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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Setup Considerations: Ledger Posting for Project Labor Costs

Setup Considerations: Ledger Posting for Project Labor Costs

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of ledger posting for project labor costs. 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

Ledger posting for project labor costs enables you to summarize project labor costs and post these summaries to your ledger.

Business Benefits

Ledger posting for project labor costs enables you to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort by:
  • Analyzing project profitability as a dimension of company profitability.
  • Automating ledger posts for your labor cost summaries.
  • Making all project labor costs auditable within Workday.
  • Reporting on total project labor costs using ledger balances.

Use Cases

  • Capitalize labor cost summaries tagged to capital projects.
  • Create comprehensive accounting and reporting for project labor cost summaries.
  • Summarize labor costs for intercompany projects, and recover the labor cost from either the project or worker company.
  • Summarize labor costs from Workday Payroll journal lines tagged to capital projects.
  • Summarize standard and fully burdened labor costs from worker time blocks and ad hoc project time transactions.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
Which project types do you need to post labor cost summaries for?
You can post labor cost summaries that include all projects or capital projects only.
What level of detail do you need to include in your ledger posts for summarized project labor costs?
When configuring summaries for project labor costs, you can specify worktag details to determine:
  • The granularity of summarizations.
  • Whether worktags follow projects or workers.
How does project advanced labor costing interact with ledger posting for project labor costs?
You can summarize and post prorated labor costs to your ledger.
What company and cost center combinations will you use to account for project labor costs?
Invalid company and cost center combinations result in labor cost summaries with a status of
Invalid
. Workday doesn't create accounting for invalid labor cost summaries.
How do payroll cost allocations and payroll adjustments interact with ledger posting for project labor costs?
Workday doesn't support payroll cost allocations or payroll adjustments when summarizing project labor costs.
Where do you want Workday to post project labor cost summaries?
You can configure your tenant to create intercompany accounting entries that post to the ledger of either the project or worker company. If you don't configure your tenant to generate intercompany accounting for project labor cost summaries, Workday posts all journals to the actuals ledger of the project company.
Do you want to enable multibook accounting for capital project transactions?
To set up your tenant to create multibook accounting for capital project transactions, ensure you configure the
Business Asset Multibook Settlement
account posting rule.

Recommendations

Run labor cost summarizations for projects after:
  • You approve and submit all time.
  • The end date of your ledger period passes.
Otherwise, you might summarize the same period multiple times, causing Workday to create a reversal and a new transaction to account for any changes.
Complete your review of capital project transactions after you run labor cost summarizations.
Include the same worktag types in time entry templates that you include in your criteria for summarizing project labor costs. This action ensures that worktags are available for summarization.
If you configure balancing worktags in your tenant, require the primary balancing worktag type on the template for project time entry. Otherwise, labor cost summaries will have a status of
Invalid
, and Workday won't generate accounting for them.

Requirements

If you're using advanced labor costing, schedule summarizations for project labor costs after you run advanced labor costing. This action ensures you include prorated amounts in the summaries.

Limitations

You can only configure this functionality for a tenant-level setup. Company or project-level configurations are unavailable.

Tenant Setup

Configure Work In Progress (WIP) worktags in your tenant for Workday to include them automatically in your WIP ledger posting.

Security

These domains in the Capital Projects and Projects functional areas:
Domain
Considerations
Manage: Project Labor Cost Accounting
Create, schedule, and view labor cost summarizations that post to your ledger for capital and noncapital projects.
Set Up: Project Labor Cost Summary Accounting
Configure labor cost summarizations that post to your ledger for capital and noncapital projects.

Business Processes

When you configure the
Verify Project Labor Cost Summarization
business process for fully burdened and standard costing methods, Workday:
  • Routes your summarizations for approval.
  • Creates accounting for your labor cost summaries.

Reporting

Use the:
  • Find Project Labor Cost Summaries
    report to review summarized time transactions and details for standard and fully burdened labor costs.
  • Project Labor Cost Summary
    report data source to create custom reports.

Integrations

No impact.

Connections and Touchpoints

Feature
Considerations
Capital Projects
Ledger posting for project labor costs enables you to configure labor cost summaries for all projects or capital projects only.
Capitalize labor cost summaries tagged to capital projects.
Payroll
Capitalize summarized labor costs from Workday Payroll journal lines tagged to capital projects.
Time Tracking
Summarize standard or fully burdened labor costs for worker time blocks and ad hoc project time transactions.
Configure time entry templates for projects to group time blocks on labor cost summarizations.
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.