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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-09-19
Set Up Retro Costing for Payroll Accounting

Set Up Retro Costing for Payroll Accounting

Security:
Set Up: Payroll (Calculations - Payroll Specific)
 domain in the Core Payroll functional area.
You can automatically update retro result lines to reflect the costing rules, budget date, and payroll attributes of a retro pay period instead of the current period.
You can select earnings to exclude from retro costing when you want to keep the costing as the current period.
You can configure retro pay amounts to charge either over or under a salary cap grant when you run retro payroll calculations, reducing the number of payroll accounting adjustments you need to run and improving the accuracy of your billing. You can configure retro lines specific to salary cap grants to cost fully over or under the cap for certain job families, job family groups, and job profiles.
  1. Access the
    Maintain Payroll Accounting Options
     task.
  2. Select the
    Enable Retroactive Costing
     check box.
  3. (Optional) From the
    Earnings to Exclude from Retro Costing
     prompt, select 1 or more earnings to exclude from the calculation.
When you run the
Run Retro Pay Calculation
 task, Workday pulls in all incomplete retro events. When you complete the next pay calculation, Workday automatically updates retro result lines to reflect your costing rules.
Retroactive Costing
In July, a worker receives a bonus pay of 1,000 that is retroactive to January. Their cost center in January was CC100. In March, they moved to a different department and their cost center changed to CC500. When you select the
Enable Retroactive Costing
 check box and run a retro pay calculation for the bonus pay, Workday applies the costing from the retro pay period instead of the current period, which is July. Their bonus is charged to cost center CC100.