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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-02-21
Setup Considerations: Payroll Global Deployment

Setup Considerations: Payroll Global Deployment

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of payroll global deployment. 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

Workday provides payroll software for Australia, Canada, France, the UK, and the U.S.. For workers in other countries, you can use Workday third-party payroll connectors. These connectors provide templates for bidirectional integrations that bring third-party payroll data into and out of Workday for global reporting. You can use Workday to:
  • Help manage a current global deployment.
  • Prepare for future global growth.

Business Benefits

A global payroll deployment in Workday provides:
  • Flexibility to connect to different third-party payroll providers using integrations.
  • A unified global experience for both employees and administrators.
  • Localized experiences for workers, enabling them to use Workday in their local language. Workday delivers translations in over 30 languages.
  • Integrations that support complex payroll use cases, and detect and report changes to worker data that are relevant to payroll.
  • A hire-to-pay solution for employees that enables employees to see their HR and pay information, such as payslips and tax documents, in Workday.
  • An integration template that helps you reconcile worker data used in payroll processing between Workday and your third-party provider to ensure accurate payments for your workers.
  • A global view of external payroll results within Workday. Provides powerful insights, such as analytics on global labor costs. Helps you with your business decisions.

Use Cases

  • Use integration templates to integrate to global third-party payroll providers with Workday.
  • Your workers can view their payroll information, such as third-party payslips and year-end tax documents, directly in Workday. Help support a mobile workforce.
  • Gain a full view of your global workforce, such as employee salaries, benefits, and employer contributions. You can combine both Workday Payroll data and third-party payroll data in dashboards and reports.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
What countries do you need to support payroll for?
You can use Workday to manage payroll for:
  • Australia
  • Canada
  • France
  • Ireland
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
You can use a Workday certified partner to provide a global payroll solution for certified countries.
What countries might you need to support payroll for in the future?
Your Workday account executive can help you consider your options and preparation steps. Example: If you anticipate needing to support payroll for France, you'll need to set up establishments.
Where do you store your absence data?
Workday handles the absence and payroll relationship differently for different countries.
Examples:
  • For Payroll for Australia:
    • Use Absence Related Component Calculations (ACRCs) to configure time-off earnings.
    • Use the delivered Pay Component Group (PCG) to group together all hours that are paid or unpaid Leaves of Absence (LOA) and time offs. The PCG takes into account sub-periods caused by proration.
    • Configure time-off plans for each of the leave types except parental leave.
  • Payroll for Canada uses Leave of Absence (LOA) in the Record of Employment (ROE) configuration setup.
  • For Déclaration Sociale Nominative (DSN) in Payroll for France, you must configure absences to report in:
    • DSN block S21.G00.60 as time off or therapeutic part-time leave.
    • DSN block S21.G00.65 as other leaves of absence.
    For part-time therapeutic leave, configure:
    • Leaves of absence to represent the entire leave.
    • Time offs to represent when the worker isn't at work.
  • Payroll for the UK needs special consideration in terms of selecting time off versus LOA. Example: Workday recommends using a time off rather than a LOA for Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), because there are implications with cascading leaves.
    For UK statutory holiday pay, you must configure distinct absence occurrences as any changes made to these can impact payroll.
    For annual leave, if using Payroll for the UK, configure a time off with an absence occurrence. If using a third-party payroll, configure a time off.
    Configure LOAs for these UK absence types:
    • Statutory Adoption Pay
    • Statutory Maternity Pay
    • Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay
    • Statutory Paternity Pay
    • Statutory Shared Parental Pay
    • Unpaid Parental Leave
    Configure time offs for these UK absence types:
    • Compassionate Leave
    • Jury Duty
    • Statutory Sick Pay
    • Unpaid Time Off
  • Payroll for the U.S. uses Absence Calculation Related Calculations (ACRCs). Those calculations help pull in absence hours when calculating payroll earnings.
What is the currency elected for the worker or the company?
The default country selection determines the currency. When a worker is in a pay group with a currency that isn't equivalent to the worker's company currency, Workday converts the currency using the default exchange rate for display purposes. You can set the default exchange rate as of the period end date.
What third-party products do you need to integrate with?
Plan to work with vendors to set up and maintain those integrations, if required.
Which historical payroll data do you need from external systems?
To improve your payroll calculations, you can load historical payroll data from external systems. This data enables you to:
  • Include payroll history in quarter-to-date and year-to-date calculations.
    For Payroll for the UK, the tax year is from April 6th to April 5th of the next year.
    To calculate superannuation contributions, PAYG, and calculations that use the average normal gross, you may need to have data from the beginning of the tax year.
  • Apply limits and self-correcting logic to correct amounts when you start using Workday Payroll.
You can add or correct payroll history at any time. However adding or changing historical results for a worker can impact calculations and results that use historical balances.
For the UK:
  • Identify and load the worker's legacy payroll ID. After Workday generates their new Workday payroll ID, you can't go back and load the legacy ID. Without the legacy ID, HMRC might not be able to match the worker's details under the legacy ID with their new Workday payroll ID.
  • Consider what data that you want to load for features such as SSP and statutory holiday pay.
For more information, see Concept: What Payroll History to Load.
Do you have employees who work in multiple countries at the same time?
The amount of coverage Workday provides depends on the countries and roles involved in the type of international assignment.
Payroll for Canada and the U.S. support international assignment pay.
  • When a worker from another country is on international assignment in Canada, the UK, or the U.S., you can set up Workday Payroll to pay them in their host country. You can pay them either their entire pay or only selected expenses.
  • Payroll for Canada doesn't support Record of Employment (ROE) for international assignment pay. You'll need to issue ROEs for these workers directly through the Service Canada website.
Payroll for Australia and Payroll for France don't support multiple jobs and the Workday international assignment functionality. Payroll for France does support tax calculations and DSN reporting for nonresident workers and workers with an international assignment status.
When a worker from Canada, the UK, or the U.S. is on international assignment elsewhere, Workday provides support for international assignment and multiple jobs with third-party payroll connectors, such as:
  • Payroll Interface
  • Payroll Effective Change Interface
  • Worker Effective Change Interface
Consider whether the third-party payroll system that you're integrating with also supports international assignment and multiple jobs.
Do you have employees who travel internationally for work?
When a worker from another country is on international assignment in Canada, the UK, or the U.S., you can pay them in their host country using Payroll for either:
  • Their entire pay.
  • Only selected expenses, such as housing allowance. You continue to pay their base pay in their home country using third-party payroll.
What data do you want to collect?
Your data requirements might vary depending on the countries you need to support payroll for. Plan to create custom reports if required.
For Payroll for France, your Workday setup must contain the required data to avoid errors and missing data in DSN declarations.
For Payroll for the UK, your Workday setup must contain the required data to avoid errors and missing data, such as partner and dependent information for shared parental pay.
What do you need to customize for your employees at the country level?
You can configure Workday to create a global experience for your employees, by localizing the:
  • Language of the product at the country level.
  • Currency.
Are you implementing Payroll for France and another country?
Payroll for France recommends that you disable payslip viewing in self-service for all workers. As payslip self-service is a tenant-level setting, Workday recommends that you create an intersection security group for French employees.
What global analytics do you want to report on?
You can report on items such as the:
  • Number of employees paid.
  • Variants by pay group and employee.
  • Average cost per employer by pay group.
What payroll accounting categories do you need to set up?
When using Payroll for multiple countries, you can set up multiple charts of accounts, such as a primary and secondary. You might need to set up multiple charts of accounts because the standards for charts of accounts can differ by country, such as U.S. and France.
When do you need to audit your payroll?
You can review the payroll run results and the audit log. You can schedule the payroll audits and they're:
  • Date and time stamped.
  • Configurable.
How do you want to group your workers for payroll processing?
Set up a separate pay group for each country. Workday uses the country that you configure to determine the currency to use when processing the employee's payroll results. A pay run group can't include pay groups for multiple countries.
After you process payroll for a pay group, you can't change the country on the pay group. To change the country, you must create a new pay group.

Recommendations

When implementing across multiple countries, Workday recommends:
  • Naming objects with a standard naming convention based on country as well as using the country field when possible. This convention helps you easily identify and maintain different objects during implementation and production.
  • Use different period schedules for each country, when applicable. This configuration helps you avoid issues, such as when pay dates for different holidays don't align across countries.
  • Creating a separate run category for each country that you’re implementing to help you process each item. Most countries have country-specific pay accumulations and pay component groups.

Requirements

Configure company and worker data in Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) for each country.
For certain payroll calculations, you must provide data from within Workday or external integrations for these areas:
  • Absence.
    Payroll for the UK customers must use Workday Absence for UK statutory holiday pay, Statutory Sick Pay, and Statutory Parental Pay. Statutory Parental Pay includes:
    • Statutory Adoption Pay
    • Statutory Maternity Pay
    • Statutory Neonatal Care Pay
    • Statutory Parental Bereavement Pay
    • Statutory Paternity Pay
    • Statutory Shared Parental Pay
    Payroll for France customers must use Workday Absence for Déclaration Sociale Nominative (DSN) reporting.
    Payroll for Australia customers must use Workday Absence for Leave payments.
  • Benefits
    Payroll for the UK customers must use Workday Benefits for pension auto-enrolment.
    Payroll for France customers must use Workday Benefits to report health insurance and contingency fund contributions.
  • Compensation
    Payroll for Australia customers must use Compensation for Superannuation.
  • Time Tracking
Regardless of whether you use Financial Management in Workday, you must create and regularly maintain accounting configurations related to payroll transactions, including:
  • Account sets and account posting rules.
  • Fiscal schedules, posting intervals, and years.
  • Journal source mapping.
  • Types, account types, periods, and years for ledgers.
For the UK, use the same pay frequency when there are multiple run categories to avoid incorrect taxation due to conflicting period schedules.
For Canada, you might need to configure period schedules at least 53 weeks into the past. This configuration accommodates historical data loaded for Record of Employment (ROE) periods.
For France, you must set up a work schedule calendar for workers for DSN reporting.

Limitations

  • Workday doesn't report tax information directly to government organizations for:
    • Payroll for Canada.
    • Payroll for the U.S.
    • Countries supported through third-party payroll providers.
    Workday provides the necessary reports for you to do so manually.
  • While you can use Workday to help you meet payroll compliance, you must verify that your payroll is compliant with requirements for the regions in which you operate.
  • After you process payroll for a pay group, you can't change the country on the pay group. To change the country, you must create a new pay group.

Tenant Setup

On the
Edit Tenant Setup - Global
 task you can:
  • Set countries where you allow worker payment elections in Workday-supported and other countries. Payment election types include payroll and expense reimbursement pay types.
  • Create translations in Workday-supported and other languages. If you’re deploying Workday in multiple languages, you must create and maintain translations specific to your configuration and business data.
  • Manage personal data for workers, based on country.
On the
Edit Tenant Setup - HCM
 task, select
Multiple Jobs
 in the
Position Setup Options
 field if you plan to use multiple jobs for Canada and the U.S.
On the
Edit Tenant Setup - Payroll
 task, enable all Workday Payroll countries for which you’ve bought Workday Payroll.
On the
Edit Tenant Setup - System
 task, you can configure:
  • Local time zones at the tenant, location, and user levels.
  • The currencies available for selection, and maintain currency conversion rates.
  • Country-specific settings, locales, and languages to enable localization for countries to help you comply with local regulatory requirements.

Security

You can use:
  • Constrained, role-based security groups to provide payroll partners access only to the specific pay groups to which you assign them. Example: Payroll partners only see country information, such as a U.S. payroll partner not being able to view France pay group results.
  • User-based security groups to provide payroll administrators with access to all pay groups across organizations. Consider also using user-based security groups for calculation and settlement administrators to provide them with a system-wide access without enabling them to see employee-level payroll data. Example: Payroll administrators can see global information.
To view the different security domains for payroll, access the
Domain Security Policies for Functional Area
 report and select a payroll functional area. Workday recommends that you identify and grant the minimum level of security that a worker needs.
Functional Areas
Considerations
Core Payroll
Security domains in this functional area enable users to configure and use basic payroll features that are common to all countries, such as:
  • Accumulations.
  • Balances.
  • Deductions.
  • Earnings.
  • Payment elections.
  • Payroll input.
  • Payroll processes.
  • Settlement.
AUS Payroll
Security domains in this functional area enable users to configure and use features specific to Australian Payroll, such as:
  • Mapping leave types to leave pay.
  • Mapping termination reasons to Australian Taxation Office (ATO) cessation types.
  • Superannuation configuration.
  • SuperStream.
  • Company tax configuration.
  • Processing Single Touch Payroll (STP) reports.
  • Worker tax data.
  • Withholding orders.
CAN Payroll
Security domains in this functional area enable users to configure and use features specific to Canadian Payroll, such as:
  • Record of employment (ROE) reporting.
  • Tax authorities.
  • Withholding orders.
  • Worker tax data.
  • Year-end forms.
FRA Payroll
Security domains in this functional area enable users to configure and use features specific to French Payroll, such as:
  • Advances.
  • Company and establishment tax data.
  • Declaration Sociale Nominative (DSN) reporting.
  • Employee and Employer deduction data.
  • Loans.
  • Obligation d’Emploi des Travailleurs Handicapés (OETH) reporting.
  • Withholding orders.
  • Worker tax data.
  • Bordereau de Paiement pour le versement des Indemnités Journalières (BPIJ).
IRL Payroll
Security domains in this functional area enable users to configure and use features specific to Irish Payroll, such as:
  • Company tax data.
  • Employer tax reporting.
  • Pension auto-enrolment.
  • Worker tax data (LPT, PAYE, USC).
UK Payroll
Security domains in this functional area enable users to configure and use features specific to Payroll for the UK, such as:
  • Company car.
  • Company tax data.
  • Court order deductions.
  • Employer tax reporting (RTI).
  • Holiday pay.
  • IR35.
  • National insurance.
  • Pension auto-enrolment.
  • Postgraduate loans.
  • Statutory payments associated with birth, adoption, or sickness.
  • Student loans.
  • Worker tax data (P45, P60).
U.S. Payroll
Security domains in this functional area enable users to configure and use features specific to Payroll for the U.S., Puerto Rico, Guam, and Virgin Islands. Example:
  • Company tax data.
  • Payroll commitments.
  • Withholding orders.
  • Worker tax data.
  • W-2, W-2R, W-2GU, and W-2VI boxes and employee forms.
Third-Party Payroll Integration
These security domains in the Integration functional area enable you to create and launch third-party payroll integrations:
  • Integration Build
  • Integration Configure
  • Integration Debug

Business Processes

You can use the
Event-Driven Integration for Third-Party Payroll
 integration service with the
Payroll Effective Change Interface
 integration (PECI).

Reporting

Reports or Dashboards
Considerations
Global Labor Cost Analysis
Enables you to review year-to-date labor cost analysis on third-party payroll results.
View Global Payroll Results
Global Payroll Results Number of Employees by Pay Group
Global Payroll Results Average Cost for Pay Component
Global Payroll Results Variant by Pay Component
Global Payroll Results Variant by Worker
Workday provides reports that give you different views of your global payroll results. Once you set them up, you can:
  • Review payroll results from both Workday and your third-party payroll vendors.
  • Analyze comprehensive payroll data to help you understand your global payroll costs.
Set up global payroll reporting groups to use the reports.
You can add these reports as worklets to the
Pay Cycle Command Center
 dashboard.
View Global Payroll Reconciliation Results
All Global Payroll Reconciliation Items
My Assigned Global Payroll Reconciliation Items
You can use these reports to reconcile payroll results in Workday and in your third-party payroll system.
Workers Sent to Third Party Payroll
Worker Changes Sent to Third Party Payroll
Third-Party Payroll Errors by Severity
You can use these reports to review global payroll integration processing. You can add these reports as worklets on a new tab on the
Pay Cycle Command Center
 dashboard.
Pay Cycle Command Center
 Dashboard
You can review and manage payroll data for a single or multiple pay periods at a time.
Payroll Compliance Updates
 Dashboard
Gives you quick visual insight into the compliance-related updates that are most important to you. You can quickly identify whether a compliance-related update potentially impacts your employees and take appropriate action. Example: Alerting employees, spot-checking payroll results, or being ready to answer questions.
Global Library
Displays sample configurations and common compliance requirements. You can use this report when adding on another Workday product area or expanding into new countries or regions. The report is a preconfigured profile of 2 types of configurations:
  • Workday delivered and maintained statutory guidance configurations. Example: State minimum wages, tax calculations, withholding and court order data, address and name formats.
  • Sample configurations. On the sample configuration tabs, you'll see a description of how to implement them.
You can also add this report as a menu item to the
Pay Cycle Command Center
 and
Payroll Compliance Updates
 dashboards.
Tenant Analyzer
 Dashboard
Enables you to verify your tenant configuration against Workday recommendations, for Workday:
  • Absence
  • Financials
  • HCM
  • Payroll
  • Time Tracking
All Supported Payroll Retro Transaction Types
Workday doesn't support all retroactive changes for Australia, Canada, France, the UK, or the U.S.
You can use the report to view the supported retroactive changes by country.

Integrations

Integrations
Considerations
Payroll Effective Change Interface (PECI)
Full-stack integration, which transmits payroll changes for workers and includes the effective date and data entry date for each change. Enables you to load third-party payroll data into and out of Workday. You can configure the integration to suit your needs.
Within PECI, you can use the:
  • Event-Driven Integration for Third-Party Payroll
     integration service.
  • Payroll Interface Integration Command Center
    .
Worker Effective Change Interface (WECI)
Enables you to load worker data, including time off and LOA. You can configure the integration to suit your needs.
Payroll Interface
Enables you to load third-party payroll data into and out of Workday, such as payroll organizations that have different:
  • Pay frequencies.
  • Earnings and deductions.
  • External processing requirements.
You can configure the integration to suit your needs.
For Payroll for Australia, enables you to use:
  • Single Touch Payroll (STP).
  • SuperStream.
Global Payroll Reconciliation
Requires the
Payroll Effective Change Interface (PECI)
 integration. Enables you to compare payroll data in Workday with data in your third-party payroll system and provides options for reconciliation.
External Payroll Results Inbound
The integration imports payroll data from an external payroll system into Workday.
External Payroll Documents
Enables you to upload externally generated payroll documents into Workday, such as:
  • Externally generated payslips.
  • External tax documents. Example: To import Canadian tax documents into Workday, create a T4 external payroll document type.
  • Other payroll documents. Example: A garnishment letter that you received for an employee.
Import External Payslips
Enables you to retrieve external payslip files for pay groups and import the files into Workday.
Government Integrations
Australia: Australian Taxation Office - STP
Canada:
  • Annual Tax Filing - CRA (T4)
  • Annual Tax Filing - CRA (T4A)
  • Annual Tax Filing - CRA (NR4)
  • Annual Tax Filing - RQA (RL -1)
  • Annual Tax Filing - RQA (RL -2)
  • Service Canada ROE Outbound
  • Service Canada ROE Inbound
France:
  • DSN Deposit (Machine to Machine)
  • DSN Polling (Machine to Machine)
  • BPIJ Integration (Machine to Machine)
Ireland:
  • IRL Incoming Notifications
  • IRL Payroll Submission
United Kingdom:
  • HMRC Incoming Notifications
  • HMRC Real Time Information - Earlier Year Update
  • HMRC Real Time Information - Employer Payment Summary
  • HMRC Real Time Information
United States:
  • Electronic Income Withholding Order Inbound
    Electronic Income Withholding Order Outbound

Connections and Touchpoints

Touchpoint
Considerations
Pay Run Groups
When you calculate payroll or run reports, you can select the pay run group instead of the individual pay groups.
A pay run group can't include pay groups for multiple countries.
Payroll administrators have access to all pay run groups. However, payroll partners can only process and report on a pay run group if you assign them to all of its pay groups.
Payslips
For each country, you need to maintain payroll payslip configuration. You can include up to 7 configurable sections on employee payslips. Workday automatically includes sections for:
  • Employee information.
  • Pay period dates.
If you have a license to use Workday Payroll in more than 1 country, define a separate payslip configuration for each country. Make sure that payslips meet the consolidated requirements of all regions.
For Payroll for France, Workday provides a standard layout that you can use.
For Payroll for Australia, Workday provides a standard layout that you can use which includes superannuation information by default.
Gross-Up Earnings
When you have Workday Payroll enabled for multiple countries, you can only select a single country for a gross-up earning. Create an earning per country.
Payroll for Australia doesn't support gross-ups.
Workday Human Capital Management (HCM)
Period schedules for all countries.
Multiple employment or multiple jobs. Workday recommends you configure your tenant for additional jobs if you need support for multiple jobs now or in the future.
There's some worker data collection in France that the government prohibits, such as ethnicity. You might need to set that data up for global deployment.
For France, you must set up establishments as a sub category of a company.
Workday Financial Management
Set up travel profiles, define payment election options, maintain payment elections, set up company tax IDs, set up expenses, and create project billing rate sheets.
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.

Other Impacts

No impact.