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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-12-12
Setup Considerations: Salary Over the Cap (USA)

Setup Considerations: Salary Over the Cap (USA)

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of salary over the cap. 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

Salary over the cap enables you to define rules to set up salary caps so that payroll expenses don't exceed limitations for the salaries of workers with grants.

Business Benefits

Salary over the cap helps you:
  • Comply with regulatory and reporting requirements.
  • Track federal funding allocated for research.
  • Calculate under and over the salary for a grant.
  • Configure costing rules for salary exceeding the cap amount.

Use Cases

Salary over the cap is used by universities, hospitals, or specialized agencies that receive funding from the federal government or a sponsor to do research work. Example: National Institute of Health (NIH) provides funding for stem cell research with annual salary cap amount of $240,000 to the Global Modern University.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
How can you set up worktags for salary over the cap costing?
You can use the
Maintain Salary Over the Cap Type
report to add specific
Salary Over the Cap Type
worktags. Workday includes the salary over the cap type worktags while evaluating over the cap amount, for the worker whose salary exceeds the cap.
How do you define salary caps?
You can use the
Maintain Salary Caps
task to define:
  • Salary cap amounts
  • Specific earnings for pay component group.
  • Salary cap intervals.
How do you configure alternate salary over the cap costing?
You can use the
Assign Costing Allocation
task to set up costing rules for salary exceeding the cap amount, including allocating the over the cap portion of a worker's salary to grant worktags other than the parent grant.

Recommendations

Workday recommends that you don't make changes if you've already assigned the salary cap to an award line and payroll exists.

Requirements

You must:
  • Set up an award with a sponsor salary cap in Workday Grants Management, to be able to configure salary over cap costing in Workday Payroll.
  • Enable salary over the cap for payroll accounting to be able to set up the salary over the cap feature for payroll commitments.

Limitations

You can't make payroll accounting adjustments for salary over the cap costing.

Tenant Setup

You can use the
Maintain Payroll Accounting Options
task to enable:
  • Salary over the cap for payroll accounting and commitments.
  • Using the number of work periods in the academic year to calculate the salary over the cap amount for a pay period. Workday recommends selecting the check box when you use specialized configurations of academic pay using both an:
    • Earning for the annual work period.
    • Offset earning for the accrual payment.

Security

Domains
Considerations
Set Up: Salary Cap
in the Core Payroll functional area.
Enables access to the:
  • Maintain Salary Over the Cap Type
    report.
  • Maintain Salary Caps
    task.
Set Up: Tenant Setup - Payroll
in the System functional area.
Enables access to the
Edit Tenant Setup - Payroll
task.
Set Up: Payroll (Calculations - Payroll Specific)
Enables access to the
Maintain Payroll Accounting Options
task.

Business Processes

You can configure the
Assign Costing Allocation
business process to assign alternate costing rules for salary caps.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
Salary Over the Cap Audit Report
Verify if the salary over the cap calculation for a worker needs review.
This report currently doesn't support the
Salary Over the Cap - Allow Grant Worktags in Suballocations
tenant setting. When you enable this setting, values on the
Salary Over Cap Pay Amount for Grant with a Salary Cap
column report incorrectly.
Retro Journal Lines with Salary Cap Grants
Identify retro period journal lines associated with grants using the Salary Over the Cap feature and determine if the amounts charged over or under the salary cap.

Integrations

No impact.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features
Considerations
Grants Management
You need a separate Grants Management license to be able to create and use awards in Workday. If you have Grants Management with Payroll Accounting, you can:
  • Create salary caps.
  • Assign the salary cap to an award line with a grant before you configure payroll costing allocations.
Effort Certification
When a payroll journal line displays a Salary Over the Cap worktag, the worktag displays for effort certification. Salary Over the Cap Type is a payroll worktag; you can't change it.
Payroll Commitments
When you enable salary over the cap for payroll commitments, Workday calculates costing and standard salary cap proration for these payroll commitment transactions:
  • Initial commitments
  • Commitment adjustments
  • Liquidations
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.