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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-10-02
Create Effort Certification

Create Effort Certification

  • Set up effort certification.
  • Security:
    Process: Effort Certification
     domain in the Core Payroll functional area.
Effort certification enables you to validate payroll effort expenditures with funding organizations and confirm that you're billing them correctly. This certification helps to ensure that organizations reimburse you for only the payroll expenses that fall within the scope of a funding agreement after you meet effort commitments. You can certify efforts for posted payroll results that include:
  • Base pay.
  • Retro pay.
  • Pay accounting reallocations (PAR).
  • Payroll accounting adjustments (PAA).
Don't certify an effort while a PAA or PAR is in progress. Complete the PAA or PAR before you start the effort certification process.
You can't mix PAR and PAA on the same payroll results. Use only PAR to update pay results previously adjusted by PAR, and PAA to update pay results previously adjusted by PAA.
During the
Effort Certification
 business process, when a reviewer or approver changes the percentage distribution of an effort being certified, you can adjust the payroll results to match the effort. To adjust payroll results with a:
  • PAA, you can add the
    Create Payroll Accounting Adjustments for Effort Certification
     step to the business process after the
    Completion
     step to automatically initiate the PAA when there's been a change in effort. Alternatively, you can add a
    To Do
     step that sets a task to manually run the PAA.
  • PAR, you can add a
    To Do
     step to the business process to direct effort change requests to the
    Assign Costing Allocation
     business process to run the PAR.
  1. Access the
    Run Effort Certification
     task.
  2. As you complete the task, consider:
    Option Description
    Company
    To calculate effort for payroll results containing PAR or PAA, or to automatically initiate PAA from effort certification changes (with the
    Create Payroll Accounting Adjustments for Effort Certification
     step in the
    Effort Certification
     business process), select the:
    • Same company structure you use in payroll accounting.
    • Company and not company hierarchy in a multicompany organization.
    Use Effort Certification Type's Population
    When you select this option, Workday certifies the effort of all eligible employees in the effort certification type.
  3. Click
    Refresh
     until the process completes.
  4. When there are efforts certified, you can find the certifications in the
    Employees Eligible
     grid, under the
    Effort Certification Background Process
     tab. To view the composite report of a certification, click the
    Effort Certification
     link for the worker. As you view the report, consider:
    Tab Name
    Details
    Details
    In the
    Details
     tab, you can find effort distribution grouped by combinations of:
    • Payroll periods containing posted pay results earned during the effort period, including base pay, retro pay, PAA, and PAR.
    • Worktags on the payroll costing allocation.
    Effort Period
     displays the period for which you're certifying the worker's effort. It may include 1 or more payroll periods.
    When the award line has a salary cap and the worker's payroll costing allocation is configured with suballocations for over-the-cap salary:
    • The
      Effort Grant
       column displays the grant associated with the effort. This is the grant on the worker's main payroll costing allocation, which is also the grant attributed to the under-the-cap portion of the worker's salary.
    • If the salary over the cap suballocation contains a grant worktag that's different from the main allocation grant worktag, effort lines for the over-the-cap salary portion will display the:
      • Effort grant, or the main allocation grant, as the
        Salary Over The Cap Basis
        payroll worktag
        . This is also the grant for the salary under the cap.
      • Salary over the cap suballocation grant as the
        Grant
        costing worktag
        .
    Summary
    In the
    Summary
     tab, you can view efforts grouped by worktags you select in the
    Group By
     field of the effort certification type, summarized by the effort grant. An effort grant is the grant associated with the worker's effort. When there's a salary cap associated with the award line, and the salary exceeds the salary cap, Workday displays separate rows for the under and over the cap portions of the salary.
    When you configure the effort certification type to subtotal by grant hierarchy, Workday first subtotals by the effort grant, then by the effort grant hierarchy.
    Aggregate
    You can add an
    Aggregate
     tab to the effort certification composite report to display amounts and percentages for each pay period, by:
    1. Accessing the
      Configure Profile Group
       task.
    2. Selecting the
      Aggregate for Effort Certification Composite View Profile
       profile group.
    3. Adding a row, and selecting 1 of the allowed reports or a custom report that you want run when you click the tab.
Workday routes the effort certification for approval and creates effort certification reports for posted journals.
Review and approve the effort certification.
If effort was changed during the business process and you didn't configure the business process to automatically initiate a PAA, run either a PAR or PAA manually after the effort certification completes to ensure that the workers' payroll matches their certified effort.