Workday Finance Stabilization In Progress

Payroll actuals and encumbrances 

Actual

Encumbrance

Reporting

SYSTEM OFFICE IN PROGRESS - They expect payroll interfaces will be caught up by end of March 2025 and will then resume a regular schedule.

Notified 3/20/25 that

• payroll encumbrance is known to be incorrect and System Office is working on resolution, but concerned about complexity and time it will take to resolve.
• there are issues with how business expense reimbursement is coming through - may be duplication.  System office is working on resolution and cleanup will be needed.

Most recent interfaces competed into Workday Finance:

• Pay period ending 03/11/2025 - in progress
• Pay period ending 02/25/2025 - posted March 12
• Pay period ending 02/11/2025 - posted March 7
• Pay period ending 01/28/2025 - posted March 3
• Pay period ending 01/14/2025 - posted Feb 27
• Pay period ending 12/31/2024 - posted Feb 23
• Pay period ending 12/17/2024 - posted Feb 20
• Pay period ending 12/03/2024 - posted Feb 20
• Pay period ending 11/19/2024 - posted Feb 10
• Pay period ending 11/05/2024 - posted Feb 4
• Pay period ending 10/22/2024 - posted Feb 3
• Pay period ending 10/08/2024 - posted Jan 30
• Pay period ending 09/24/2024 - posted Jan 16

Earlier periods that went to default cc may not have been corrected yet.

The issue:

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 were put on hold while they determined root cause for issues; they are now working on catch up and getting on a regular schedule.

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Also for awareness:

Resident faculty base salary expense gets charged to last year's cost center % allocation until March, when Workday payroll allocation is updated to match the actual teaching assignments in FWM for the year. 

• Above describes the process used pre-Workday
• FM would like 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 that are more efficient.

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.  Although 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

Encumbrance-Nonpersonnel

• 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

Plan to research when able, 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

Encumbrance - Duplicated

Cancelled POS may have a duplicated Commitment/Pre Encumbrance

COMPLETED 11/20/2024:  A Metro Financial Services team member identified this issue and effect.  A new process is now in place.

Committments/Pre-encubrance is duplicated 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.

Encumbrance - Negative

Encumbrance showing negative transaction  - impacts Total Expense and Budget Variance on reports

IN PROGRESS

There are some Fy24 expenses where the encumbrance was released in FY25.  This will cause your Encumbrance column to appear lower than it should be and as a result make it appears as though you have more remaining budget than you actually do.

As of 2/5/25, FM currently has no way to identify these. System Office is working on getting a list to campuses so manual journal entries can be completed.

Please submit a Workday/Get Help request to Finance if you identify this in one of your programs, projects or grants.

Some revenue (invoices that have been paid by customers) seem to be stuck in deferred cash (balance sheet) instead of showing as actual revenue on budget vs actual reports

Submitted system office ticket 190131 on 2/6

We have heard it may be a known issue but are trying to get better info on how the mechanics/timing should work.  We are able to see deferred cash detail by invoice and program worktag (ISRS cc) on the balance sheet.

Carryforward FY24 to FY25 remaining budget

Frozen Budgets from ISRS into Workday

GL cash balances from ISRS into Workday

Budget

Reporting

As of 1/29, we believe all carry forwards from Fy24 to Fy25 have been completed except:

• Cost centers in Customized Training (old Fund 120) - mid March are working on cash balance reconcilaition at fund level - believe is wise to do at this time of transition from ISRS to WOrkday since there are multiple programs in one balance.
• Tech Fee (this will be done soon now that FROZEN is an option in Workday)

Carry forwards were initially delayed while waiting for:

• System Office to load FY24 Workday transactions in ISRS after year end. (done late Sept)

• Carry forward related ledger accounts to be created in Workday (done mid Oct)

Ensure program balances are associated with ONE cost center

• (done) Model Legislature 210178
• College in Prison 218373
• Student Basic Needs 216006
• Gateway Student Services 216010 - also doing their reorg back to Student Success
• 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
• (done) 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  - need the delayed payroll interfaces to come in before we can finalize corrections - these will likely get fully cleaned up in April 2025

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 -- the payroll interface delays and corrections are putting a big wrinkle/delay in this work

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 - this was discussed again on 12/5 as something they are working on resolving

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

As of 1/16/2024, beginning cash has not yet been loaded and reconciled in Workday.  This is a System Office activity.

Estimates can be arrived at by reviewing GL cash balances in ISRS and adjusting for actual expense/commitments/encumbrances.

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...)

DONE -   See my 2/19 email to cc managers and finance analysts for more info:

Ticket 170947 has resulted in a change request CR1280  created 12/5/2024 - resolved in Feb

Finance Analysts and CC managers can now  see Employee name when they use Budget Vs Actual reports and click into payroll transaction detail.  

In some reports it is in the Worktags column, in others there is a Workers column

University level financial reporting

Structure/routine needs to be established

Understanding of Fund conversion to WD 

Workday reports /filters

PENDING:  Cannot fully complete this until payroll interfaces are in and defaults corrected (Approx April 2025).  Payroll is our largest expense.  Even after that will be difficult/very manual since other 'restricted' program codes are within general fund.

Met with System Office reporting director mid March to discuss options for improvement, which appear to be limited.  This is a priority we will continue to work on. 

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 expect to use Workday Fund hiearchies 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.

Hierarchy level 3 is now accurate and aligns cost centers by division/VP. 

Levels 4 & 5 are not yet corrected

Actual 

Encumb?

Reporting

PENDING SYSTEM OFFICE improvement / resolution on both eBuilder and Workday reports.

Metro State sent SO tickets in Dec and March; met with SO facilities team rep in March.

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 --On March 18, we learned that this is likely  due to errors in the Budget Vs Actual reports which are pulling both books (but should be pulling only modified cash book)

As of March, facility project reporting is still limited.  View Project > Financials is currently best source for actuals, but should be reconciled periodically against eBuilder and SWIFT to ensure accuracy.   Other information View Project screen is likely not useful (i.e. it does not show budget, etc).

Trial Balance  by project worktag (keep retainage in mind when running) or RPT000275 Find Journal Lines Faceted maybe helpful (transaction detail)

PENDING completion of carry forward budgets from FY24, then will review if budget controls will be turned on.  It likely they will not be turned on until FY25, but monitoring spending against budget is still necessary.

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.

As an aside -- PEC is also establishing a process around approval of position refill / new positions so we can start to track personnel budget impacts.  This is a very manual process that some day should be done in Workday (last we heard they would need to purchase something to have the hiring process look at position budget/PCN)

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)

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.

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.

NOTE ISRS for F25 has some activity (that originates in ISRS but it is incomplete) - even budget just has the original budget load, but not all subsequent amendments.

Revenue budget load practices

Actual

Reporting

More consistent or 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.