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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-12-12
Setup Considerations: Asset Tracking

Setup Considerations: Asset Tracking

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of asset tracking. 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.
Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What It Is

Asset tracking enables you to physically track assets. You can report on assets that you assign to:
  • Locations.
  • Workers.
  • Worktags, such as cost centers.
Example: Security badges.

Business Benefits

Tracking business assets helps you retrieve all your assets when workers leave or move to a different role, saving you the cost of lost assets.

Use Cases

Business assets tracking specialists can:
  • Register assets.
  • Copy and edit assets.
  • Place assets in service without issuing them to workers or locations.
  • Issue assets to workers or locations.
  • Transfer assets within a company. Example: you transfer an asset from 1 cost center to another.
  • Transfer assets to different companies.
  • Remove assets that you register in error.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
To which locations do you assign assets?
You can use existing locations to track business assets.
What types of assets do you track?
You can track tangible and intangible assets by spend categories.
For more granular reporting, you can also set up:
  • Asset classes.
  • Asset types.
Which accounting standards or guidelines does your organization follow?
You can set up asset tracking with or without asset accounting:
  • Asset tracking enables you to track tangible or intangible assets according to business use.
  • Asset accounting enables you to account for these assets based on your accounting practices.
How many asset books do you need?
When you enable asset accounting, you can set up multiple asset books. Tax managers can manage the nonprimary asset books for tax purposes without accessing the accounting asset books or affecting accounting activities. See Setup Considerations: Asset Accounting.

Recommendations

When you uptake asset tracking without accounting, create 1 spend category per fixed asset and accumulated depreciation ledger account. This helps reduce future work when you uptake asset accounting.

Requirements

No impact.

Limitations

No impact.

Tenant Setup

You can access the
Edit Tenant Setup - Financials
 task to:
  • Configure the ID sequence generator for business assets.
  • Automatically populate the
    Coordinating Cost Center
     field from the cost center worktag when you register assets.

Security

Domains
Considerations
Process: Business Assets
 domain in the Business Asset Tracking functional area.
Perform lifecycle events on assets.
Reports: Business Assets
 domain in the Business Asset Tracking functional area.
Run reports on business assets.
Self-Service: Business Assets
 domain in the Business Asset Tracking functional area.
Workers can see the assets that you've issued to them.
Set Up: Business Asset Tracking
 domain in the Business Asset Tracking functional area.
Set up business asset tracking.
Set Up: Spend Categories
 domain in the Common Financial Management functional area.
Set up spend categories.
Set Up: Tenant Setup - Tenant Analyzer
 domain in the System functional area.
Run the
Tenant Analyzer
 report.
View: Business Asset
 domain in the Business Asset Tracking functional area.
View the details of business assets.
Worker Data: Business Assets
 domain in the Business Asset Tracking functional area.
View the business assets that you've issued to workers.

Business Processes

The
Asset Registration Event
 business process routes transactions for review and approval.

Reporting

You can:
  • Access
    Workday Standard Reports
     and select the
    Business Assets
     and
    Set Up Business Assets
     report categories to view details on standard reports for assets.
  • Access the
    Tenant Analyzer
     report and select the
    Validations
     tab in the
    Financials
     profile group to verify your tenant configuration of business assets against Workday recommendations.

Integrations

When you uptake asset tracking, you can import the assets that you track outside of Workday with the
Register Assets
 web service. When you don't use asset accounting, specify an accounting treatment of
Expense
 on the assets that you import.

Connections and Touchpoints

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.