Setup Considerations: Period Schedules
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of period schedules. 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
A period schedule is a set of sequential periods of a standard length that Workday uses in:
- Workday Absence to determine accrual frequency for time off plans that track balances, and to define worker eligibility for a time off plan.
- Workday Payroll to determine how often you pay workers and the span of days that the payment is for. They also control forward accruals for accounting entries.
- Workday Time Tracking to control when users can enter and adjust work hours.
Business Benefits
You can set up multiple period schedules with different frequencies according to your business needs.
You can save time and improve efficiency by using:
- An EIB integration to create a period schedule, or to add periods to an existing schedule.
- The same period schedules for multiple Workday products.
Workday increases flexibility by enabling you to automatically adjust payment dates that normally fall on a weekend.
Use Cases
- Define the length and payment dates for different payroll cycles. Example: Set up a biweekly schedule for regular payroll, and an annual schedule for bonus payments.
- Set up matching time period and pay period dates to pay employees for time worked on the same dates covered by the pay period.
- Establish when workers can enter time worked, and when administrators can make adjustments to workers' hours, for each period.
- Define payroll cutoff dates to exclude one-time payments after a certain date each period.
- Integrate holiday calendars to automatically adjust pay dates and accommodate non-business days.
Questions to Consider
Questions | Considerations |
|---|---|
How many different cycles for payroll, time tracking, and absence exist in your company? | You need to create at least 1 schedule for every pay and time tracking cycle.
You can share schedules in Absence, Time Tracking, and Payroll when the time period and the pay period dates align. When they don't, create separate period schedules for each product and map each period to pay periods. In payroll, pay groups with the same pay cycle and pay dates can share a schedule. Example: Pay groups for hourly and contingent workers can share a biweekly period schedule. |
Do you use Workday Payroll in more than 1 country? | You can use a period schedule for multiple countries. When needed, you can set a different payment date on a period for each country. Specify the date override before you make any payments for the period. |
Do you track balances in your time off plans? | If your time off plan tracks balances, you can create a period schedule that matches the frequency that your workers accrue time off. Example: Workers accrue 2 time off days per month. |
When do you want workers to enter their time for a period? | You can set dates for each period between which workers can enter time for the period. |
How do you want your workers to accrue time off? | You can configure your period schedule so that your workers accrue their time off at:
You can also front-load accruals. Example: Workers accrue 5 sick days at the start of the year. |
Does your company have a holiday calendar? | You can integrate your company's holiday calendar to automatically adjust pay dates and accommodate non-business days. |
Recommendations
To save time and reduce duplication of effort, review the period schedules in your tenant before you create a new schedule. You might be able to reuse a schedule with the same frequency.
Altering the start and end dates for a payroll schedule can impact retro, proration, and FLSA pay calculations. Instead of changing the dates for a period, create a new pay group and move workers to the new pay group on the date the change occurs.
When you create period schedules for Time Tracking:
- Lock time entry when you need to calculate payroll.
- Close time entry no more than 3 months after the period end date.
- Define Absence and Time Tracking eligibility criteria that match the guidelines you use to assign employees to pay groups.
When building a schedule, add periods for the current and next year. Doing so enables workers to request time off for dates into the future. For optimal performance, Workday recommends you build period schedules no more than 2 years in the future from the current period. For customers using commitments, you can configure period schedules beyond 2 years.
Requirements
You need at least 1 period in each schedule with dates before the effective date of your first Workday Payroll or HCM transactions.
When you create a semimonthly period schedule, the first period of each month must end on the 15th to ensure accurate time tracking processing.
Limitations
Workday doesn't automatically adjust payment dates that fall on a statutory holiday.
You can't change the payment date or your accrual configuration for a period after you've calculated payroll for that period. Cancel the pay calculation, make the changes to the period schedule, then rerun the pay calculation.
Workday doesn't support using calculations that reference academic pay periods or disbursement plan periods in Absence calculation fields as they don't use Absence period schedules. See:
When you generate period schedule periods to extend an existing schedule, you:
- Can only add periods for weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, monthly, and annual schedules.
- Can only add periods to period schedules that have less than 2 years of future periods already added.
- Need to edit the schedule to update the time tracking, payroll GL accruals, and payroll settlement date overrides information for generated periods.
Tenant Setup
No impact.
Security
Domains | Considerations |
|---|---|
| Enable you to create and manage period schedules for payroll. |
Set Up: Period Schedule in the Project Tracking functional area. | Enables you to create and manage period schedules for projects. |
Set Up: Time Off (Calculations - Absence Specific in the Time Off and Leave functional area. | Enables you to create and manage period schedules for time off plans. |
Set Up: Time Tracking in the Time Tracking and Time Tracking Hub functional areas. | Enables you to create and manage period schedules for time tracking. |
Business Processes
No impact.
Reporting
Reports | Considerations |
|---|---|
Audit - Workers with Multiple Time Period Schedules
| Enables you to identify workers who meet eligibility requirements for more than 1 Time Tracking period schedule. |
Tenant Analyzer
| Enables you to verify your period schedule setup against Workday recommendations. |
View Period Schedule
| After adding periods to a schedule, enables you to verify that dates are correct for all new periods. |
Integrations
Integrations or Web Services | Considerations |
|---|---|
Get Period Schedule
| Retrieves period schedule information. |
Put Period Schedule
| Uploads a new period schedule or adds periods to an existing schedule. |
Connections and Touchpoints
Features | Considerations |
|---|---|
Continuous payroll calculation | You can set up a period schedule that enables you to automatically:
|
Pay groups | When you create a pay group, you select the period schedule that Workday uses for each run category. |
Payroll accounting | Workday creates forward accruals when a pay period spans multiple accounting reporting periods. |
Payroll calculation | Workday calculates payroll results for a specified pay period. For each pay group, complete payroll for a period before you calculate payroll for the next period. |
Payslips | A payslip displays pay for the time period you define. |
Time off plans | You can run Absence Management reports based on the period schedules. Workday uses the period schedule to:
|
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.