Workday for Finance Professionals

HRS and SFS will shut down on April 30, 2026.

Pre-Workday data is available via legacy systems for a limited period of time: HRS data was available through OBIEE through November 2025, and SFS data will be available in WISER through September 2026.

Universities of Wisconsin finance staff use Workday to perform many important finance business processes, including:

  • Reviewing and approving expense reports or purchases
  • Generating customer invoices
  • Overseeing a procurement process
  • Completing payroll costing allocations and adjustments
  • Completing journal entries and adjustments
  • Searching for financial data and running reports

Finance Actions in Workday

Workday brings many finance business processes into a single, integrated platform. Expand the menus to find job aids for common finance processes or to access job aids and how-to videos sorted by topic.

Adaptive Planning

Workday Adaptive Planning supports budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting. Adaptive Planning incorporates financial and Workday HCM data to enable individual universities and central offices to plan using shared data, common assumptions, and standardized structures. Adaptive Planning supports detailed financial modeling, position-based budgeting, compensation planning, and scenario analysis, while promoting transparency and alignment across universities. The platform is used for systemwide forecasting and annual budget development. 

If you need access to Adaptive Planning, please contact your campus Budget Officer.  

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Browse Adaptive Planning Job Aids for Financial Professionals  

Banking and Settlement

Workday will be used to manage payments made to and from the Universities of Wisconsin, including processing payments and printing checks. Banking in Workday uses functionality for automatic bank reconciliation and payment application.

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Browse Banking and Settlement Job Aids for Finance Professionals

Budget

The budget process is supported by Workday Financial Management and related reporting tools that leverage integrated data from Workday to support budget amendments, monitoring, and analysis using a consistent, systemwide framework. Budgeting support from Workday reduces manual reconciliation, improves data consistency across campuses, and supports timely visibility into financial position and performance to inform decision-making. 

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Browse Budgeting Job Aids for Financial Professionals

Business Assets

Workday will be used to manage business assets (also known as fixed assets). Each university is responsible for maintaining accurate capital equipment records, including but not limited to book value, depreciation, and federal ownership. Workday will also be used as our system of record for biannual physical inventory requirements.

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Browse Business Assets Job Aids for Finance Professionals

Customer Accounts

The customer accounts processes (also known as accounts receivable) in Workday will be used to manage customer invoices and collection of revenue. These processes in Workday maximize the Universities of Wisconsin’s collection of delinquent accounts receivable and minimize the administrative cost of those efforts.

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Browse Customer Accounts Job Aids for Finance Professionals

Expense Reports/University Credit Cards

Workday Expenses will be used to submit expense reports, track expense reports through the approval process, and reconcile credit card transactions. Some support staff may submit expense reports on behalf of others.

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Browse Expense Reports Job Aids for Finance Professionals

Financial Accounting

Financial accounting in Workday occurs on an accrual basis and includes accounting adjustments and journals. Accounting adjustments are created for adjustments of settled operational transactions, such as supplier invoices or expense reports. Accounting journals are used to move partial costs or transfer revenues between worktags.

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Browse Financial Accounting Job Aids for Finance Professionals

Internal Service Delivery

Internal service delivery (ISD) in Workday refers to processes related to internal billing actions both within and between the Universities of Wisconsin.

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Inventory

Many actions related to inventory management — such as stocking, tracking, and replenishing internal goods and supplies — will happen in Workday. ShopUW+ will be used to handle other parts of the inventory process, like creating a requisition for inventory fulfillment.

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Payroll Accounting

Costing allocations provide the funding details related to payroll transactions in Workday. Costing allocations are set up during various stages of HR business processes and can also be managed ad hoc.

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Payroll Accounting Resources

Procurement/Purchasing

Workday will be used to create requisitions, purchase orders, and receipts, and to manage supplier accounts. Some steps in the end-to-end procurement process, like catalog shopping, will take place in ShopUW+.

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Browse Procurement/Purchasing Job Aids for Finance Professionals

Projects

Many actions related to capital and non-capital projects will happen in Workday.

Planning and approval of capital project initiatives will happen outside of Workday, while financial transactions for capital projects will be recorded in Workday for analysis and regular financial reporting. Actual transactions for Universities of Wisconsin-managed projects will be processed in Workday and recorded to the project, while transactions for state-managed capital projects will be routed from the Department of Administration to Workday.

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