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Quarterly Workday Finance News

Our quarterly Workday Finance update, brought to you by Finance, Planning & Budgeting (FPB), the Office of Research, and Workday Coordination Services (WCS).

Q1 2025 Update

Updates from FPB

UW Connect Finance (UWCF)

The new UWCF Landing Page is going live on Monday, February 24th at 7 pm PST! We are implementing updates to enhance the look, feel, and navigation of UWCF. These improvements will also streamline how information is located, updated, and managed, including ownership and the frequency of updates.  

Workday Companies 

Starting Monday, February 3, 2025, expanded business processes in Workday went live for the following organizations:

  • Portage Bay Insurance (PBI)
  • University of Washington Alumni Association (UWAA)
  • University of Washington Foundation (UWF) 

While these organizations have been part of Workday since its initial launch, their functionality has been limited. This update will enable a variety of operational transactions within Workday for these companies. 

To ensure a smooth transition, Enterprise Business Solutions will provide four weeks of prioritized support after go-live. 

Shared Environment FDM Bootcamp  

The FDM Bootcamp Series kicked off in September.  The content was focused on FDM related topics and needs from a central office and SE perspective, geared for Shared Environment accounting staff.  Slide decks and recordings from all four sessions can be found at Shared Environment Accounting Forum & FDM Bootcamp Series.  

Updates from Workday Finance for Research

The Office of Research Central (ORC), the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), the Office of Research Information Services (ORIS), and Grant & Contract Accounting (GCA) have collaborated on the following updates:  

Guidance on New Administration Policy for Federal Research 

Award Setup & Modification Requests 

Other New & Updated Resources 

SAGE Updates 

The SAGE team has worked to improve the flow of work for OSP & GCA, add clarity to SAGE’s interface and processes, and address high-priority maintenance by releasing: 

  • Updated subcategories and request amount field for Modification Requests to improve process flow and reporting 
  • Grant Runner FORMS-I and restoring NIH error-checking and PDF generation functionality 
  • Improved awards search by application to provide additional clarity 
  • Fixed access and navigation issues for users with the eGC1 Reviewer role 
  • Increased access to eGC1s for Global Edit and SAGE Read-only Roles 

Reporting 

Updates from WCS

Jira  

  • Launched new Workday Operations (WDO) Jira to track work. WCS and the Finance Application Management (FAM) teams are tracking Workday configuration work in WDO. Next steps include discussions with teams using the Integrated Service Center (ISC) Jira to begin planning for migrating into the WDO Jira. Teams on the ISC Jira include HRP Application Management, Workday Security, Workday QA, and Workday Tenant Management.  

Project Management Services  

WCS project management services include coordination with business teams and technical teams: Workday Application Management, Security, Tenant Management, QA, Reporting, and/or Integrations. 

  • WCS provided project management support for both technical and business activities for the New Companies set-up activities as discussed above. This work included coordinating multiple teams: integrations, application management, and security on the technical side. UW Foundation, UW Alumni Association, and Portage Bay Insurance are enabled as transacting companies in Workday Finance.
  • Unallowable Fringe fix: Workday’s Payroll Accounting functionality does not allow for the ability to override where fringe benefits post. This means fringe benefits will be posted based on the distribution of the corresponding earnings. Therefore, when Sponsors impose spending restrictions on individual awards that do not allow fringe benefits, expenses averaging $60,000 per month were manually moved by the Grant & Contract Accounting (GCA) team to remain in compliance. WCS provided support to correct the automatic posting of unallowable fringe benefits to improve both GCA’s business processes end user experience when reviewing Budget vs. Actual reports.  
  • Minimum Wage & ATB Table Changes effort completed the project retrospective as well as wrapping up the work. With the completion of the work come 22 pay table updates for classified employees, 4,728 employee comp movements, 1,745 employee job profile movements, and 135 compensation grade changes are now reflected in Workday as of 1/1/25.
  • New Customer Invoice Type: Miscellaneous A/R revenue couldn’t be tracked and reported easily in Workday. UW Academy and Harborview Medical Center (HMC) required a separate Miscellaneous A/R revenue stream from Program Income, which previously used Customer Standard (CST) invoice type.  A new invoice type of CPI (Customer Program Income) was created and uses the same ledger accounts and approval process as CST. New Custom Validations (CVs) were added to restrict program income revenue categories to the new CPI invoice type which doesn’t allow specified program income revenue categories on CST invoices, and also to create new Customer Invoice layout rules for each company.   
  • Workday Configuration Elements Strategy Stage 1 project completed an inventory of all Finance Custom Validations, Business Processes, and Workday EIBs.   Inventory has been collected and audited, the primary business office identified, and the relationships between these 3 configuration elements are now established and documented.  This will elevate the cross-functional understanding of Workday Finance configuration, enable more efficient solution design and implementation, and reduce unforeseen configuration issues due to lack of cross-functional visibility.  
  • Workday Extend for FDM Provisioning completed the configuration of Workday Extend to mature the FDM worktag request and provisioning process.  By using Workday Extend for FDM provisioning, key FDM worktags can now be more efficiently requested and provisioned, eliminating significant manual intervention, speeding up request/approval/provisioning times, reducing user errors, and providing automated reporting.  Around 1,600 FDM requests have been requested and provisioned through Workday Extend since September 2024. 

Past Updates

Archive

Updates from FPB

UW Connect Finance

  • As of October 7, the UW Connect Finance Portal requires a UW NetID login to access all content and forms, ensuring full access to resources.

New Job Aids

  • How to Use Advanced Search & Filters to Manage Your Tasks in Workday – Covers how to filter and organize tasks that you are assigned in Workday.
  • Understanding Full-Time Equivalency (FTE) in Workday and the EDW – Explains Full-Time Equivalency (FTE), explores how this value is calculated in Workday and the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW), and identifies the scenarios where these calculations may be incorrect for Actual (Paid) FTE.
  • Fabrication Projects Job Aid – Provides an overview of Fabrication Projects in Workday. Specifically, it outlines the responsibilities of key contacts and roles within the Workday Fabrication Project lifecycle.
  • UW Connect Finance Portal Content Creator Resources – Based on feedback from a survey that went out to content creators, we’ve developed a resource page specifically for content creators to make your work easier. This page includes updated guides for creating and editing knowledge articles, new instructions for managing attachments, job aid and knowledge article templates, and a content review checklist to help ensure top-quality content.

FDM Change Request Process

Now Live! The new FDM Change Request process for Activity, Assignee, Program, and Stand-Alone Grants worktags, designed for Shared Environments FDM requestors and approvers. Explore detailed job aids below for clear, step-by-step guidance on this transition.

All other FDM requests (i.e., Cost Center) need to go through the current UW Connect submission process. You can also use the UW Connect form to ask questions about the new FDM Change Request process or to log an issue.

Shared Environment FDM Bootcamp

The FDM Bootcamp Series kicked off in September. The content is focused on FDM related topics and needs from a central office and SE perspective, geared for Shared Environment accounting staff. Slide decks and recordings from the first three sessions are available for reference.

Remaining Series Topics:

  • Series #4 – Reporting

Updates from Workday Finance for Research

Together, the Office of Research Central (ORC), the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), the Office of Research Information Services (ORIS), and Grant & Contract Accounting (GCA) are continuously working to improve guidance and resources for the research and grants process.

Award Setup & Modification Requests

Subaward Requests

Other New and Updated Resources

Updates for Escalating Problems

If you experience delays affecting awards, please follow these processes:

Procurement-related urgent requests should go to pcshelp@uw.edu and, if needed, notify your Shared Environment for further escalation.

For projects at risk of losing funding, collaborators, or vendors: If the Urgent Request process (above) does not resolve your problem, complete the abbreviated escalation intake form at “How do I escalate an urgent sponsored research problem?” and send to your Dean’s Office designee.

SAGE Updates

The SAGE team has released updates to improve OSP, GCA, and campus users’ flow of work, reduce returns, and address high-priority maintenance items:

  • Automation of OSP eGC1 assignments frees up OSP time spent managing and triaging eGC1 work.
  • Integrations between SAGE and Workday facilitate the setup of awards in Advance Spend status, reducing manual entry and processing time for GCA.
  • Various validations and updated hint text have been released to improve clarity and reduce returns.
  • Award permissions for Dean’s Reviewer and SAGE Read-Only ASTRA roles have been updated to allow access to all ASRs, MODs, and ADVs within their research hierarchy span of control. This allows greater transparency, triaging, and escalation of department work.
  • SAGE user guides are undergoing iterative revisions to improve clarity and provide more policy links and guidance.

View more details on the SAGE Release Calendar.

Reporting

  • Upcoming – Expense Verification Tool: Planned for an early 2025 release, this anticipated tool for sponsored program funding will streamline the process of verifying expenses on grant-funded projects.
  • Upcoming – Dean’s Office Level Award Reporting: Exploratory information sessions for developing Dean’s Office Level Award reporting tools are being hosted in November and December. Stay tuned for more information as these are developed.

Updates from WCS

UW Connect

  • Reviewing remaining Extended Transition Services (ETS) and older UW Connect Assignment Groups and routing for retirement, as the WCS Intake Form is now live and should be the main point for requesting work from WCS for Workday configurations (break-fix, change requests, projects).

Jira

  • Coordinating with FPB, UW Medicine, and ORIS to identify which of the 10,000+ open tickets in Jira remaining from the UWFT Program are still valid.
  • Developing new Workday Operations (WDO) Jira project to track work. This will be another step to move away from UWFT Program processes and into operational mode. WCS and the Finance Application Management teams will be the first teams utilizing the new Jira project.

Project Management Services

WCS provided project management services to the following projects and initiatives:

  • FDM Change Management as mentioned above.
  • Created an automated data pull from Adaptive Planning data into the Enterprise Data Warehouse for the new Fiscal 26 Budgeting tools to prepare for the next budget cycle. Several teams worked together to solve the challenges encountered during the FY25 cycle including the Budget, Security, Reporting, and Integrations teams. Live as of 11/8/2024.
  • Annual Merit and Open Enrollment activities which also included updating documentation to streamline the processes for next year.
  • Continuing support across Grant Award to Close, Record to Report, Procurement & Supply Chain, Workday Recruiting implementation, New Company Integration, and Workday Security.
  • Migrating former ISC incident management process into UW-IT’s Incident Management process.

Updates from Finance, Planning, and Budgeting

FPB Blog
FPB is committed to keeping you informed about the latest developments within the FPB team through our weekly blog post. This includes updates on new content we create, and any stabilization efforts as needed.

Go to the blog

Procurement Training
Starting in July, Procurement shifted their weekly office hours to monthly Procurement Deep Dives. Each session is structured and focused on specific training themes, a transition that you can expect in many of our disciplines supported by FPB. Monthly Procurement Deep Dives will address common issues and trends identified from the UW Connect data, ensuring that our time together is productive and targeted.

Sign up for Procurement Deep Dives

Our goal with this change is to better equip the community with the necessary skills to utilize Workday for Procure to Pay processes effectively and to “flip the classroom” such that the community engages in the work and specialized training where it is complementary to a growing skillset within our shared environments.

New Support Resources in the UW Connect Finance Portal

⇒ The Workday Company & Worktags job aid reviews the basics of Workday worktags and company, including defining what they are, how to use them, how driver worktags function, what company codes are, and how to find worktags and company codes for your department or unit.

⇒ The Workday Fundamentals for Grant Managers video demonstration and quick guide offer grant managers an introduction to using Workday, featuring strategies to enhance efficiency in performing tasks. The video demonstration is a live recording from the CORE Works-in-Progress series, where grant managers’ questions are answered by Stephanie McConnel, a Grant Manager.

Shared Environment FDM Bootcamp
With the completion of the Shared Environment (SE) Accounting Forum, the shift is now to an FDM Mini Bootcamp Series. The content is focused on FDM related topics and needs from a central office and SE perspective, geared for Shared Environment accounting staff. As we know others are interested in joining, we are keeping the audience restricted but will be sharing the recordings and slide deck on the FPB website.

Draft Series Topics:

  • Series #1 – Accounting Fundamentals
  • Series #2 – Deep Dive into UW Specific Setups
  • Series #3 – Net Position
  • Series #4 – Reporting

The mini-series begins September 10th; contact uwfinance@uw.edu with questions.

Updates from Office of Research

The Office of Research Central (ORC), the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), the Office of Research Information Services (ORIS), and Grant & Contract Accounting (GCA) are committed to collaborating to serve the needs of our users.

SAGE Updates

  • The System to Administer Grants Electronically (SAGE) team recently released an integration between SAGE Budget and Workday that has reduced manual data entry in Workday for GCA and resulted in more efficient processing of Award Setup Requests.
  • An additional integration planned for August will send full award setup details to Workday when an award in Advance Spend status already exists, which will further reduce data entry required by GCA.
  • In early FY25, there will be efforts focused on improving OSP’s flow of work.

Research Reports

  • For Workday users, GCA has assembled a list of recommended reports to aid in grant management.
  • The newly released Grant Manager Dashboard centralizes grant information for a given user. This new dashboard comes in addition to the Grant Planning and Forecasting Tool, Post Award Dashboard, and Principal Investigator Dashboard, as the suite of available reporting tools continues to grow.
  • ORIS provides monthly volume reports on proposals, and Award Setup and Modification Requests, including those returned to campus, until self-service is available.

Contact grantrpt@uw.edu with special research report requests.

Training

Upcoming Resources

Updates from WCS

Workday Coordination Services (WCS) is working on a simplified request process where Workday Business Owner Representatives will soon be able to use a single form to submit requests to WCS. Once available, the form will be used for change requests, new projects, and break-fix submissions that involve Workday Finance, Workday HCM, or platform-wide functionality alike.