Setup Considerations: On-Cycle Payroll Processing
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of on-cycle payroll processing. 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
On-cycle payroll processing enables you to calculate payroll for your workers on a regular, recurring cycle.
Business Benefits
- Calculate payroll when it's convenient for you. You can process payroll:
- Manually.
- At scheduled times.
- Continuously in the background.
- Recalculate payroll as often as needed to update payroll results.
- Cancel or reverse pay results.Payroll for Ireland doesn't support payment reversals.
- Make corrections without needing to cancel the calculation.
- Calculate payroll for all workers, a subset of workers, or a single worker, and put a worker's pay on hold.
- Maximize efficiency and performance with the smart calculation option, which only includes workers with a pay-impacting event since the last calculation.
- Improve accuracy by using the continuous calculation feature, which calculates payroll as pay-impacting events occur.
Use Cases
- Manually or automatically open a new pay period for a pay group by running a full calculation.
- Recalculate payroll for a worker after adding pay input or making other changes that affect pay.
- Cancel pay results for all workers when you need to make a configuration change. Example: Correct the payment date.
- Put a worker's pay result on hold to prevent payment temporarily while you troubleshoot issues.
Questions to Consider
Question | Considerations |
|---|---|
Do you want updated payroll results continually throughout the pay period? | If yes, consider enabling the continuous payroll calculation feature. This feature automates payroll calculations, continuously updating pay results as events occur. You can pause continuous calculation when you want to perform period-end audits. |
When do you want to process payroll? | Processing payroll is a calculation-intensive process that can affect the performance of other jobs. If you initiate payroll calculations manually, you can schedule the job to run after hours, either once or on a recurring basis. |
What payments other than salary do you need to pay on a defined schedule? | When you have payments that fall outside of the regular payroll schedule, you can create off-cycle payments. When the payments occur on a recurring basis, you can set up separate nonregular run categories for recurring payments (Example: Bonuses). |
Recommendations
Ensure that you set up period schedules correctly before running your first payroll. Once you start live payroll processing, changes are more difficult.
Don't run more than 1 processing task for a pay group at the same time. Running concurrent tasks in multiple browser tabs increases the risk of data corruption. Example: Don't cancel an individual worker's payroll result while a payroll calculation is running.
When you calculate payroll, you can reduce processing time by only updating accounting for the workers processed. When you're ready to complete payroll, Workday recommends that you update accounting for all workers.
To help ensure data accuracy, don't abort payroll processing tasks. If you mistakenly/erroneously start a task, let it finish. Then:
- For calculated results, use theRun Pay Canceltask to cancel the pay results and reset the workers' status toNot Yet Started.
- For completed results, use theCancel Pay Completetask to set all pay results back toIn Progressstatus.
Before you complete regular payroll for the period:
- Review and verify all data generated by the payroll calculation (Examples: Payroll accounting entries, regulatory reporting data). Correct any data as needed and rerun the calculation.
- Calculate and complete any retroactive pay differences for the pay group. This pulls the retro differences into the current period and includes them in the current pay result.
To run smart calculation efficiently:
- Run a full calculation at the beginning of the processing period.
- Run a full calculation at the end of the processing period before youRun Pay Complete. A full calculation captures any configuration changes that have an effective date within the period being processed.
- Schedule a nightly smart calculation run to process any pay results that have a pay-impacting event.
- Wait until after an integration has completed to run smart calculation.
Requirements
Before you can complete payroll for a pay period, you must complete any on-demand additional and replacement payments.
Before you can open a new pay period:
- Complete all pay results for a pay group.
- Resolve any pay results that are inErrorstatus.
- Cancel or complete any pay results that areOn Hold.
Limitations
The smart calculation and continuous payroll calculation features detect employee-level events, such as a pay raise or benefits election change. They don't detect configuration changes, like changes to an earning that applies to all workers or changes to state tax rates.
Tenant Setup
To enable continuous payroll calculation for all regular run categories, use the
Edit Tenant Setup - Payroll
task. Security
Configure these domains in the Core Payroll functional area:
Domains | Considerations |
|---|---|
Process: Run Batch Calculations (Pay Calculation)
| Users secured to this domain can run and schedule payroll calculations. |
Process: Run Batch Cancel (Pay Cancel)
| Users secured to this domain can cancel a payroll calculation for a pay group or pay run group. |
Process: Run Batch Complete (Pay Complete)
| Users secured to this domain can complete payroll for a period. |
Process: Off-Cycle (Reversal)
| Users secured to this domain can reverse a payment to a worker.
Payroll for Ireland doesn't support payment reversals. |
Process: Run Batch Cancel Complete
| Users secured to this domain can cancel a completed on-cycle payroll. |
| Users secured to these domains can complete the associated action from the Related Actions menu on a worker's pay result. |
You can set up an unconstrained role to enable a payroll administrator to view and modify data for all pay groups in all payroll countries. You can set up a constrained role that enables payroll partners to view and modify data only for specified pay groups.
Business Processes
You can configure the
Pay Cycle Event
business process as a to-do list of the required steps in payroll processing. Using this business process can also help you delegate tasks and ensure accountability when multiple users perform different steps in the process. Reporting
Reports or Dashboards | Considerations |
|---|---|
Audit - Pay Calculation Results for a Period
| Helps you to identify unusual pay results to check for possible errors. |
Pay Calculation Results for Group of Workers
| Find payroll results for workers in a pay group or pay run group. |
Pay Cycle Command Center
| Access common tasks used to process payroll. |
Pay Input Not Processed
| Find pay inputs for a period that the payroll calculation didn't process. |
Payroll Calculation Processing Report
| View and take these actions on on-cycle payroll results:
Example: A worker is on leave and returns in the middle of the pay period, resulting in multiple on-cycle pay results. If you click Hold for the worker that has multiple on-cycle pay results, all the on-cycle pay results will have a Hold status. |
Payroll Calculation Lines Processing Report
| View details of individual payroll result lines and their related calculations. You can also view, analyze, and create a detailed report on the selected payroll result lines. |
Payroll Pay Group Summary
| Use this report to view a high-level summary of workers, results, gross pay, and net pay based on the pay group details and periods you select. You can then use Drill-To Report Links from the results to access the Payroll Calculation Processing report. |
Payroll Pay Component Summary
| Use this report to view a high-level summary of workers, results, result lines, and result line amount for the pay components based on the pay group details and periods you select. You can then use the Drill-To Report Links from the result lines to access the Payroll Calculation Lines Processing report. |
When you create custom reports, use report data sources on 1 of these business objects:
- Payroll Resultsfor gross and net totals.
- Payroll Result Linesfor pay component-level detail.
For best performance, Workday recommends:
- Using indexed report data sources when possible.
- Avoiding report data sources on theWorkerbusiness object for payroll reporting.
Integrations
You can use the:
- Put Run Pay Calculationweb service to start a pay calculation.
- Get Run Pay Calculationweb service to retrieve the status of a calculation.
Connections and Touchpoints
Features | Considerations |
|---|---|
Absence balances | Workday frequently uses absence balances from Absence Management as part of payroll calculations. For optimal performance when calculating on-cycle payroll, Workday recommends manually scheduling the storage of absence balances based on your business needs. |
Payroll accounting | Workday automatically generates payroll accounting entries in your ledger as part of the calculation process. |