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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).

On This Page:

Updates from FPB

New & Updated UW Connect Finance Job Aids:

Updated Workday Support Model

Since Workday Finance launched in July 2023, Finance, Planning & Budgeting (FPB) has focused on rapid stabilization to support the UW system. Nearly two years later, FPB is shifting to optimization with a support model that targets critical needs and maximizes resources.

UW Connect Finance tickets will still route through Shared Environments (SEs) first, escalating to central FPB only if unresolved. Under the new model, FPB units will no longer work directly with UW-IT on bug fixes or enhancements. Instead, Enterprise Business Solutions (EBS) will serve as the central escalation point, working with FPB leadership to coordinate priorities and ensure efficient resource use. FPB is working in partnership with UW-IT, especially Workday Coordination Services (WCS).

The FPB and UW-IT teams are piloting this approach with Banking & Revenue Management and Procurement & Supply Chain to identify efficiencies and develop scalable practices. If successful, the model will expand to other business processes in fall/winter 2025.

Update to the Revenue Category-to-Ledger Mapping Logic

Effective September 1, 2025, the University Controller’s Office (UCO) will change how Revenue Category activity is mapped to the appropriate Ledger in Workday, shifting from Balancing Unit to Fund as the determining dimension. This update aligns Workday with legacy UW financial practices, where Fund was the primary driver for routing revenue to either Sales and Services of Educational Departments or Auxiliary Revenue Ledgers. For most users, the change will occur behind the scenes, but those creating manual journals involving revenue will need to understand the new Fund-based logic. Updated Revenue Category Guidance will be available by September 1, 2025.

The change improves accuracy in financial reporting, aligns with historical practices, and simplifies reconciliation and training. Users may notice revenue posting to different Ledgers than before, depending on Fund setup, so departments should verify their driver worktags to ensure correct Fund assignments. For example, the same Revenue Category may now post to “46100 – Other Auxiliary Revenue” if tied to an Auxiliary Fund (e.g., FD125, FD126, FD129, FD133, FD134), or to “43000 – Sales and Services of Educational Departments” for all other Funds. This change applies only to future activity; historical data remains unchanged.

Update to Default Fund for Specific Resource Worktags

The University Controller’s Office (UCO) has corrected default Fund assignments for the following Resource worktags:

  • RS100082 – Clinical Medicine Resource
  • RS100083 – Royalty Resource
  • RS100366 – Clinical Salary Support – CUMG (SOM Only)
  • RS100367 – Clinical Salary Support – UWP (SOM Only)

These previously defaulted to FD108 – Designated Contract Fund instead of the correct FD134 – Auxiliary Fund – Other.

In addition, RS100012 – Auxiliary Enterprise – Academy was incorrectly defaulting to FD123 – Service and Recharge Center Fund; it has also been corrected to default to FD134 – Auxiliary Fund – Other.

All listed Resources now default to FD134 going forward. Shared Environments are working with UCO to adjust Driver Worktags and Internal Service Providers (ISPs) to align with these changes.

Successful FY25 Year-End Close

Thank you to everyone for your hard work in closing FY25! The fiscal year officially closed on Friday, July 25th. After the close, roll-forwards posted to FY26, and local units were able to run FY25 reports by the morning of Monday, July 28th. Please note that the University Controller’s Office (UCO) will make post-close entries on the following dates, which may affect reporting:

  • August 28th
  • September 19th
  • September 26th

These entries address required adjustments before issuing the University of Washington’s audited financials by October 31st. While they have impact at the enterprise level, the effect on local unit reporting should be minimal.

Updates to Match Exceptions for Supplier Invoices in Workday

Recently, enhancements to match exceptions have been added in Workday for supplier invoices on purchase orders (POs). These include a new match exception and new threshold amounts to other exceptions. This has been done in an effort to reduce administrative burden and streamline operations for campus.

New Match Exception: This exception will appear when the dollar amount on a goods line item on an invoice exceeds the dollar amount set up on the purchase order.

  • Supplier Invoice Unit Cost Amount/PO Unit Cost Amount Exceeds $500 Threshold (UWA)

Updated Match Exceptions: Two exceptions now exist for the “Supplier Invoice Total Amount/PO” exception, with different threshold amounts for catalog and non-catalog orders. These will appear when the dollar amount of the invoice exceeds the dollar amount of the purchase order.

  • Supplier Invoice Total Amount/PO Total Amount Exceeds $100 and 5% Threshold (UWA Catalog Orders Only)
  • Supplier Invoice Total Amount/PO Total Amount Exceeds $1,000 and 20% Threshold (UWA Non-Catalog Only)

Exceptions with New Threshold Amounts: The threshold amounts for each of these exceptions has been raised:

  • Supplier Invoice Freight Amount Exceeds $2,000 Threshold
  • Other Charges Exceeds $500 Threshold

These updates have been reflected in the How to Resolve Workday Match Exceptions for PO Invoices job aid in UW Connect.

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 Federal Updates

The Office of Research communicates changes via direct email, MRAM, and the Office of Research federal administrative policy guidance page and the Provost federal policy updates page.

GCA Updates

  • GCA’s Award Setup backlogs in Advances, Award Setup Requests, and Modifications have stabilized, averaging 145 items since July.
  • The June, July, and August 2025 GCA Newsletters share helpful tips, highlight process improvements, and outline trends that GCA is observing.
  • GCA continues to work with Shared Environment contacts, the Equipment Inventory Office (EIO), and the Controller’s Office to identify, document, and resolve issues related to fabrication award lines and associated project worktags. Job aids and related communications will be available soon.

OSP Updates

Reporting

  • Several reports are now accessible in the BI Portal:
    • Applications for Sponsored Program Funding shows historical and active applications.
    • Subawards includes subaward requests received by OSP from FY2024 to present, assisting with tracking the status of subaward requests, prioritizing which to escalate, and analyzing trends.
    • Award Setup and Modification Requests includes ASR/MODs by Cost Center and PI in order to track all of the active requests in progress.
    • A video walkthrough of the Post Award Dashboard in the BI Portal provides the basics of navigating the dashboard to get answers to common questions about expenses and balances remaining on awards.

BI Portal access requires being granted EDW permissions for every individual based on their job function and business justification for the access with specific manager approval.

Request BI Portal Access

SAGE Updates

ORIS has worked to improve the flow of work for campus and central offices, clarify SAGE processes, and address high-priority maintenance by:

  • Introducing new ASR validations to reduce the number of returns to campus.
  • Adding information to MOD headers to help improve identification at a glance.
  • Updating OSP assignment routing to expedite eGC1 and ASR processing.
  • Releasing new and updated training requested by campus, including a revised Subawards in SAGE Quick Guide and a new crosswalk of SAGE Budget base types and object codes.
  • Migrating SAGE to cloud infrastructure for long-term system maintainability.

Award Improvements Development Effort (AIDE)

Finance, Planning & Budgeting, the Office of Research, and UW Information Technology are working with campus leaders to make award setup faster, improve reporting, and boost efficiency to better support research. For weekly updates and progress on goals, please visit the IT Website.

Updates from WCS

  • Workday Operations (WDO) Jira has expanded. WCS has brought the remaining Workday Technical Operations Teams – HR Application Management, Platform Services, Security, Reporting, and Finance Application Management into one Jira project, facilitating the syncing of processes across teams.  This migration allows for WCS and Workday Operations teams to work together in one space. Processes have been reviewed and aligned to more closely track configuration work within Workday and to allow for better audit reporting.
  • WCS facilitated workshops with UWIT Workday leadership and EBS to identify how to more effectively plan, direct, and coordinate work across functions, domains, and business units. As a first step, we are bringing together the functional areas of Banking & Revenue Management and Procurement & Supply Chain, across FPB and UW-IT in a pilot to identify areas of opportunity to create efficiencies and draw boundaries where discrepancies in processes or standards must continue. We’ll then leverage lessons learned to scale refined practices to other Workday functional areas later in the Fall.

Project Management Services

WCS project management services include coordination with business teams across UWA, UWM, and technical teams: Workday Application Management, Security, Tenant Management, QA, Reporting, and/or Integrations. Below are some of the initiatives and projects WCS resources supported in the last quarter.

Audit

  • External Audit: Deliverables focused on security policies, access controls, and change controls on technical deployments submitted to KPMG, the external auditor. Evidence delivery is on target to wrap up by the second half of August. Support also included developing a framework and repeatable processes to respond to the annual audit.
  • Internal Audit: Change Controls processes for performing retrospectives on changes within Workday have been updated. Workday technical teams are now reviewing previous deployments monthly to ensure all procedures were correctly followed. Multiple Jira dashboards have been created to simplify this process.

Core Finance

  • FY2025 Procurement Transaction Roll Forward Process: WCS brought  enterprise procurement OPS teams, WD integrations, WD tenant management, central finance, and UWM Controllers’ Offices together to streamline the prep-work ahead of the roll forward window so the work was more predictive rather than reactionary as it has been in the past. This effort made the work across teams more efficient. Procedures have been documented to follow in the coming years as these transactions are part of the standard operations for year-end close events. Some clean-up activities continue.
  • Custom Validation (CV) Naming Standards & CM Activities: WCS coordinated with FAM, Custom Validation project team, and EBS to develop communications and materials for Shared Environments and Central Finance end users to define the approved naming standards and develop a roadmap for updating the backlog of CVs in the upcoming quarters.

Grants

  • Equipment Fabrication/Capitalization system fix implementation: WCS and Grants teams are celebrating implementation of a long-awaited solution for specific transaction types associated with fabrication projects that have high impacts for many research teams. Up to now, these transactions were not visible on the capital project workbench, so fabrication projects could not be associated with an asset to capitalize it. The fix replaces the temporary workarounds previously used and resolves multiple pain points in this process identified by our Finance Shared Environment partners on campus.
  • Use Tax Fix: WCS coordinated with GCA, Controller’s Office, and Workday to fix the underbilling issue for Use Taxes on Cost Reimbursable transactions. UW was able to correct billings by $385,000.
  • Prism Pipeline Documentation: WCS coordinated publishing definitions and calculations of the most popular Sponsor Invoice type enabling GCA users to troubleshoot when they suspect the information generated might not be accurate.

Banking and Revenue Management (BRM)

  • Supported the resolution of 5 maintenance, break-fix and other tasks for the BRM team which resolved and investigated issues Finance customers were having with Workday functionality and data. This work included the correction of accounting discrepancies of over $115 million, the resolution of bugs and errors from prior fiscal year and before Finance go-live, and the cleanup of over 1,000 customer records with incorrect Workday generated IDs.
  • Extend Development Framework: WCS coordinated decision making and formation of the Extend Development Framework stakeholders group and Community of Practice which will ultimately help UW and UW-IT attain a sustainable model for the development and support of new, custom Extend applications. These applications will expand the functionality of our Workday modules while reducing the effort of staff to perform associated business and technical tasks.

Workday Recruiting Module Implementation

  • WCS is managing the Technical Support of WD Recruiting, which will integrate and enhance UW’s hiring process and employee data and allow us to retire a decades old in-house system that is not able to meet evolving business and technical requirements. WD Recruiting will go live 8/18/2025 providing a new way for both internal and external applicants to apply for positions at UW.

Procurement and Supply Chain

  • AI: WCS coordinated the implementation of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for Supplier Invoice Automation with Email Ingestion to create supplier invoices in Workday for invoices that cannot be scanned by GHX. This alleviates the need for UW AP staff to manually enter these invoices
  • Advanced Routing | Remove Prior Approver Exclusion from Funding Approvers for ER, SA, and ProCard: WCS continues to manage the ongoing optimization of routing for review and approval for a more consistent user experience and accuracy in authorizations across Expense Reports, Spend Authorizations, and other Procurement Card transactions.
  • Update Match Exception Rules – UWA/UWM: WCS facilitated the threshold revisions (both flat dollar amount and percentage) that trigger exceptions requiring review and approval by appropriate user(s) to better align with UWA and UWM organizational standards and criteria.

Finance Application Management (FAM)

The FAM 2025 Q2 newsletter provides business owners and stakeholders with quarterly updates and important announcements about the work Finance Applications Management is doing across different functional areas.

Past Updates

Archive

This spring, we launched the Awards Improvement and Development Effort (AIDE) effort, an institution-level initiative formed to improve the grant management system at the University of Washington. This project is focused on immediate and long-term positive impacts for managing research awards, including streamlining processes and making enterprise-level system improvements for our campus partners and those that support the processes (FPB, GCA, ORIS, OSP, and UW-IT staff). You will see AIDE deliverables featured throughout our update below.

Updates from FPB

New & Updated UW Connect Finance Job Aids

Updated UW Connect Finance Request Forms

  • Travel Spend Authorization & Reimbursement Request
    • Mirror the same fields for authorization and reimbursement
    • Adjust language that was pointing users to old FAS info
    • Adjust language around driver and non-driver worktags
    • Allow watchers to be added directly

Reporting Enhancements

Advanced Routing Implementation Enhances Procurement Approval Process

FPB partnered with UW-IT to implement Advanced Routing, a streamlined approval process designed to eliminate workflow bottlenecks and reduce manual intervention. Since the launch of Workday Finance, users with multiple approval roles within a single business process frequently encountered unassigned approval actions. These unassigned tasks often caused processing delays—sometimes taking over a week to resolve manually.

The new routing logic significantly improves efficiency for Procurement Services, local units, and support teams. The initial rollout focused on Procurement workflows, including:

  • Requisitions
  • Purchase Orders
  • Change/Cancel Purchase Orders

How Will This Impact Users?

  • Single-Line Transactions (same funding worktags): No major changes. If you hold multiple approval roles, one approval will apply to all relevant roles.
  • Split-Line Transactions (multiple funding worktags): It is possible you may receive multiple approval notifications, depending on your role and sequence. However, this will be rare.

The update went live on April 2, 2025.

FY25 Year-End Close Calendar Now Available

The University Controller’s Office (UCO) has released the fiscal year 2025 (FY25) year-end close calendar. In addition, Procurement Services has published key deadlines for specific transaction types. Users are encouraged to coordinate with their shared environments to prepare for year-end close activities.

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 Federal Administration Research Policy

Other New & Updated Resources

  • GCA’s new Responding to Returned ASRs and MODs page provides information about why most items are returned, what to do when an ASR or MOD is returned to campus and how to avoid returns in the future.

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:

  • Selection of the associated Workday Grant and ASR/MOD for subaward requests to expedite processing
  • Auto-assignment of ASRs and MODs to OSP staff, reducing time spent manually assigning work
  • A direct link between SAGE and MyResearch Training Transcript for tracking investigators’ compliance status
  • Various requested training materials, including the Managing SAGE Award Requests List video

Research Reporting

Updates from WCS

Jira 

Workday Operations (WDO) Jira is about to expand. WCS is working with teams currently using the Integrated Service Center (ISC) Jira and will begin migrating to WDO by the end of May. This migration will allow for WCS, Finance Application Management, HRP Application Management, Workday Security, Workday QA, and Workday Tenant Management to work together in one space. Processes have been reviewed and aligned so we can more closely track configuration work within Workday.

Project Management Services

WCS project management services include coordination with business teams across UWA and UWM and technical teams: Workday Application Management, Security, Tenant Management, QA, Reporting, and/or Integrations. Below are some of the initiatives and projects WCS resources supported in the last quarter.

  • The AIDE project has handed over its first approved initiative to WCS to manage: Award Modification Integration and Award Views. This initiative will reduce duplicate data entry and expedite the process once complete.
  • OnCore Sponsor Integration fix provided additional Award Purpose Code values to OnCore Customer Payment. Previously, OnCore was receiving payment details for invoices not affiliated with their system.
  • Workday 2025 Release 1: The tenant management team partnered with multiple UW-IT teams to ensure a successful launch for the first Workday Release of 2025.  Noteworthy changes that impact UW can be found here.
  • Adaptive Planning Support:
    • The Adaptive Planning team mapped objects and tables between Adaptive (which is not fully integrated with Workday) and other Workday Integrations. This will aid future efforts to automate data transfers between the two systems.
    • WCS facilitated discussions to begin a partnership between Adaptive and the Workday tenant management and security teams to educate them on Adaptive use cases and points of friction to enable more comprehensive maintenance and ongoing improvements.
  • Restrict Ad Hoc Bank Transactions (ABHTs) on Grants in Closeout in Progress Status added a new approval step and condition rule along with security and configuration updates to restrict AHBTs that posted to grants when they should not (which otherwise would violate strict sponsor requirements that grant spending happen during the period of performance).
  • Functionality of bank institution record search checkbox discovery work determined the functionality of the “enable bank institution record searching” which in turn allowed the Treasury office to determine if the functionality could address obstacles to getting bank information loaded into Workday.
  • The Book to Bank Summary report not being updated correctly by the Journal Entry (JE) issue created over $115 million in “unexplained differences” in the Book to Bank Summary report. The discovery work determined a monthly payroll payment settlement was missing from the Cash Ledger Balance column in the report. Note this work is technically still ongoing.
  • Workday Configuration Elements Inventory in Jira: The Finance Application Management (FAM) team identified several key Workday configuration elements—Business Processes, Custom Validations, and EIBs. However, Workday lacks built-in tools to effectively track interdependencies among these elements or annotate detailed metadata. This effort delivered the development and ongoing management of a Jira-based inventory of these elements. This included capturing metadata, mapping relationships, defining business ownership, and documenting configuration rationale.
    • The technical FAM teams are currently tracking over 700 configuration elements, with plans to eventually present this data to business stakeholders through Tableau dashboards.
  • Asset-Supporting EIBs in Production were a post Go-Live requirements for both UWM and UWA Asset Management teams. The EIBs support key asset-related operations, including transfers, disposals, removals, reclassifications, useful life updates, and service date adjustments. Role-based security has replaced user-based security to reduce operational overhead. Currently, three out of seven EIBs are now live in production, with the remaining four targeted for deployment by the first week of June.
  • Production Lockout for Accounting Journal Adjustments work supported a high volume of accounting journal corrections. Most of the adjustments handled were for Grants and were part of the preliminary clean-up work initiated by the AIDE project.
  • Work on the Custom Validation Bypass Process project continues with an initiative to formalize the policy, process, and technical framework for bypassing Custom Validations (CVs). UWA and UWM Controller’s Offices partnered with WCS and the FAM Core Finance team to define new policy outlining how CV Bypass requests should be submitted, reviewed, and approved. The new method has been created, configured with a new UW Connect request flow established. The legacy bypass process is being decommissioned.

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.

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.