Setup Considerations: Account Reconciliation
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of account reconciliation. 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
Account reconciliation is a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for comparing two sets of financial records to ensure they are accurate and in agreement. Account reconciliation supports multicurrency, enabling you to translate amounts in different transaction or ledger currencies into a specified currency for reconciliation.
Business Benefits
This functionality enables you to quickly and easily identify and resolve discrepancies in financial records during month end close, helping you to ensure that your financial data is correct and reliable.
You can:
- Streamline operations by monitoring progress and prioritizing work effectively.
- Save time by accessing all required information and actions from a single location.
- Reduce manual effort through a reconciliation coverage check that verifies all ledger accounts are included.
- Easily manage reconciling items, including automatic rollover of outstanding items to the next period, and item age tracking.
- Quickly understand the context of reconciliations through comment histories and a comprehensive audit trail.
- Empower your teams with the option to certify reconciliations manually or automatically.
- Manage risk and maintain control over your account reconciliation process through detailed reporting.
Use Cases
System administrators can:
- Control access to account reconciliation tasks and reports.
- Set up preparer and approver groups.
- Set up account reconciliation definitions and assign users to roles on those definitions.
- Set up autocertification for reconciliations that are not started, have no activity in the period being reconciled, and have no reconciling items or supporting balances.
Accountants can:
- View account reconciliations that they have been assigned to by a system administrator.
- Assign themselves to reconciliations as a preparer.
- Prepare reconciliations by adding supporting balances and reconciling items.
- Send reconciliations for certification.
Accounting managers and controllers can:
- View account reconciliations that they have been assigned to by a system administrator.
- Certify or send back reconciliations.
Questions to Consider
Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|
Which criteria do you want to use to set up your account reconciliation definitions? | An account reconciliation definition specifies which balances to reconcile.
You can set up account reconciliation definitions by company or hierarchy, ledger accounts and ledger account summaries, book, worktag, risk rating, and frequency. On each account reconciliation definition, you also assign users to preparer and approver roles for reconciliations created from the definition. |
In which currency do you want to perform reconciliation? | You can perform reconciliations in the transaction currency, ledger currency, and reconciliation currency of your choice. You select a reconciliation currency on each account reconciliation definition.
You can't perform reconciliation in an Alternate Ledger Currency (ALC). |
Who will be responsible for setting up account reconciliation? | Workday recommends that system administrators complete the initial setup.
You can enable other users, such as accounting managers, to manage role assignment on reconciliations for companies and hierarchies that they have access to. To do this, give them View access only to the Set Up: Account Reconciliation domain in the Financial Accounting functional area through roles on companies or hierarchies, and add them to the Assigned/Reviewed by Security Groups column for the role in the Maintain Assignable Roles task. They will be able to assign users to roles on account reconciliation definitions for companies or hierarchies to which those users have access. |
Who will be responsible for preparing and approving account reconciliations? | You can set up and assign users to these roles:
Users that you assign to these roles can take responsibility for preparing and approving account reconciliations created from a particular account reconciliation definition. These roles are linked to individual account reconciliation definitions rather than companies or company hierarchies. As a result, users assigned to these roles can view reconciliation information that derives from companies they don't have access to when those companies are specified on the account reconciliation definition. |
What reporting access do your intended preparers and approvers have? | From the Reconciliation Summary section on an account reconciliation, preparers and approvers can view the underlying journals by drilling down on the ledger balance to access the Trial Balance report for each company on the reconciliation.
To access this report, users require access to:
When a user doesn't have this access, they can drill down on the ledger balances to see a breakdown by company, but Workday doesn't display a link to the Trial Balance report. |
What actions do you want approvers take on account reconciliations? | Approvers can send back, comment on, and certify reconciliations.
The Process: Account Reconciliation - Reconciling Items and Process: Account Reconciliation - Supporting Balances domains control whether users can view or modify reconciling items and supporting balances. Ensure that your Account Reconciliation Approver role has View access only to reports and tasks on these domains. This prevents approvers from modifying reconciliations and preserves internal controls. |
Which fiscal schedules are used by companies in your company hierarchies? | Account reconciliation doesn't support company hierarchies that contain companies that have different primary fiscal schedules. You can't select these company hierarchies when you set up an account reconciliation definition.
When you use a company hierarchy on an account reconciliation definition, ensure that you don't add a company to the hierarchy later that uses a different primary fiscal schedule. |
How frequently might you change your account reconciliation definitions? | After you create reconciliations for a period using a definition, the only settings you can change on the definition are the role assignments and the autocertification rule. To change any other settings, you can either:
|
What requirements do you want to enforce on supporting balances and reconciling items? | You can add your own critical and warning validations on fields on supporting balances and reconciling items. Workday processes these custom validations when:
|
How do you track the age of reconciling items? | Workday displays the age of reconciling items in ranges, such as 1-30 days old, or 30-60 days old.
Workday calculates the age as the number of days between the date of the reconciling item and the earliest of:
|
Recommendations
If you are migrating partially to account reconciliation and haven't included all ledger accounts in your reconciliation definitions, we recommend that you make a copy of the
Reconciliation Definition Coverage Check
standard report and add a filter to exclude ledger accounts.When you run the custom report, use this filter to exclude any ledger accounts that you don't want to reconcile using the account reconciliation functionality.
If you currently use basic account certification, to gain the maximum benefit and to simplify your financial reporting, we recommend that you don't use basic account certification and reconciliation at the same time.
If you choose to take a phased approach while continuing to use account certification, note that you will not see a holistic overview of your month-end reconciliation status on the
Account Reconciliation Hub
.When you first access the account reconciliation tasks, we recommend that you freeze, resize, reorder, and hide columns on the various grids to display the information that's most important to you in a way that meets your preference.
You can customize the:
- Reconciliationsgrid on theOverviewtab on theAccount Reconciliation Hub.
- Reconciling ItemsandSupporting Balancesgrids on theView Reconciliation Workspacereport.
To ensure continued performance, we recommend that you don't exceed 5,000 reconciling items or supporting balances on each reconciliation.
Requirements
No impact.
Limitations
Account reconciliation is not supported for Alternate Ledger Currency (ALC). Workday supports reconciliation for the primary ledger only.
Tenant Setup
No impact.
Security
Domain | Consideration |
|---|---|
Set Up: Account Reconciliation in the Financial Accounting functional area. | Enables users to access setup tasks for account reconciliation definitions. Users with access to this domain can view all account reconciliation definitions.
You can add these security group types to this domain:
|
Process: Account Reconciliation - Run Period in the Financial Accounting functional area. | Enables users to access tasks for creating account reconciliations. |
Process: Account Reconciliation in the Financial Accounting functional area. | Enables users to access tasks and reports for viewing and managing account reconciliations.
This domain has 5 subdomains:
|
Process: Automatic Certification for Account Reconciliation in the Financial Accounting functional area | Enables users to configure Workday to automatically certify account reconciliations that have no activity in the period being reconciled. |
Reports: Financial Accounting in the Financial Accounting functional area | Enables users to access the Trial Balance report.
Account reconciliation preparers and approvers with access to this domain can drill down on balances on reconciliations and view the underlying journals for companies and ledger accounts they have access to. |
Business Processes
You set up the
Reconciliation Period Event
business process to manage approvals for reconciliations. When approvers receive a reconciliation, they can approve it or send it back to the preparer. The business process supports advanced routing and delegation. See:
To add multiple approvals, add 2 or more
Approval
steps in the required sequence.When more than 1 approver is assigned to a reconciliation, you can't assign a particular approver to specific
Approval
steps, but you can configure the business process to require a different approver for subsequent approvals.This business process doesn't currently support conditional approval.
We recommend that you set up the business process to display account reconciliation tasks through the
Account Reconciliation Hub
only. You can do this by excluding approval steps from My Tasks
and disabling email notifications. If you choose to keep these notifications, Workday provides a link from the item to the reconciliation workspace for easy navigation.Reporting
Reporting Object | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
Advanced report | Reconciliation Definition Coverage Check
| This advanced report enables financial administrators and accounting managers to determine whether journal lines in the current year are covered by an account reconciliation definition. This report uses the Reconciliation Definition Coverage Check report data source.
Required prompts: Account Set , Companies/Hierarchies , Period . |
Search report | Find Events
| This search report enables users to access audit trails for the Reconciliation Period Event business process. |
Business view data source | Business View for Account Reconciliations
| Provides comprehensive insight into account reconciliations for fiscal periods.
Enables users to view details about individual account reconciliations, submission and certification dates, and the account reconciliation definition from which each reconciliation was created. Includes period, companies, reconciliation currency, certified ledger balance, certification status, submission and certification dates, and other data such as preparers, approvers, and comments. Only returns data that the user has access to. The lowest granularity for each data row is an account reconciliation for a period. |
Business view data source | Business View for Account Reconciliation Reconciling Items
| Provides comprehensive insight into reconciling items and account reconciliation definitions.
Enables users to view details about reconciling items on account reconciliations, and the account reconciliation definition from which each reconciliation was created. Only returns data that the user has access to. Includes company, ledger account, item type, amounts, item age, and other data such as comments and attachments. The lowest granularity for each data row is a reconciling item on a reconciliation. When you create custom reports using this business view data source, we recommend that you clear the Optimized for Performance check box to ensure that you can filter and prompt by all report fields on the business view.For more information, see:
|
Business view data source | Business View for Account Reconciliation Supporting Balances
| Provides comprehensive insight into supporting balances and account reconciliation definitions.
Enables users to view details about supporting balances on account reconciliations, and the account reconciliation definition from which each reconciliation was created. Only returns data that the user has access to. Includes company, ledger account, amount, balance date, and other data such as comments and attachments. The lowest granularity for each data row is a supporting balance on a reconciliation. |
Report data source | Reconciliation Definition Coverage Check
| Accesses Reconciliation Definition Coverage Check as its primary business object and returns 1 row for each combination of company, ledger account, book code, and worktags on journal lines that doesn't match the combination on an account reconciliation definition. Only evaluates journal lines from the beginning of the year until the end of the specified period. Prompts you for Period to filter the report results. |
You can access these report fields through the
Business View for Account Reconciliations
business view data source (secured to the Process: Account Reconciliation - Reporting
domain): For reconciliation definitions:
- Book
- Companies or Company Hierarchies
- Frequency
- Ledger Accounts or Ledger Account Summaries
- Reconciliation Currency
- Risk Rating
- Worktags
For reconciliations:
- Approver
- Certified Ledger Balance
- Comments
- Period
- Preparer
- Reconciliation Definition
- Reconciliation Status
- Start Date and Time
For events on the
Reconciliation Period Event
business process:
- Date Certified
- Date Submitted
For autocertified reconciliations, the
Date Certified
and Date Submitted
report fields don’t display values because autocertification doesn’t initiate the Reconciliation Period Event
business process. For autocertified reconciliations, the date in the Start Date and Time
report field is equivalent to the certification date.You can access these report fields through the
Business View for Account Reconciliation Reconciling Items
business view data source (secured to the Process: Account Reconciliation - Reporting
domain):For reconciliation definitions:
- Inactive
- Reconciliation Definition Name
- Risk Rating
For reconciling items:
- Added By
- Age in Days
- Age in Days on Reporting Date
- Related Balance
- Attachments
- Book Code
- Comments
- Company
- Date Added
- Description
- Ledger Account
- Ledger Amount
- Ledger Currency
- Reconciliation Definition
- Reconciling Item
- Reconciling Item Date
- Reconciling Item Status
- Reconciling Item Status on Reporting Date
- Reconciling Item Type
- Reference Note
- Resolution Date
- Transaction Amount
- Transaction Currency
- Worktags
You can access these report fields through the
Business View for Account Reconciliation Supporting Balances
business view data source (secured to the Process: Account Reconciliation - Reporting
domain):For reconciliation definitions:
- Inactive
- Reconciliation Definition Name
- Risk Rating
For supporting balances:
- Attachments
- Balance Date
- Book Code
- Comments
- Company
- Description
- Ledger Account
- Reconciliation Definition
- Reference Note
- Source
- Supporting Balance
- Transaction Amount
- Transaction Currency
- Worktags
You can also use these report fields on the Reconciliation Definition Coverage Check (Derived) business object (secured to the
Public Reporting Items
domain) in your custom reports:
- Accounting Worktag
- Book Code
- Company
- Ledger Account
Integrations
Integration or Web Service | Considerations |
|---|---|
Get Account Reconciliation Definitions web service operation
Put Account Reconciliation Definition web service operation | You can use these web service operations to create, update, and retrieve account reconciliation definitions. |
Get Reconciling Items web service operation
Put Reconciling Item web service operation | You can use these web service operations to create, update, and retrieve reconciling items on account reconciliations. To use the Get Reconciling Items web service operation, you need:
To use the Put Reconciling Item web service operation, you need:
|
Get Supporting Balances web service operation
Put Supporting Balance web service operations | You can use these web service operations to create, update, and retrieve supporting balances on account reconciliations.
To use the Get Supporting Balances web service operation, you need:
To use the Put Supporting Balance web service operation, you need:
|
Assign Roles web service operation | You can use this web service operation to assign users to roles on account reconciliation definitions. |
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.