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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-10-16
Concept: Facilities and Administration for Awards

Concept: Facilities and Administration for Awards

When you spend against a cost reimbursable award line, Workday generates the facilities and administration (F&A) costs and revenue for the spends automatically. You can use the award costs processing rule and F&A configurations to determine the time, calculation, and accounting for F&A. There are criteria that must be met for Workday to generate F&A on a spend.
You can configure fixed amount award lines to calculate F&A costs, but you won't be able to bill the sponsor for F&A revenue on fixed amount award lines.

Award Costs Processing Rules

You can configure award costs processing rules for your company to specify:
  • When to generate F&A and revenue recognition operational journals for your award spending.
  • Whether to calculate F&A and revenue recognition for award spending that occurs outside of the award line dates.
  • The spend category and object class to use when you want to record F&A costs separately from the direct costs.
See Set Up Award Costs Processing Rules.

F&A Configurations

Workday calculates the F&A costs of a spend based on these configurations, which you directly or indirectly associate with a cost reimbursable or fixed amount award line on the award:
  • Basis Limit
  • Basis Type
  • Cost Basis Type
  • Cost Rate Type
  • Exceptions
  • Rate Agreement
  • Waived Expense Allocation Profile

Criteria for Calculating F&A

For Workday to calculate F&A for a spend against an award line, verify that:
  • The source transaction either has a sponsored fund, or the F&A revenue allocation profile has cost-share enabled. When cost-share is enabled and fund is not sponsored, Workday generates the F&A accounting but not the revenue recognition for the spend transaction.
  • The source transaction has a grant worktag.
  • You approve the spend transaction.
  • The grant on the award line is active.
  • The award status is
    Approved
    .
  • The award line status is
    Active
    .
  • There's an F&A rate agreement on the award line.
  • When an award has multiple versions, an F&A rate agreement exists on all versions of the award.
  • There's an object class set on the award line.
  • There's a revenue allocation profile on the award line.
  • You map the spend category or spend category hierarchy to an object class.
  • The F&A basis type on the award line contains the object class of the spend.
  • When the spend is on a non-Workday delivered journal source, you configure the journal as an accounting source and enable the journal for processing award costs.
  • You configure a non-Workday delivered manual journal source as an expense source.
  • You configure the account posting rules for F&A expense and revenue.
  • The payroll journal contains the
    Object Class
     dimension.
With Enhanced ACP, the journal lines created by the source transaction must also meet the criteria in Reference: Journal Line Requirements for Processing Award Costs.

Settlements

If a spend transaction is settleable, you must first settle the transaction before you can bill the sponsor. The amount you can bill is the amount you've paid out in a full or partial settlement, plus the F&A generated for that amount.
When the settlement produces a discount, Workday cancels the original cost reimbursable spend lines for the full amounts and regenerates new
Ready To Bill
 lines for the discounted amounts.

Payment Returns

Workday reacts to payment returns and cancellations automatically with Enhanced Award Costs Processing:
  • When you return or cancel payment on a transaction, Workday automatically adjusts the billing status and billable amounts of the grant accounting lines to be the same as before you made the payment. Example: When you return a payment that received an early settlement discount, Workday automatically reverses the discounted lines and generates new
    Awaiting Settlement
     lines for the full original amounts.
  • The accounting date on payment return accounting lines is set to the budget or accounting date of the original spend transaction.
  • Payment returns and payment cancellations are processed in a background job that runs every 15 minutes. By contrast, settlement run cancellations are processed in real time upon completion of the cancellation.

Background Processes

When you use Enhanced ACP and access the
Process Monitor
task, you might see these 3 jobs:
  • Award Costs Background Process
    : Manages all
    Reprocess Award Costs
     runs.
  • Award Cost Processing of Journal Lines - [grant] - [basis limit] - [creation moment]
    : Reprocesses award costs for the same grant and basis limit.
  • Award Costs Sweeper Background Process
    : Processes all journal lines eligible for award costs processing.