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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-03-13
Setup Considerations: Payment Elections

Setup Considerations: Payment Elections

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of payment elections. 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

Workday payment elections enable you to set preferences for how users get paid. You can determine how they can set up their payment elections through self-service and edit their payment elections.

Business Benefits

Workday payment elections make it easier for you to:
  • Audit payment elections changes.
  • Control reviews and approvals for payment election changes.
  • Customize the methods in which a person can receive their payment.
  • Enable international users to select their preferred currency.

Use Cases

You can manage payment elections for:
  • International users who want to receive different types of currency.
  • Pre-hires to set up bank accounts during the Onboarding process.
  • Terminated workers.
  • Users who want to split their payment across multiple accounts.
Payment election configurations also apply to supplier invoices, expenses, student payments, and student refunds.

Questions to Consider

Question
Considerations
How do you prevent bank returns?
You can use the
Create Prenote Run
task to validate electronic banking information for U.S. banks only.
What payment types do you want to use?
You can give employees the option to receive a check or direct deposit. If employees select a check, Workday prints their home address on the check.
When you don’t want to print out checks, you can limit the option to direct deposit only.
Example: When a worker receives a bonus, you can configure payment types such as check or deposit. Workers can then select their preferred method.
Do you want to give specific rules on setting up payment elections?
You can set up rules on the
Maintain Payment Election Rules
task to give users the options on how they want to receive their payment.
Do you want to set criteria to control who is eligible to view a specific payment type?
You can set criteria to control who is eligible to view specific payment types on the
Maintain Payment Election Rules
task.
Example: You can exclude temporary workers from seeing the Bonus payment election types because they aren't eligible for bonus payments.
What bank account attributes and validations do you want to put in place when a person enters their bank information?
You can use the
Create Payee Bank Account Validation Override
task to:
  • Control which bank account attributes are mandatory or optional.
  • Customize the display labels and format validations for different countries.
Do you want to verify individuals before they make changes to payment elections and bank information?
You can require workers to verify their identity before they can make changes to their payment elections and bank information. You can specify a maximum number of failed verification attempts before Workday locks the worker out of editing their information.
To give a user the ability to unlock a locked-out worker, you must also configure the
Manage: Unlock Payment Elections Access
domain.
How do you determine which account needs to be verified when you have multiple accounts with identical masking details?
Bank account verification labels on the
Payment Election Verification
screen include the bank name or account nickname.
For workers with account nicknames assigned, Workday displays the nickname, account type, and masked last 4 digits of the account number.
For workers without an assigned nickname, Workday displays the bank name, account type, and masked last 4 digits of the account number.
How do you verify individuals before they make changes to payment elections and bank information?
Configure the
Edit Tenant Setup - Financials
domain to enable the verification feature. This enables workers to verify their identity before they can make changes to their payment elections and bank information. To give a user the ability to unlock a locked-out worker, you must also configure the
Manage: Unlock Payment Elections Access
domain.
What instructions do you want to give users for entering payment election information?
You can use the
Maintain Payment Elections Help Text
task to configure custom help text for administrator and employee self-service payment elections tasks and reports. See Set Up Custom Help Text for Payment Elections.
How do you handle workers transferring to another country?
You can add a rule to the
Maintain Payment Election Options
task to give workers options to change their country and currency.
You can add the
Add Payment Elections
to do step on the
Start International Assignment
business process to ensure workers set up their payment preferences upon relocation.
How does Workday validate International Bank Account Number (IBAN)?
Workday follows the international standard. While the length of the IBAN might vary for each country, Workday provides a default setting, enabling you to override the length using the Payee Bank Account Validation Override task. When you enable and supply IBAN during bank account creation, we automatically verify the IBAN.
Do you want to prevent users from creating new payment elections or modifying existing elections?
You can create a payment elections access restriction to prevent users from modifying their self-service payment elections or creating a new payment election if one already exists. See: Create Access Restrictions.

Recommendations

Workday recommends that you:
  • Add
    Manage Payment Election
    as a process step on the Onboarding business process. It ensures that users finish setting up their bank information.
  • Set up your bank account attributes and validations on the
    Create Payee Bank Account Validation Override
    task. It ensures all manually entered bank IDs meet country requirements.

Requirements

To add payment elections or process payroll for a worker, you must add them to a pay group.

Limitations

When setting up rules for payment election options:
  • You can only set up 1 rule for payment preferences for expense, supplier invoice, student refunds, and student payments.
  • You can only set up 1 payment election rule per unique combination of pay group and run category.
  • You can split a payment into a maximum of 8 elections when you use ADP Check Print integration.
You can’t limit the number of bank accounts users can enter in Workday.

Tenant Setup

You can use the
Edit Tenant Setup - Global
task to enable the option to select different countries and currencies for payment elections.
You can use the
Edit Tenant Setup - Financials
task to:
  • Enable a bank account verification screen for bank account and payment election changes.
  • Specify the maximum number of verification attempts workers can make before Workday locks them out.

Security

Domains
Considerations
  • Set Up: Payment Election
    in the Expenses functional area.
  • Set Up: Payroll (Payment Election Rules)
    in the Core Payroll functional area.
  • Set Up: Payroll Interface
    in the Payroll Interface functional area.
Users with access on these domains can set up payment preferences.
  • Manage: Payment Election
    in the Expenses functional area.
  • Worker Data: Payroll (Payment Elections)
    in the Core Payroll functional area.
  • Worker Data: Payroll Interface (Payment Elections)
    in the Payroll Interface functional area.
Enables you to set up new countries and currencies options for payment elections.
Person Data: Bank Account Masking
in the Banking and Settlement functional area.
Enables you to view full unmasked bank information.
Manage: Unlock Payment Elections Access
Enables you to unlock a user after multiple incorrect attempts at entering bank information.
  • Self-Service: Payment Election
    in the Expenses functional area.
  • Self-Service: Payroll (My Payment Elections)
    in the Core Payroll functional area.
  • Self-Service: Payroll Interface (Payment Elections)
    in the Payroll Interface functional area.
  • Self-Service: Student Financials
    in the Student Financials functional area.
Users with access on these domains can access their employee self-service (ESS) payment election tasks.
Manage: Student Payment Elections
in the Student Financials functional area.
Enables you to access student bank accounts and student payment elections.
  • Worker Data: Payment Elections by Organization
    in the Core Payroll, Expenses, and Payroll Interface functional areas.
Enables you to set up payment election processing details and view these related report fields:
  • Account Number
  • IBAN
  • Roll Number

Business Processes

Business Process
Considerations
Hire
You can add
Manage Payment Elections
as an action step when you configure
Payment Election Enrollment Event
as a subprocess of:
  • The
    Hire
    business process.
  • A consolidated template for
    Hire
    .
Onboarding
To gather bank information from new users, you can add
Manage Payment Elections
as an action step.
Payment Election Enrollment Event
Workday recommends that you add an approval step to review bank information for possible inaccuracies and phishing attempts.
You can add the
Prenote of Worker Bank Accounts if New or Changed
service step to alleviate the possibility of bank returns, for U.S. banks only.
Start International Assignment
You can add the
Add Payment Elections
to-do step to ensure workers set up their payment preferences when they relocate.

Reporting

Reports or Dashboards
Consideration
Audit Missing Payment Elections
Identifies a person missing any type of eligible payment elections.
Payment Elections
Lists a person's pay group and current payment elections including payment type and payment method.
In Progress Payment Elections Requiring Submit
Lists all payment elections that require administrative approval.
You can use the
Payment Elections Current
business object to create filtered reports to:
  • Find changes made to payment elections.
  • Sort through preferred bank details.
You can use the
Payment Election History
report data source to view the history and track changes on all payment elections for a specific pay group.

Integrations

If you outsource your check printing or your payments, you can use these check print integrations:
  • ADP Check Print (Enhanced Performance)
  • Core Connector: Payroll Check Printing (Enhanced Performance)
  • WPN - Ceridian Check Printing
You can use these web services to maintain payment election security and help text configurations:
Web Services
Considerations
Get Tenant Setup - Financials
Put Tenant Setup - Financials
Use these web services to manage bank account masking, verification, and lockout attempt settings.
Get Payment Election Help Text Configurations
Put Payment Election Help Text Configuration
Use these web services to manage the
Bank Account Lockout Help Text
field.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features
Considerations
Expenses
Payment elections determine the options that a person can select regarding receiving their expenses.
Mobile
Workers can use Workday for Android or iOS to add, delete, or edit their payment elections as well as set them up as part of the
Onboarding
business process.
Payroll
Payment elections determine the options that a person can select regarding receiving their payments.
Student Financial
Payment elections determine the options that students can select regarding receiving their refunds and make payments.
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.