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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Setup Considerations: Object Class Mapping

Setup Considerations: Object Class Mapping

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of object class mapping. It explains:
  • Why to set it up.
  • How it fits into the rest of Workday.
  • Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.
  • Security requirements and business process configurations.
  • Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.

What It Is

Object classes are budget and expenditure categories defined by sponsors. You can map internal spend categories and pay component groups to an object class. For spends on cost reimbursable and fixed amount award lines, Workday uses the object class to determine whether the spends are eligible for reimbursement from the sponsor.

Business Benefits

Object class mapping improves reporting capabilities and accounting by enabling you to track internal spend and report on your budget and expenditures. You can:
  • Create budget and expenditure categories defined by your sponsors and rate agreement.
  • Map an object class to your internal spend categories, spend category hierarchies, and pay component groups.
  • Classify an object class for F&A transactions.
  • Create exception worktags for object class sets.
  • Define restrictions for eligible and ineligible expenditures.
  • Validate spend transactions against sponsor restrictions.

Use Cases

Use object class mapping to match internal cost categories to sponsor requirements when your organization needs to:
  • Report on sponsor categories.
  • Calculate F&A costs.
  • Define spend restrictions for unallowable costs.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
How do you configure multiple sets of sponsor budget and expenditure categories to meet reporting requirements?
You can create multiple object class sets to define separate groups of sponsor budget and expenditure categories.
How do you map spend categories and pay component groups to more than 1 object class?
You can create exception worktags to capture secondary mapping rules when spend categories or pay component groups need to map to more than 1 object class.
How do you determine which object classes are eligible for facilities and administration calculations?
You can include object classes in the F&A basis types when you want award costs processing to generate F&A costs calculations.
Example: Create these 3 basis types:
  • Total Direct Costs: Includes all object classes.
  • Modified Total Direct Costs: Includes a subset of object classes.
  • Salary and Wages: Includes only payroll-related object classes.
How does Workday determine the spend category and object class on facilities and administration transactions?
F&A transactions inherit the spend category and object class from the originating spend transaction.
You can select an override spend category or object class when you need to specify unique object class mapping rules for F&A transactions.

Recommendations

  • Create 1 object class set that defines your internal cost categories. You can match the cost categories to the basis types specified on your sponsor rate agreements.
  • Create an object class to capture unmapped expenditures and set that object class as
    Default
    . The default object class enables you to view unmapped spend categories and pay component groups.

Requirements

  • Select 1 object class as
    Default
    . Workday uses the default object class when the mapping rules fail to determine the appropriate object class.
  • When you create exception worktags, you must also add the exception worktag on the related spend transaction.
  • Create an F&A rate agreement that specifies your basis type. When you add the rate agreement on an award line, Workday uses the basis type to determine whether the spends are eligible for F&A costs reimbursement.

Limitations

Direct spend journal entries don't include an object class when spend occurs on a grant:
  • Before the award is in
    Approved
    status.
  • Not associated with an active award line.
You can't manually change the object class on F&A and award revenue recognition journals.

Tenant Setup

To define the object class mapping rules for your tenant, access the
Maintain Object Class Mapping
task. You can use this task to map an object class to your internal spend categories and pay component groups.
To define company-wide configurations, select
Company
Edit Award Costs Processing Rules
from the related actions menu of a company. You can use this task to determine whether Workday overrides the spend category or object class worktag on F&A transactions.

Security

Domains
Considerations
Set Up: Grants Management
in the Grants Management functional area.
  • Create object class sets and object class mapping.
  • Report on object class mapping.
Set Up: Object Class
in the Common Financial Management functional area.
Create object classes for fund accounting.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

You can run the
Object Class Mapping Reconciliation
report to review the spend categories and pay component groups that map to an object class set. You can also identify the spend categories and pay component groups that don't map to an object class set or that map incorrectly.
You can use the
Facilities and Administration Object Class Mappings
report data source to create a custom report that displays object class information for F&A.

Integrations

You can use the
Company
web service to override spend category and object class worktags on F&A transactions.

Connections and Touchpoints

Object class mapping interacts with Payroll using:
Features
Considerations
Spend Category / Hierarchy
Use spend category hierarchies to maintain object class mapping.
When you add a new spend category to the spend category hierarchy, you must also include the spend category in your object class mapping.
Pay Component Group
Use pay component groups to map payroll and fringe benefits transactions to an object class.
Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.