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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Setup Considerations: Spend Authorizations

Setup Considerations: Spend Authorizations

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of spend authorizations. It 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

Spend authorizations are expense transactions that payees can use to request preapproval of estimated expenses. Based on the expense items that payees select, they can enter:
  • Anticipated spend dates.
  • Descriptions.
  • Estimated amounts.
  • Spend authorization lines.

Business Benefits

  • Eliminate the need to collect expense information outside of Workday by adding questionnaires on spend authorizations.
  • Forecast future expenses by using commitment accounting for approved spend authorizations.
  • Increase spend control and improve expense policy compliance using preapproval.
  • Provide payees with greater flexibility to manage their travel expenses.
  • View accurate budget balances by tracking commitment amounts and outstanding cash advance amounts.

Use Cases

  • Create spend authorizations on behalf of other workers and external committee members, such as guest speakers.
  • Create cash advance repayments from payments that workers submit to repay outstanding balances.
  • Create new expense reports from approved spend authorizations to deduct from approved amounts and cash advances.
  • Link spend authorizations with cash advances to expense reports.
  • Request approval for estimated travel expenses before trips occur.
  • Use 1 spend authorization on multiple expense reports until the spend authorization balance equals zero.

Questions to Consider

Questions
What expense information do you want to track?
You can require workers to add lines on their spend authorizations to gather additional expense details for auditing purposes. Unless configured, Workday doesn't require spend authorization lines.
You can also configure:
  • Expense item attributes to ensure that payees provide additional information on their spend authorizations.
  • Rate table-based expense items to ensure that payees provide information that Workday uses to calculate totals for committed spend.
  • Questionnaires to collect custom survey data from payees.
How do you want to control and track spend authorization amounts?
To prevent overspending and control liquidation of spend authorization amounts, you can configure:
  • Budget checks to control spend authorization transaction budgetary options and view budget results. Example: You can prevent overbudget transactions.
  • Commitment accounting to track spend authorization commitment amounts. You can control spend from the originating transaction to the spend authorization. You can also create commitments in their respective ledgers.

Recommendations

  • Add instructional text on expense items to provide additional information to expense payees to help them complete their spend authorizations.
  • To calculate deductions or maximum amounts automatically, configure rate tables for the expense items you want to use on spend authorizations.
  • Configure commitment accounting to enable workers to request cash advances on spend authorizations.
  • Configure commitment accounting and budget dates to display on your actuals ledger to enable workers to select a budget date on spend authorization lines.
  • Display or require expense item attributes on spend authorizations to encourage workers to include additional details at line level.

Requirements

  • Configure payment election rules for companies and payees to determine how to pay workers for their cash advances.
  • Configure commitment accounting to generate accounting when workers link spend authorizations to expense lines and liquidate specific spend authorization lines.
  • Settle cash advances to enable workers to select spend authorizations on expense reports.

Limitations

  • Payees can't request cash advances and spend authorizations in currencies that differ from their reimbursement currency.
  • To prevent accounting inaccuracies, you can cancel and close spend authorizations only under certain conditions. Example: You can't cancel a spend authorization if it's associated with a settlement run that's
    In Progress
     or
    Completed
    .
  • Workday doesn't generate accounting when you receive cash advance repayments from workers. You need to create separate journal entries using bank deposits or payroll deduction.
  • Workday doesn't support travel journals on spend authorizations. When you use per diem expense items on spend authorizations, Workday can't calculate the amounts accurately.
  • You can link spend authorization lines to expense report lines only when you enable commitment accounting.
  • You can't copy spend authorizations to generate new spend authorizations. Workday only copies spend authorization header details.

Tenant Setup

You can use the
Edit Tenant Setup - Financials
 task to:
  • Configure sequence numbers for spend authorizations.
  • Enable workers to submit cash advance requests in their spend authorization requests.
  • Hide the
    Billable
     check box on spend authorizations when your organization doesn't bill customers for worker expenses.
  • Hide spend authorization options on expense reports when payees don't have spend authorizations.

Security

These domains in the Expenses functional area:
Domain
Considerations
Manage: Expense Advance Repayment
Enables you to:
  • Create cash advance repayments.
  • Access receipt records of an expense advance repayment.
Process: Expense Report Payment/Settlement
Enables you to:
  • Access and settle expense payments.
  • View related settlement reporting.
Process: Spend Authorization
Enables users with company-based or unconstrained roles to manage spend authorizations and related reporting.
You can also configure subdomains to give users more control over spend authorization actions.
Process: Spend Authorization Mass Close
Enables you to:
  • Close multiple spend authorizations at once.
  • Close spend authorizations to prevent further action against them, such as linking to expense report lines, and liquidating remaining balances.
  • View related reports for mass close requests.
Reports: Organization Spend Authorization Reporting
Enables users with organization-based roles to view spend authorizations and spend authorization line reporting.
Self-Service: Spend Authorization
Enables you to:
  • Access, edit, and close spend authorization requests.
  • View related reporting for spend authorizations.

Business Processes

Business Process
Considerations
Check Budget (Financial)
Configure to review and approve budget check results for spend authorization transactions, such as budget check overages or failures.
Expense Report Event
Configure to include rules for spend authorizations when you want to require additional approval for spend amounts.
Example: When the estimated spend authorization is greater than the total amount on the expense report, you can require additional manager approval.
Spend Authorization
Configure to enable employees, data entry specialists, and expense partners to make spend authorization requests.
You can configure these additional action steps:
  • Budget Check
     to check spend authorization requests against your budget.
  • Complete Questionnaire
     to gather additional information from employees before approval.
  • Propose Reimbursable Allowance Plan Assignment
     to propose an allowance plan for employees who request spend authorizations.
Spend Authorization Mass Close Event
Configure to:
  • Enable expense partners to mass close spend authorizations.
  • Require reviews before approving the mass close spend authorization request.
  • Send custom notifications and alert expense payees about closed spend authorizations.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Budgetary Balance Report
View spend authorization commitments and actuals for expense reports on your accounting journals.
Find Cash Advances
View cash advance details, including:
  • Outstanding and available balances.
  • Related expense reports.
  • Repayment amounts and dates.
Find Spend Authorizations
Based on spend start and end dates, view spend authorization:
  • Remaining balances.
  • Accounting, liquidations, and commitments on linked expense reports.
Find Spend Authorization Mass Close Requests
View all spend authorizations and their details in each mass close request.
You can use these report data sources to aggregate and filter large volumes of data:
  • Cash Advance Payments
  • Cash Advance Repayments
  • Spend Authorizations
  • Spend Authorization Lines
  • Spend Authorization Mass Close Requests

Integrations

Web Services
Considerations
Cancel Spend Authorization
Use to cancel spend authorizations when you provide a spend authorization ID.
Get Cash Advance Repayments
Put Cash Advance Repayment
Use to:
  • Add, update, or submit cash advance repayments.
  • Gather submitted cash advance repayments.
Get Expense Items
Put Expense Item
Use to configure and gather expense items for use on spend authorizations.
Get Spend Authorizations
Use to gather submitted spend authorizations.
Submit Spend Authorization
Use to add, update, and submit spend authorizations.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features
Considerations
Budgets
You can configure:
  • Budget checks to control spend authorization amounts.
  • Commitments for spend authorizations.
When you use budgets on spend authorizations, you can view generated accounting and journal details such as:
  • Budget dates.
  • Commitments and actuals.
  • Reserved budget amounts.
Financial Accounting
You can configure:
  • Accounting posting rules to determine default accounts for cash advance transactions.
  • Balancing worktag rules to keep track of spend across multiple cost centers or funds.
  • Spend authorization journal sources and map them to spend authorization operational transactions.
  • Commitment accounting on ledgers for spend authorization transactions.
Banking and Settlement
You can:
  • Configure the payment category to identify which account to use for cash advance payments.
  • Generate payments for cash advances.
Travel Profiles
When users configure a hotel or travel country on their travel profiles, Workday:
  • Populates the spend authorization lines for expense items that require a hotel or travel country.
  • Provides a
    Preferred
     folder for the expense item when you select the expense item for the hotel or travel country.
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.