|
Payroll actuals and encumbrances
|
Actual
Oblig.
|
When reviewing FY26 payroll expenses, be aware that:
- System Office has to move some faculty summer pay transactions between FY25 and FY26. Awaiting update on completion..
- Payroll encumbrance (obligation) calculation is not accurate and it may not always be recorded where the employee's payroll costing allocation is set (notified 3/20/25) - We have also noticed that some may be going to a 'blank' program code and the appropriate Cost Center. Pending more info from System Office
- One time lump sum payments, which includes expense reports (business expenses) must be manually corrected by Financial Management staff weekly. The program code coding does get sent to Workday.
- This has high impact on IFO professional study and travel program codes
Fy25 payroll interfaces into Workday Finance were fraught with issues. Financial Management staff spent months doing manual coding corrections on thousands of transactions that came through with default or blank program codes. Not all corrections could be made before hard close. Some corrections related to Fy25 will be made in FY26 (if it affects a grant or carryforward balance)
|
|
Fringe Benefits Expense
|
Budget
Actual
Oblig.
|
FY26 fringe budgets were loaded to the Workday program level. This should be an improvement over FY25.
Fringe budgets are an estimated (32% on base salaries 23% of community faculty salary or special pay types). Any excess fringe budget belongs to the University and is not eligible for transfer to NonPersonnel or Salaries.
Presumably, fringe encumbrance (Obligations) are not calculating/being recorded correctly (like salary encumbrance).
In FY25, general fund program and cost centers had fringe expense but no fringe budget. Fringe was budgeted centrally ($16.7M) in PG0006172 METS CENTRAL SALARY & FRINGE BENEFIT COSTS 215220). Previously ISRS budgets were loaded in the same way, but it had a reporting feature that visually removed expense from the program/cc and reported it against central budget. (BAT tables). At the time of Fy25 budget load, there was nothing available to advise how this would work in Workday.
|
|
Negative Commitments or Obligations totals
|
Commit.
Oblig.
|
If you see a negative total in your program's Commitments or Obligations columns, please contact Financial Services
It likely is result of an Fy25 encumbrance being released in Fy26.
Until the transaction is corrected, it will artificially inflate your "Budget Variance" and "% Remaining" columns.
|
| Revenue not appearing on budget vs actual report when expected |
Revenue Actual |
Some revenue (invoices that have been paid by customized training customers) appear to be stuck in deferred cash instead of showing as actual revenue on budget vs actual reports.
Submitted system office ticket 190131 on 2/6; As of late summer, System Office has confirmed this is a known issue they need to address
|
|
Carryforward FY25 to Fy26
|
Budget
|
As of 9/26/25 - any carry forwards in Workday for Fy26 are ESTIMATED and were loaded at the time of budgeting.
Financial Management is in process of calculating adjustments based on final Fy25 actuals.
Some cannot be done until System Office has made the FY25 / Fy26 summer payroll corrections.
|
|
Program code activity may be in more than one cost center
|
Budget
Actual
Commit.
Oblig.
|
Workday programs/projects/grants are associated with a default cost center, however Workday does allow transactions to post to other cost centers.
This should be rare, but could happen by accident when coding a financial transaction, or due to reorganization, a program code may move from one cost center to another (we try to do most of these at the beginning of a fiscal year).
Use RPT00290 Budget vs actual by Program and/or run a report on that Workday program #, so you can see program balances regardless of the cost center.
In Fy25 several program codes were originally mapped to an incorrect cost center, and/or we realized after go live a new cost center was needed. Corrections were made to move most but not all balances.
|
|
Student Payroll Commitment (encumbrance) not in Workday
|
Commit.
|
Student payroll encumbrance (Commitment) does not interface to Workday from ISRS..
Workaround process: Cost Center Managers, please keep tabs on your student payroll encumbrance amount by reviewing it in Web Accounting. Actual and Encumbrance will be correct, but budget may not be (Web Accounting only has original budget load)
Student Payroll does send detail to supervisors every pay period and will make note of this.
System Office ticket 170892 opened 10/15/2024 asked System Office to interface the encumbrance - awaiting response.
|
|
Transfer In/Transfer Out (Funds transfer)
|
Actual
|
Be aware that 'Transfer in" in Workday, appears on the "Expense" section as a negative expense.
In ISRS, "Transfer In" appeared in the "Revenue" section.
Ticket submitted to System Office 10/1/24 to inquire if that was an intentional change or an error - no answer as of April.
|
| Workday Cash balances / ISRS General Ledger Balances |
Balance Sheet |
Until July or August 2025, cash balances by fund were not visible in Workday.
ISRS, had a "General Ledger" field that could be used to track cash balances within a fund. You may still look up ISRS "General Ledger" cash balances, however be aware that it does not include transactions that originated in Workday.
Workday does not have "General Ledger". Cash balances are recorded at the fund level.
Financial Management is in process of reconciling ISRS General Ledgers / Fund to Workday Fund cash balances and determining how to maintain records on cash balances within a fund. Carry forward entry or Transfer In/Out entries between program codes may be an option. Every Minn State institution has this need.
|
|
University financial reporting
|
|
Unable to make meaningful progress on this in FY25 due to inaccuracy of payroll transactions and unavailability of cash balances in Workday.
Pre-Workday, the financial reporting data structures, and reporting tools and routines were limited.
Elements needed to get to a comprehensive reporting routine will include:
1- (DONE) Map out all projects/programs/grants into Fund structure - determine what structures Workday has to organize reporting (done)
2- Determine what to report on, level of reporting and who needs to receive the reports -- identify/establish data structures to enable that reporting
a-)For Gen fund, we will either need to
- establish a structure that allows us to report on the program codes that the University community tends to focus on most (unrestricted funds that are tuition and appropriation funded). Would likely require Workday program hierarchies, which we will need System Office support to establish.
-OR-
- change how we report on general fund with the University community to include ALL of general fund including restricted System Office-funded initiatives and student Tech Fee.
b-) Also need to make continuous improvement on granularity of important financial data (differential tuition, PPSC, budget loads). Once we can see the data at the right level, then we can improve processes, controls, reporting, communication, decision-making around it.
3- Determine schedule for review, distribution, publish of financials
This also includes ensuring there is a routine for meaningful collaboration and support with cost center managers and their support staff to ensure transaction accuracy.
4- Determine how to produce and publish the reports.
Long term goal: Financial reports/dashboards in My Reports on my.metro like we have for enrollment data. All university CFOs are pushing on SO to get the data access that would allow that to progress.
For now -- we will need to use custom filters on the reports available in Workday and export them to Excel, modifying as needed for structures that do not exist in the data yet.
|
| Hierarchy of Workday Cost Centers - improvements |
|
Cost Center Hierarchies can be used to report on multiple Workday Cost centers that report to a single VP .
Cost Center Hierarchies in Workday are correct through Hierarchy level 3 (VP / Division level)
Levels 4 & 5 are not yet corrected, lower priority, since hierarchies are not yet commonly used.
Cost center hierarchies are listed in the file in KB Article: ISRS Cost Center Mapping into Workday
|
| eBuilder related invoices (Facilities projects) |
Actual
Commit.
Oblig.
|
Workday reports are not built to report our on Facilities projects.
Ebuilder integration issues were problematic in Fy25.
As of late Sept 2025, FM received guidance on reconciliation across eBuilder, SWIFT, and Workday that should help improve confidence in Workday results.
|
| Budget Controls |
Actual |
Nonpersonnel budget controls
Currently all Minn State institutions are setup for Workday "Budget Check" to give a warning rather than stopping a transaction. The setting can be turned on by institution (Workday "Company"), but has not been turned on in Fy25 due to the many Workday stabilization activities underway. Cost Center Managers need to monitor spending against budget as best they can.
System Office anticipates turning on budget controls early in FY26. We are told it will monitor budget at the ledger account level within a program, but detailed testing is underway.
Personnel budget controls
There are no system controls for personnel, however during Fy25,
The Position Request form (previously a pdf file) is now a BP Logix form owned by Human Resources. That form gets routed to FM so the position budget can be confirmed before leadership makes decisions on approving a position refill. FM will soon be working with HR to close or freeze PCNs that are not budgeted. This data clean up will help prepare us for continued improvements.
|
| Transaction reports not providing needed fields and drill down for expense reconciliation |
|
Office managers have expressed frustration with viewing appropriate transaction level detail especially for pcards.
Ticket submitted to system office (#194061 3/3/25 asking for additions to transaction detail screen (show expense report #) and on expense report detail (show memo or receipt comments). Response received mid April, indicating that they are reviewing for change request. As of July indicated our continued interest in this. Thank you to Nayoung Kim and Quina Davis for providing detailed feedback that enabled this request.
|
| Budget transaction detail is limited in budget vs actual reports, making it difficult to see budget transfer and other budget adjustment details |
Budget |
Budget transaction detail have very limited detailed provided.
On 2/4/2025 we submitted a ticket to System Office (#189559) suggesting that they add date, description (of budget load/transfer) and budget amendment ID# to the transaction detail so it is easier to understand the activity, both for Financial Management and for Cost Center Managers and Workday Finance Analysts. No response as of April 24, 2025.
Also be aware that initial budget load (from Adaptive Planning) does not show in the budget transaction detail. Only Budget Transfer (budget amendments) are detailed.
|
|
FY24 Results / Reporting from Workday
Uncertain if Workday 'last year' has been tied out to ISRS FY24
|
|
ISRS/Web Accounting is the system of record for FY24 results
- ISRS contains post-July 1 FY24 balances (for txn detail, you may need to go to Workday)
- System Office communicated that the Workday FY24 conversion into ISRS was completed 9/26/24
For now, disregard Workday 'Last Year' (FY24) columns on reports. There is data there, but we have received no communication/confirmation about its accuracy. Once we are in Fy26, the last year columns can be used.
FY25 data in ISRS
ISRS has
- all student payroll, and other student-related financial activity.
- initial budget loads (but not budget transfers/amendments).
All ISRS financial data interfaces to Workday for FY25 except for student payroll encumbrances.
|
|
Revenue budget load practices + budget loads for other funds
|
Budget
Actual
|
in Fy26, general fund revenue budget loads indicate the expense budget was based on that revenue.
In Fy24 and prior, Revenue budget loads were not consistently used.
Revenue budgeting/loads may aid in consistent reporting, budget target setting and quality assurance. Research, data changes, and process changes will need to be worked through for a more holistic and consistent approach.
Related work in progress:
This is a Metro State effort not dependent on System Office.
|