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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-03-13
Concept: Award Budget Check at Total Grant Level

Concept: Award Budget Check at Total Grant Level

Virtual parent-child (VPC) relationships enable you to perform budget checks at the total grant level rather than only at individual budget lines. By aggregating all budget and spending data through the Grant worktag, Workday provides a summarized view of funding status during transaction entry.

How VPC Hierarchies Work for Awards

A VPC hierarchy consists of a virtual parent structure and one or more child structures. The virtual parent does not contain budget entries of its own. Instead, it acts as a summarized total of the children linked to it. This structure is useful for Education, Healthcare, and Public Sector organizations that need to remain in compliance with budget authority while maintaining spending flexibility.

Structural Integrity

To maintain a valid hierarchy for award plan types, the parent and child structures must share:
  • Award plan types.
  • The same account set.
  • The same currency.
When you select the Award plan type, Workday automatically sets the
Schedule Type
 to Award. Because this value is non-editable, parent and child structures in an award hierarchy always share the same schedule type.

Dimension Requirements

For dimensions that exist in both the parent and the child structures:
  • The child dimension members must be the same as the parent dimension members or a subset of them.
  • If a dimension is required on the parent, it must also be required on the child.
The child structure can include additional dimensions that do not exist on the parent structure to enable more granular tracking at the child level. However, a child structure cannot add a new required dimension if that dimension is not also required on the parent.

Budget Validation

When you enable budget check at the parent level, Workday validates transactions against the total grant level amount. This enables your team to manage internal budget shifts across different categories without exceeding the total funding for that grant. Validation messages reflect the total grant balance, providing you with visibility into overall funding status during transaction entry.