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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-01-09
Setup Considerations: Alternate Ledger Currencies

Setup Considerations: Alternate Ledger Currencies

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of alternate ledger currencies. 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

Alternate ledger currency (ALC) enables you to comply with ASC 830 and IAS 21 accounting standards, where you must generate financial statements for your company in both the local currency under local reporting requirements, and functional currency. Each company can now support 2 actuals ledgers with unique currencies, where the:
  • Primary ledger can serve as the functional currency.
  • Alternate ledger can serve as the local currency.
Workday can post operational journals to both ledgers, and accounting journals to 1 or both ledgers.

Business Benefits

You can:
  • Distinguish between functional and local currencies.
  • Generate reports in real time for both functional and local currencies simultaneously.
  • Maintain historical exchange rates on prepaid, fixed assets, and deferred revenue during recognition and subsequent adjustments.

Use Cases

  • Record all operational journals and accounting journals in both primary and ALC actuals ledgers.
    Example: A Japan marketing company that doesn't generate any revenue and receives monthly funding from the USA parent in USD. Record the primary ledger journal in functional USD currency and the ALC journal in local JPY currency.
  • Companies in high inflationary countries can report in a functional currency that's different from the high inflation currency.
    Example: An Argentinian entity uses ARS as the functional currency. Due to the high inflation economic environment, they reassessed the functional currency to the functional currency of the parent company, USD. To comply with reporting requirements, the Argentinian entity now reports financials in ARS and USD.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
When should you configure ALC?
You can configure ALC during the current or at the start of the fiscal year or period. The
Alternate ledger Currency Fiscal Start Year
 you select during ALC configuration is what constitutes as the ALC start date. At configuration, Workday:
  • Generates the first ALC ledger year and ledger periods.
  • Assigns the status of primary ledger periods to alternate ledger periods, ensuring the primary and alternate ledger period statuses are always in sync.
For configurations starting the new fiscal year:
  • When closing the prior fiscal year, Workday continues to reflect newly posted accounting in the primary ledger only for the prior fiscal year
  • Workday posts ALC journals in the first fiscal year once you start posting transactions and accounting journals.
For configurations starting mid fiscal year:
  • When you’re closing a period, Workday generates newly posted accounting in both the primary and ALC ledger.
    Example: You simultaneously configure ALC on April 1, 2024 and close March 2024. The operational journals and accounting journals posted after configuring ALC reflect in both the primary and alternate ledgers in March.
  • Workday posts ALC journals once you start posting transactions and accounting journals in all open periods.
Do you use recurring journal templates?
Once you configure ALC, Workday immediately converts all existing recurring journal templates for a company to all ledger templates. This conversion takes place even if the ALC fiscal start year is in the future. When you configure ALC to start in a future period, the template only generates journals for the primary ledger until the ALC fiscal start year.
Do you have documents that amortize over a period of time or transactions that have down-stream impacts in future periods?
Consider the historical conversion rates between the transaction currency and ALC. These exchange rates help Workday to generate accurate accounting for your future ALC periods.

Recommendations

Workday recommends setting up the:
  • Primary ledger currency as the functional currency.
  • Alternate ledger currency as the local currency.

Requirements

Obtain and import:
  • ALC beginning balances based on the time of implementation for the fiscal year.
  • ALC general ledger activity based on the time of implementation for the fiscal year.
  • Currency conversion rates for ALC and respective transactions currencies.
Before configuring ALC, you must uptake:
  • Persisting noncontrolling interest to ensure accurate primary ledger accounting.
  • Multibook asset accounting.
  • The redesigned retained earnings reporting feature.
To configure ALC company accounting details:
  • Post all transactions and manual journals in
    Draft
    ,
    Created
    ,
    In Progress
    , and
    Reserved
     status.
  • Finalize or cancel all allocation results in
    Open
     or
    Pro Forma
     status.
  • Disable reversing allocations in the month before you configure ALC, ensuring Workday doesn't create reversals only for the primary ledger.
  • Correct any journals in error.
  • Withhold from entering future dated manual journals.
When you use custom validations, review the accounting journals validations to determine whether to exclude alternate ledgers. By default, Workday applies the existing validation to both primary and alternate ledgers.

Limitations

Workday doesn't support ALC accounting for:
  • Accounting adjustments for purchasing cards.
  • Adaptive Planning.
  • Alternate contracts for revenue recognition.
  • Budgets.
  • Cash balance check and cash balancing rules.
  • The cash to bank reconciliation report.
  • Carve in carve out adjustment journals.
  • Commitment and obligation accounting.
  • Customer contract asset and liability reclassification journals.
  • Customer contract foreign currency adjustment journals.
  • Endowments.
  • Equity pickup.
  • Grants.
  • Inventory transactions.
  • Multiple funding sources.
  • Noncontrolling interest.
  • Payroll transactions.
  • Purchasing card transactions.
  • Student financials.
  • Translation adjustments.
  • Transaction matching and account certifications.
You can't:
  • Configure ALC for companies that use inventory or cash balance check functionality. Additionally, you can't use the functionality in companies with ALC configured.
  • Use the
    Submit Accounting Journal
     web service or the recurring journal template web services to create ALC journals. Workday only generates primary ledger journals only.
  • Disable ALC once you've defined it on a company, even if no transactions are posted to the alternate ledger. If no transactions are posted, you can change the alternate currency or the fiscal start year.

Tenant Setup

In the
Intercompany Accounting Journals Option
 section on the
Edit Tenant Setup - Financials
 task, you can select
Ignore Alternate Ledger Currency Indirect Intercompany Journals in Settlement
 to help bring in activity balance for intercompany amounts into an ALC ledger during implementation. Workday doesn't include journals recorded with this option enabled in intercompany events, such as intercompany settlement or receipt.
This option is only for during ALC configuration. Don't use this option for intercompany journals recorded after you configure ALC.

Security

Domains
Considerations
Process: Journals – Core
Enables you to access and edit core accounting journals.
Reports: Alternate Ledger Currency
Enables you to report on primary and alternate journals when you configure ledger currency mapping.
Set Up: Alternate Ledger Currency
Enables you to access and edit ledger currency mapping.

Business Processes

Workday only displays the primary ledger journal when you access the Review, Revise, and Approve business process steps of an All Ledger journal in these business process events:
  • Accounting Journal Event
  • Accounting Journal Unpost-Reversal Event
When you:
  • Make changes to the primary ledger journal, Workday applies the changes to the ALC journal to ensure the journals are always in sync.
  • Access the ALC journal from the primary ledger journal review or action business process step, Workday takes you outside of the business process to view the journal.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Company Accounting Details
Displays company accounting details so you can identify ALC details.
Ledger
Displays all the ledgers for a company.
Ledger Year
Displays each ledger period and its status for the ledger year.
Find Journals
Displays accounting journals of all status so you can identify journals that require action.
You can create custom reports using report data sources to view single ledger primary, single ledger ALC, and all ledger journal details:
  • Journal
  • Journal Line
  • Journal Lines for Financial Reporting
For any custom or standard report using these report data sources, you can include the
Ledger Currency Mapping
 report field to report on primary and alternate ledger currency journals.

Integrations

Use the latest web service version for optimum performance and stability.
Web Services
Consideration
Import Accounting Journal
Use to import accounting journals. Enables you to:
  • Bring in establish ALC activity balances.
  • Upload primary and ALC accounting journals.
Import Beginning Balances
Put Beginning Balances
Use to import beginning balances to bring in ALC beginning balance data.
Get Company Accounting Details
Put Company Accounting Details
Create and view ALC configurations for a company.
Get Ledgers
Put Ledger
Create or update the company primary and alternate actuals ledgers.
Get Ledger Year and Ledger Periods
Put Ledger Year and Ledger Periods
Create or update primary and ALC ledger years or ledger periods for companies.
You can also use the Accounting Journal Connector to import accounting journals.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features
Considerations
Multiple Book Asset Accounting
You can associate asset books with a ledger currency when you add an asset book to a company with ALC enabled. This functionality enables you to:
  • Add asset books to a company in your local and in your functional currencies.
  • Select different depreciation methods for the same asset in each currency.
  • Register and track your assets independently in each ledger currency.
Lease Accounting
You can map your lease book codes to the specific ALC assets book code for these lease types:
  • Finance Lease
  • Operating Lease (ROU Asset Depreciation Expense)
Consolidations
You can use consolidations for the primary and alternate ledgers.
Retained Earnings
You can use retained earnings related reports for both primary and ALC ledgers.
Alternate Account Set and Alternate Fiscal Schedule
You can use ALC ledgers for companies that use alternate account sets and alternate fiscal schedules. When you configure an alternate fiscal schedule and alternate account set, it applies to both primary and ALC ledgers.
Journal Sequencing
You can configure sequence generator rules and sequencing start periods by individual ledgers. Workday sequences ledgers independently and the ledgers don't share strings. You can enable journal sequencing for primary ledger only, alternate ledger only, or both.
Accounting Center
With accounting center batch processing, you can:
  • Generate ALC detailed journal lines.
  • Post the summarized journal lines in the primary and ALC ledger.
You can also update map prompts for the drill-to link to pass
ledger_currency
 in all reports that:
  • Are configured with a Drill-to option to a Prism table, and
  • Contain Accounting Center processed journal lines.
Period End Close
When you update the primary period status, Workday updates both the primary and ALC period statuses to ensure they're in sync.
Year End Close
Workday rolls forward both the primary and ALC balances when you roll forward year-end balances.
Workday recommends that you run the rollforward year-end balances for the primary schedule before the alternate fiscal schedule.
You can roll forward the balances for primary and alternate ledgers independently, or both.
Customer Invoice
You can configure ALC currency rate overrides on customer invoice documents.
Supplier Invoice
You can configure ALC currency rate overrides on supplier invoice documents.
Revenue Recognition
You can include:
  • Recognition adjustments in ALC when you create base currency adjustment installments.
  • Primary or alternate ledger currencies and conversion rates as currency rate options on revenue recognition schedule headers.
  • Primary or alternate ledger currencies, conversion rates, and override amounts on revenue recognition installment lines.
Revaluations
When you run revaluations with ALC configured, Workday returns 2 different and independent results for the revaluation process, 1 for each ledger and their respective currencies.
Allocations
When you run allocations with ALC configured, Workday:
  • Creates either a single or multisource allocation. Your allocation definitions determine which type Workday creates.
  • Finalizes and cancels allocations using the allocation result in the primary currency.
  • Updates the status of both allocations when an error occurs on the primary or alternate allocation result, or any associated journal.
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.