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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Concept: Period Activity Pay

Concept: Period Activity Pay

Period activity pay enables you to pay employees for fixed-term activities and payment arrangements. You can associate activities with period activity pay, and assign an employee with activities, date ranges, and pay amounts. With Workday Student, you can assign period activity pay to an instructor that's teaching assigned course sections.
Example: Assign an adjunct professor to teach Economics 101 for the upcoming Fall semester and pay them an agreed-upon compensation on a schedule that matches the activity dates.
When the
Period Activity Pay
 business process completes, it generates a scheduled payments list that Workday Payroll processes. The
Period Activity Pay
 business process doesn't support payroll integrations.
Workday uses assignment payment dates, the total amount for the activity, and the employee's pay group to calculate the amount and number of payments.
Whenever you change period activity assignments, Workday might recalculate the payment schedule and amount. Workday changes the scheduled payment amounts in response to changes that affect the total amount. Extending the payment end date results in more but smaller payments.
You can access the
Customize Payments
 button on the
Manage Period Activity Pay Assignments
 task to override the default payment amount and work and service hours, if enabled in your organization. You can't customize payments through a web service or from the
End Period Activity Pay
 business process.
Workday reacts to pay group changes affecting period activity pay assignments, provided you have set up Retro processing in Workday Payroll.
After a pay group change, Workday:
  • Updates the number of payments for an existing assignment when the pay group change alters the pay frequency. Example: If the pay group changes frequency from Monthly to Bi-weekly, Workday updates the number of payments from 4 to 8.
  • Won't regenerate a payment schedule for an assignment on in-progress events.
  • Won't retain any customized payments configured on the
    Manage Period Activity Assignments
     task. Workday regenerates the schedule as the default schedule.
Workday compares the
Effective Date
 of the pay group change to the period activity assignment
Payment Start Date
 to determine which assignments to update.
Workday adds a comment to the period activity pay event regarding the updated schedule.
You can rescind period activity pay events including those assignments Workday Payroll has processed. Workday retracts the payment within Payroll, provided you've configured it to do so.
The order in which you can rescind events is based on the
Initiated On
 date. If you've configured Workday Payroll to do so, any full or partial payments for rescinded events paid through Workday Payroll can also be retracted in Workday Payroll.