Workday Finance Stabilization In Progress

Payroll actuals and encumbrances 

Actual

Encumbrance

Reporting

PENDING SYSTEM OFFICE  - Update received 11/21:  They aim to complete testing on 11/22 and we hope to hear more on timing of corrections and interface catch up after that.

Payroll Periods ending 7/30, 8/13, 8/27/24 interfaced to Workday Finance, but thousands of lines went to a default cost center/program instead of the cost center/program or grant where it should have posted.  Error correction is needed for Budget vs Actual reports to be accurate.

Because of the issues above, payroll interfaces for pay periods after Aug 27 have not yet interfaced to Workday Finance.

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In addition, there are FY24 payroll transactions that interfaced in Workday into FY25; System Office in progress or correcting (late Oct);  It is our understanding that this is only a Workday interface issue which is overstating FY25 expense.  ISRS is correct for FY24.

Also fo awareness / potential discussion:

Resident faculty base salary expense is charged to last year's % split to grant/program and cost center until March, when allocations and 9 months of actual/encumbrances are updated in Workday to match FWM/actual teaching assignments.

• Above describes the process used pre-Workday
• FM plans to review how other universities handle this, and what the cost allocation and instructional cost study reporting needs are to determine if there are alternative solutions.  Goal is to meet reporting requirements, provide cost center managers with the best financial information we can, and ensure efficient use of FM staff time  Need to gather sufficient background information before discussing approach more broadly with Provost and others.

Fringe Benefits Expense

(For awareness-unlikely to change approach for FY25)

Budget

Actual

Encumb

Workday does not have the BAT/reporting feature like ISRS had that helped remove expense from the program/cc and report against central budget.  

For General Fund employees (ISRS Fund 110/Workday FD0039): 

Fringe expense is recorded a program/cost center level.  Althought budget at that level is $0, there is a university central budget that covers the fringe expense.

The university's central budget for fringe benefits is $16,7M. The budget is uses a blended rate of 32% of FY25 budgeted salary. The budget resides in Program: PG0006172 METS CENTRAL SALARY & FRINGE BENEFIT COSTS 215220

Actual and encumbrance is $15.5M (as of 10/24, last payroll interface 8/27) leaving approximately $1.2M remaining balance (for fringe on future and currently unencumbered payroll; i.e. overtime, shift diff, new hires, retirement or other special pay)

Salary budget was loaded at too high a level

Distribute to Workday programs where faculty and staff reside for:

• Colleges/Advising
• Finance & Ops

Budget

Reporting

 COMPLETED 9/30 - Deans and Fin Ops Leadership notified 10/1/24

Thinking it was in alignment with NextGen advice, salary budget loads 

• for colleges were loaded to dean's Workday program
• for Finance & Operations were loaded to FInance & Ops program

This caused a mismatch of actual to budget.  Budgets were redistributed (net $0 change in total).

Also adjusted for Academic Advising salary and nonpersonnel split + CCSPA/Psych correction requested by N Bearth.

Did not distribute CEI budget to program level.

Currently bringing to together multiple budgeting spreadsheets and looking up PCN numbers to have a single list of FY25 budgeted positions/amounts and to establish more structure around hiring  budget checks and implications.  Focus now is on staff and faculty base salary/positions.

We are hopeful that Workday Adaptive Planning will provide more integrated budgeting, hiring and monitoring processes for Fy26; We expect to learn more in the coming weeks as we get introduced to the tool

NonPersonnel Encumbrance

• Determine how to get PO detail to support encumbrance column
• Why does Encumbrance not always = "Obligation Amount Remaining" on the Open Commitments report (which has PO detail)

Encumbrance

Reporting

For some Workday programs:

Encumbrance column on Budget vs. Actual reports is not matching/align with

"Obligation Amount Remaining" on the Open Commitments Report RPT00127 - and that it could be a source for the PO detail not available in Budget vs actual reports.

We are researching but suspect it may be related to:

• FY24 transactions paid out of Workday (post July 1)
• process timing - i.e. when does PO get updated vs when do accounting transactions get recorded

Currently researching but likely will need to open a ticket with the System Office to fully understand and to determine if it is system issue or process issue.

Added to this KB article 10/21/24

A Metro Financial Services team member identified this issue and effect.  As of 11/20, they are doing a final check that all have been corrected; new process is now in place.

Committments/Pre-encubrance is duplidated when a PO is cancelled.  It reinstates the requisition, which re-commits (pre encumbers) the amount.  This causes remaining budget to show as less than it should.

Carryforward FY24 to FY25 remaining budget

Frozen Budgets from ISRS into Workday

GL cash balances from ISRS into Workday

Budget

Reporting

FY24 and other prior year residual for 19B funds, IT COE, customized training and other special appropriations have not been moved to FY25/Workday yet.

Prerequisites to complete the above:

• DONE:  Final FY24 balances exist in in ISRS
  • Some post July 1 FY24 transactions were processed in Workday
  • FInal FY24 balances are needed in order to calculate carry forward into FY24/Workday
  • System Office completed load of those balances to ISRS​​​​​ on 9/26/24 so we can now rely on Web Accounting for final FY24 numbers.  We are not certain of status of Power BI queries.
• PENDING SYSTEM OFFICE: System Office is deploying four new ledgers in Workday to aid in tracking frozen budgets and carry forward
  • As of 10/11/24 they were deployed but we are pending instruction on how to use them.
  • The Frozen Budget ledger was not part of the above; as of 11/7, we are waiting on that being available.

FM has a list of ISRS cost centers related to above and will be in communication with cost center managers once we can do this work.  With the move from ISRS to Workday, we are doing additional review/reconciliation/validation.

This will include IFO/MSUAASF 19B funds, customized training, special appropriations, or revenues collected for specific purpose.  Will also include a 'true-up of facilities project remaining budgets.

Financial Management is also reviewing options for designating and tracking within Workday to simplify carry forward and reporting processes.  

Ensure program balances are associated with ONE cost center

• Model Legislature 210178
• College in Prison 218373
• Student Basic Needs 216006
• Gateway Student Services 216010
• Metro/S IET Reno Project
• CCAMPIS Hope Program 550021
• Orientation 216700
• Commencement 219200
• Student Center Operations 299140
• Student Ctr R&R 299145
• SC Deferred Maintenance 299150
• SLLD University Activities 334214
• Application Fee 120004
• IPD Operating 218700
• XUniversity Advancement 219000
• METS Access Funding - Writing 210167
• METRO/S 2024 ST. Johns Hall PHysical Plant Repairs
• CEI WD program merges (in discussion?)

Budget

Actual

Encumb

IN PROGRESS 

Programs listed in first column currently have budget, actual, pre-encumbrance, and/or encumbrance in more than one cost center or fund. 

These are due ISRS to Workday mapping issues or ISRS cost center merges as we moved from FY24 into FY25., 

In the meantime, to review activities on these programs, 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.

Moving balances is a multi-step, multi-person labor intensive process. We recently got access to the Workday function that allows us to correct payroll actuals and are slowly making progress.

• As of 11/7, we believe all budgets have been moved to the correct cc; we are continuing to work through moving actuals and encumbrances

Student Payroll Encumbrance/Commitment not in Workday

Encumb

Reporting

Student payroll is still processed out of ISRS and although actual expense interfaces, it seems as though the encumbrance is not interfacing to Workday.  Opened System Office ticket 170892 on 10/15/2024 asking them to interface the encumbrance.

Workaround:  Cost Center Managers, look up your student payroll encumbrance amount in Web Accounting.  Actual and Encumbrance will be correct.  Note: Most current source for budget is Workday. Web accounting has only the original budget load.

Student Payroll does send detail to supervisors every pay period and will make note of this.

Transfer In/Transfer Out (Funds transfer) 

• move mis-coded TREC fee revenue from fund 120 to fund 110
• complete MSUSA student employment funding/budget 
• FY25 General fund funded facilities project budgets

Actual

Reporting

PENDING SYSTEM OFFICE

Did not have instructions on how to do Funds transfer in Workday until Early October;

Once our team attempted, found that "Transfer In" is showing in Expense when it seems it should be Revenue.  Results in a large negative 'expense' on budget vs actual reports. 

Ticket  submitted to System Office 10/1/24

Actual

Encumbrance

Reporting

PENDING SYSTEM OFFICE response to ticket/question submitted

Report seems to sum totals for that cost center's grants and projects and show on one line item labeled as 'blank'.  Clicking into the transaction detail, you may find the grant or project number/name by looking in the "Worktags' column,

Part of the balances in these lines may also relate to the payroll coding errors noted above.

PENDING SYSTEM OFFICE

Budget vs Actual reports are a start, but report labels and calculations have some oddities over which we have no control

• Budget YTD label is misleading.  Column contains Metro's FULL YEAR Budget since Metro did not budget FY25 by month
• Different column labels are used for the same data (Program report uses one label, Cost Center report another):
  • Commitments are same as Pre-Encumbrance (requisitions, spend auths...)
  • Obligations are same as Encumbrance (POs, Payroll encumbrance...)

These were corrected by System Office 11/15/2024:

• Variance column on Budget vs Actual by Program (RPT00290) is backwards +/-sign; Should be for example: 
  • Budget $100 less Total Activity $50 = $50 remaining/variance instead of ($50)
  • note: % remaining is showing the correct +/- sign
• Some campuses are reporting that assets are showing twice on reports; accounting is correct but report needs to be adjusted (mentioned in 10/24/24 meeting)

Finance Analysts cannot see Employee name when they use Budget Vs Actual reports and click into payroll transaction detail.   Cost Center Managers if you are in same position please notify Wendy Helm

Ticket 170947 opened with System office 10/15/2024; they responded 10/23 but not with information sufficient to resolve; sent further background info and pending response reinforcing this need.

We need this for our Finance Analysts in the future, but at the moment, this visibility would not help since the underlying data is not yet in Workday Finance.

• Payroll interfaces for pay period ending 8/27 and earlier have been posted into Workday Finance, (subsequent interfaces being held for now...we believe due to next bullet point), and
• thousands of payroll lines in default programs/cost center instead of where the expense belongs; System Office is working on explanation and hopefully correction mechanism.

In the meantime, FM also does not have visibility into Payroll expense and is asking System Office if there is report/data we could get to manually summarize and get a sense of year to date payroll expense.

University level financial reporting

Structure/routine needs to be established

Understanding of Fund conversion to WD 

Workday reports /filters

Analysis in progress + pending complete data in Workday Finance

Pre-Workday and over the last few years, Metro seemed to not have a regular University financial reporting routine and structure.  The most regular reporting was 'status of funds' which reported on budget vs. actual for some GEN cost centers. 

Work in progress:

1-) establishing how we should look at our full Metro State financials and what the routine should be; i.e. for GEN, revenue funds, Customized Training, Grants, Financial Aid...

2-)  gaining understanding of how our data is now reflected in Workday (i.e. how funds converted into Workday) and how it may be utilized for reporting. 

• FM leadership that was involved in Workday conversion planning left Metro in June.
• We believe we will use groupings of Workday Funds to provide information needed; example funds 0038, 0039, 0040 equate to GEN appropriation code, which no longer exists in Workday. 

3-) Identifying which Workday reports/filters  to run i.e. make sure we're not excluding the payroll default expense + how to best summarize and package the information.

4-) Understand what is in the numbers and what workday stabilization items (see article file attachment "Steps to accurate Financial Reporting" may be still be skewing what we see on reports.

System Office assures us that improving Workday  Budget vs. Actual reporting capabilities is high on the priority list.

We are told that Power BI (query tool for ISRS financial data) will be decommissioned.  Prior to that decommission, FM plans to pull data extracts so we can eventually recreate high level prior year financial reporting that should already exist but does not.  Some recap of prior year data was done for an IFO data request in mid October.

We are also considering establishing a fund budget control reconciliation to ensure clarity/control of budget totals by fund, 

We should be able to use Workday Cost center Hierarchies to group cost centers by division.  example:

• Combine all colleges, Library, Registrar, Academic Affairs cost centers to report on Academic Affairs as a division.
• Combine Finance & Ops, Campus Ops and Financial Management cost centers to report on Finance & Operations as a division
• Combine President, ICES, IPD cost centers to report on cost centers the President oversees.

Hierarchies are used for organization/structure, but not for recording transactions.

A first level of hierarchy corrections have been submitted to System Office 10/15 , with the goal of getting each cost center aligned with the correct division/VP.  From there will will work on refining lower levels and naming.   **As of 11/7, just one of the changes still needs to be made**

Our goal is to ensure they are correct when we start budgeting for FY26 in Workday Adaptive Planning.

Actual 

Encumb?

Reporting

PENDING SYSTEM OFFICE response to ticket/question submitted

Facilities project invoices received through eBuilder (SO tool) are showing in Workday as one debits and two credits (net negative expense), instead of a single debit (expense) + there are many other integration issues

Oct 7-9 workshop with NextGen team + Workday and Deloitte to work together until all issues are fixed 

Update received 10/10 indicated most was resolved, but some work continues into week of 10/14.

We have a ticket open with SO on our concerns and will review if that has been addressed by these changes.

PENDING SYSTEM OFFICE + completion of carry forward budgets from FY24 (see 1st line in table)

Workday has a function similar to ISRS Budget Control called 'Budget Check".  Currently all Minn State institutions are setup for Budget Check to give a warning rather than stopping a transaction.  This means that those those responsible for or monitoring program and cost center budgets need to be aware of their available budget before spending.

We have been told that the setting can be turned on by institution (Workday  "Company") and that they will work closely with Metro State FM before setting it to stop transactions for which there is no budget.  We of course need carry forward budgets loaded before we turn this on.

Budget structures were modified by SO in mid October so budget controls can be set at the ledger account level within a program for NonPersonnel.

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.

ISRS conversion data exists in Workday, however we have not received communication from System Office that those balances are complete/final so hesitate to use them until we know the numbers have been tied out to ISRS.

Need to circle back and revisit accounting/process flow, confirm (follow up from meeting FM and CIS had this summer)

This is pre-Workday related work, but we would like to ensure all are on the same page as we move forward in Workday.

Identifying needs so IER can try building with the permissions they have.

We believe there may be limited ability to share reports, so better suited to internal FM reports

Revenue budget load practices

Actual

Reporting

More complete revenue budgeting and budget load may aid in consistent reporting and quality assurance

In past - Fund 110 budgeted revenue included only the large pieces like tuition, course fees and appropriation and was on budget spreadsheet (but not loaded to ISRS), so needed to be manually added to reports.

There may be a transition and some reporting oddities to address as we work towards a more holistic approach.  

This is a Metro State process/practice not dependent on System Office.