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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-05-30
Setup Considerations: Pay On-Demand

Setup Considerations: Pay On-Demand

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of pay on-demand. 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

Pay on-demand enables workers to use employee self-service (ESS) to request early payment for a portion of accumulated wages for the pay period. For workers with multiple jobs, Workday calculates earned wages across additional jobs that are in the same pay group and company as their primary job.
When a worker submits a request, Workday initiates the
Pay On-Demand
 business process that includes end-to-end payroll processing. Workday supports standard or same-day:
  • Electronic Fund Transfers (EFT) payments for Payroll for Canada. When on-cycle payroll runs for the period that includes pay on-demand, Workday reduces net wages by the total of pay on-demand payments.
  • Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments for Payroll for the U.S. When on-cycle payroll runs for the period with pay on-demand, Workday reduces gross and net wages by the total of on-demand payments.

Business Benefits

  • Reduce manual processing by calculating a net advance automatically, and updating accounting and the ledger for Payroll for Canada.
  • Reduce manual processing by calculating employer and employee statutory taxes automatically, and updating accounting and the ledger for Payroll for the U.S.
  • Encourage workers' financial health by providing them the flexibility to spend their earned wages when they need it.
  • Help attract talent and reduce turnover.

Use Cases

  • Pay workers on different cadences based on their characteristics such as salaried, hourly, nonexempt, or gig workers.
  • Support workers in emergencies in a time of hardship.
  • Help workers avoid borrowing at high interest rates or paying overdraft fees.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
Which workers do you want to access the feature?
You can create rule-based security groups and apply them on the business process policy for the initiating actions. Example: You can configure rules to roll out pay on-demand with pilot groups or limit access to nonexempt workers.
How do you manage time entries?
To calculate the pay on-demand amount that workers can request, Workday uses:
  • Approved time from Time Tracking.
  • Time data from external providers through payroll input. To ensure that Workday uses the most up-to-date data, you might need to load time more frequently. Then, delete inputs based on the batch ID.

Recommendations

For annual reporting accuracy, disable pay on-demand for pay periods crossing calendar years.

Requirements

For Payroll for Canada, to use same-day EFT payments, confirm that your organization's bank or outsourced payment provider supports them.
For Payroll for the U.S., to use same-day ACH payments, confirm that your organization's bank or outsourced payment provider supports them.

Limitations

For Payroll for Canada, Workday doesn't guarantee or certify federal, provincial, or local regulatory compliance through use of its software.
For Payroll for the U.S., Workday doesn't guarantee or certify federal, state, or local regulatory compliance through use of its software.
We provide tools that can help your institution meet its payroll needs. You're always responsible for determining whether Workday features are appropriate for your business needs and ensuring you're compliant with your regulatory obligations.
Workday doesn't support pay on-demand for:
  • Contract workers.
  • Garnishments.
  • International assignments.
  • Multiple work jurisdictions.
  • Supplemental earnings as eligible earnings.
  • Tax treaties.
  • Trailing payments.
When you enable a worker with a garnishment access to pay on-demand, it could result in that worker's garnishment not calculating correctly.
For Payroll for Canada, payslips don't display the number of hours worked for an on-demand payment, since the worker is taking an early payment of earned net advance wages.
For Payroll for the U.S., payslips don't display the number of hours worked for an on-demand payment, since the worker is taking an early payment of a lump sum portion of accumulated wages.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

Domain
Description
Report Execution
 in the Tenant Non-Configurable functional area.
Enables users to review amounts paid and recouped for pay on-demand requests.
Reports: Pay Calculation Results for Pay Group (Results) - USA
 in the USA Payroll functional area (USA).
Enables users to review withholding orders by workers.
Reports: Pay On-Demand
 in the Core Payroll functional area.
Enables users to access pay on-demand report fields and data sources.
Self-Service: My Pay Dashboard
 in the Core Payroll functional area.
Enables users to access the Pay dashboard through ESS. Each self-service task requires appropriate security access. Example: To view and print payslips, configure the
Self-Service: Payroll (My Payslips)
 domain in the Core Payroll functional area.
Self-Service: Pay On-Demand
 in the Core Payroll functional area.
Enables workers to request pay on-demand using ESS tasks.
Set Up: Pay On-Demand
 in the Core Payroll functional area.
Enables users to configure tasks for pay on-demand.
Set Up: Tenant Setup: Worklets
 in the System functional area.
Enables users to configure dashboards.
For Payroll for Canada, you can access the Pay On-Demand feature from the
Pay
 dashboard, but you can't configure it from the
Benefits and Pay Hub
.

Business Processes

You can configure the
Pay On-Demand
 business process to enable payroll administrators or workers to back out requests by adding the:
  • Cancel or rescind functionality on the business process.
  • Employee as Self
     security group to those actions on the business process security policy.
When you rescind a request, Workday:
  • Cancels the pay calculation and removes the pay result, enabling you to request what calculated in the result again.
  • Changes the status of other noncomplete pay results to
    Requires Re-Calculation
    .
  • Ignores the request in the maximum number of requests workers can submit.
You can add a conditional review step to the
Pay On-Demand
 business process to monitor unsupported requests, such as workers with garnishments.

Reporting

Reports or Dashboards
Considerations
Pay dashboard
When you configure it, workers can request pay on-demand on the ESS Pay dashboard.
Pay On-Demand Amounts Paid and Recouped
 report
Compare total amounts paid to total amounts recouped on workers' pay. Drill into each pay component for details about the payroll result, company, and associated worktags.
Pay On-Demand Request Count
 report
Review pay on-demand requests by workers, transaction statuses, and amounts.
View Pay On-Demand Rule
 report
Review all rules that you configure for pay on-demand.
USA Withholding Order Results for Workers
 report (USA)
Review withholding orders by workers to help you determine which workers you want to restrict from accessing pay on-demand tasks.
Withholding Orders for Worker
 report (CAN)
Review withholding orders by workers to help you determine which workers you want to restrict from accessing pay on-demand tasks.
You can use these report data sources in custom reports:
  • Pay On-Demand Requests
  • Payroll Result Line

Integrations

You can use external time data that you load through payroll input. Workday recommends that you review the integration frequency and delete existing pay inputs through batch ID to avoid double-counting hours or amounts.

Connections and Touchpoints

Touchpoints
Considerations
Accounting
For Payroll for the U.S., when you configure pay on-demand as:
  • A direct expense, you can charge the gross, employer taxes, and fringe to the worker’s standard costing assignments. The pay on-demand payments completed in a pay period reduce the associated on-cycle gross.
  • An advance, the gross becomes a receivable. You can charge the gross, employer taxes, and fringe to the worker’s standard costing assignments. The associated on-cycle gross reverses the receivable.
For Payroll for Canada, when you configure pay on-demand as an advance, the net becomes a receivable. You can charge the net to the worker’s standard costing assignments. The associated on-cycle net reverses the receivable.
Arrears
Workday reduces the available amount that workers can request in the current period when there are recouped arrears. To ensure an accurate available amount, Workday recommends that you configure deductions that go into arrears as eligible deductions for pay on-demand.
Period schedules
You can configure existing period schedules for pay on-demand to define the:
  • Dates that workers can request early payment.
  • Auto-adjust function for weekends to apply to the payment date.
You can configure accounting for your pay on-demand earning and pay on-demand offset deduction either as a direct expense or a payroll advance.
Proration
Workday prorates accumulated wages based on proration defined on the earning or deduction.
Time Tracking
You can associate time calculation tags with earnings, enabling you to use approved time blocks as inputs when paying workers.
Workday Journeys
You can include information on pay on-demand in a Workday Journey to provide guidance to workers on financial wellbeing.
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.