Setup Considerations: Expense Items

Administrator Guide

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of expense items. The topic explains:

Why to set them up.

How they fit 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 They Are

Expense items enable you to define the transactions that payees make on:

Spend authorizations, when requesting preapproval of spend.

Expense reports, when submitting incurred expenses.

You can associate rate tables with expense items so that Workday can calculate amounts automatically on expense transactions. You can also link expense items together and organize them into a hierarchy. Payees can then use multiple expense items on expense lines to capture detailed cost breakdowns.

You can also make configurations on expense items for specific business needs, such as configurations for distance-based expenses and per diem requirements.

Business Benefits

Capture specific information for tax requirements.

Categorize expenses by policy, type, and spend category for reporting purposes.

Comply with legislation and company policies that relate to per diem expenses.

Limit spending to reduce project costs and remain within budget.

Map travel data to expense items to prevent expense transaction errors.

Speed up reimbursement by calculating expense transaction data automatically.

Track expense item trends and plan for future costs by using analytics, auditing, and reporting.

Use Cases

Calculate expense reimbursements for distances traveled.

Capture detailed cost breakdowns on expense lines and travel journals.

Link expense items with allowance plans to allocate reimbursements, such as monthly gym membership.

Recover everyday expenses, such as office supplies, taxis, and team lunches.

Reimburse expenses using rates that are based on travel destinations.

Set maximum daily amounts to prevent overspending.

Split hotel bills into multiple components to collect tax information.

Track costs for individual tasks within projects.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
Which methods do you use to calculate expense amounts?	You can prevent overspending by limiting the amount that payees can enter on expense items by using: Allowance plans. Different amount types, such as fixed or maximum amounts. You can also enable payees to exceed: Specified maximum amounts. Spend limits on allowance plans. For variable expenses such as taxi fares, you can enable users to specify amounts on expense items manually. You can configure rate tables and associate them with expense items to enable Workday to calculate expense item amounts automatically. You can base your rate table calculations on: Amounts, such as maximum allowable amounts. Percentages, which enable you to calculate amounts that change in increments over time for variable expenses, such as mileage. You can also set rules on your rate tables to validate reimbursement amounts based on additional criteria, such as travel destinations.
What expense data do you require from workers?	You can add attributes on expense items to capture additional data from workers. You can use: Configurable attributes, which enable you to gather company-specific expense information. Workday-delivered attributes, which enable you to capture more standard types of expense information. You can also set expense item attributes as optional or mandatory on expense transactions. You can link multiple expense items together to form a parent-child relationship between them, which enables you to capture detailed cost breakdowns on: Expense itemization level. Travel journals. When workers don't itemize expense items or use travel journals, you might have less expense data for reporting.
Who do you want to access expense items?	You can use segmented security to enable only some workers to use particular expense items, which prevents inaccurate and unauthorized expense claims.
Which expenses require additional approval?	To route transactions with specific expense items to additional reviewers and approvers, you can configure additional approval on these business processes: Expense Report Event Spend Authorization Example: You want additional approval from senior management when payees claim expenses for international conferences.
What per diem requirements do you have?	You can meet per diem requirements by: Configuring specific criteria on your rate tables and rate table rules. Enabling travel journal functionality on expense reports. You can also configure per diem amounts that exceed the legally required minimum. Example: You can reimburse a higher per diem amount when employees travel to cities with higher living costs.
When do you make partial per diem reimbursements?	When you use base rate tables with per diem expense items, you can add adjustment rate tables to adjust reimbursement amounts. You can make these adjustments as fixed amounts or percentages. Example: When employees receive free meals on business trips, you can deduct 20% from the standard per diem reimbursement amount.
What data inconsistencies does your company see on expense transactions?	You can configure specific attributes to enable payees to enter values only once on expense reports. Workday then calculates and populates related data on travel journal lines to reduce inconsistency. Example: You include the Number of Hours attribute on a rate table and workers enter departure and arrival times on the expense report line. Workday then calculates and populates the Number of Hours field on each travel journal line. You can also prevent workers from editing the values that Workday calculates on the Number of Hours field.

Recommendations

Add instructional text on expense items to provide additional context to workers.

Limit the number of attributes that you add on expense items, for reduced manual entry.

Use transaction tax rules instead of default tax applicability on multicompany expense items. You can use different tax rules for rates for different travel destinations.

To avoid validation conflicts, don't use the same expense item at line and itemization level. Ensure that you define your expense items for line or itemization level, but not both.

To reduce configuration effort, configure transaction tax rules and related worktags before you create expense items to capture information for auditing, accounting, and reporting.

Workday doesn't calculate estimated distances for round trips and multidestination trips. Instead, capture each leg of your trip on separate expense lines.

For child expense items, use a naming convention that includes z - do not select
in the expense item name. Example: z - do not select - per diem - meals
. This naming convention:

Groups child expense items together at the bottom of the list on the

Expense Item

prompt.

Helps workers to avoid selecting child per diem expense items inadvertently.

Requirements

For all expense items:

Create spend categories before you create expense items.

Unrestrict the expense items that you configure.

For distance-based expense items:

You might need to take additional steps to enable this feature depending on your organization's subscription service agreement. For more information, see this Community article.

Set up Amount
or Graduated Amount
rate tables that include your distance-based rates.

Limitations

You can't:

Associate more than 1 expense item with each allowance plan.

Set up prompts as configurable expense item attributes.

Use more than 5 of each of the configurable expense attribute types that Workday provides.

For distance-based expense items, Workday doesn't:

Consider current traffic data when determining routes.

Display map images that include your routes and origin and destination points.

Exclude toll roads when determining routes.

Provide alternate routes, but workers can enter trips distance values manually.

With per diem expense items, you can't:

Configure multicurrency rate tables.

Split taxable and nontaxable amounts.

Submit expense report lines with zero amounts.

Tenant Setup

In the

Expenses Option

section on the

Edit Tenant Setup - Financials

task, you can set default tax to populate tax code and tax applicability on expense items.

When you set this functionality, you don't have the ability to inactivate it.

Security

Domains	Considerations
Access Expense Item (Segmented) in the Expenses functional area.	Enables you to control who can access specific expense items. You can use the All Users security group to grant all workers access to the expense items that you don't secure to security segments. Example: Expense items for fitness reimbursement that all workers use.
in the System functional area.	Enables you to restrict and unrestrict expense items.
Set Up: Expense Item Security Segments in the Expenses functional area.	Enables you to configure: Expense items. Expense item policies and groups. Expense rate tables. Rules for expense rate tables.
View Expense Item in the Expenses functional area	Enables you to view a summary of expense items.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

Reports and Dashboards	Considerations
Expense Item Group report	Displays existing expense item groups so you can identify: Which groups are currently in use. The expense items that make up each group.
Expense Management dashboard	Displays: Expense item trends by fiscal period. The most commonly used expense items. This information can help you budget and plan for future spend.
View Expense Item report	Displays expense item configurations so you can quickly identify the updates you want to make.
View Expense Item Security Segment report	Displays security segments for expense items and expense policy groups.
View Expense Policy Groups report	Displays expense policy groups so you can determine which policies are currently in use.

You can use the

Expense Items

report data source to verify your expense item configurations, such as:

Security segments.

Spend categories.

Reimbursement types.

Integrations

You can use these web services to upload and retrieve expense item data:

Get Expense Items

Put Expense Item

You can use these web services to upload and retrieve expense report and spend authorization data, including expense item data:

Get Expense Rate Tables

Get Expense Reports

Get Spend Authorizations

Import Expense Rate Table

Put Expense Rate Table

Submit Expense Report

Submit Spend Authorization

You can also use an integration that enables Workday to call the Google Maps API to populate estimated distances on expense lines to calculate reimbursement amounts.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features	Considerations
Allowance Plans	You can associate specific expense items with allowance plans to prevent overspending. Example: A quarterly allowance for employees to cover their office commute.
Projects	You can associate expense items with specific projects to track: Overall project costs. Specific costs within projects. You can also use expense item data on projects to help reduce spending.
Rate Tables	You can configure rate tables to evaluate expense items and determine reimbursement amounts and eligibility. You can also apply rules to rate tables to validate reimbursement amounts using specific criteria, such as the countries that payees travel to.

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.

Setup Considerations: Worktags

Setup Considerations: Transaction Tax Rules

Concept: Expense Item Attributes

Concept: Parent and Child Expense Items

Steps: Set Up Expense Rate Tables

Steps: Set Up Security for Expense Items

Create Expense Items

The Next Level: Per Diems and Travel Journal

Workday Community: Expenses - Segment Security