Setup Considerations: Accounting and Worktags for Student Financials

Administrator Guide

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of accounting and worktags for Student Financials. It explains:

Why to set them up.

How they fit 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 They Are

Workday Student Financials record financial transactions at your institution, documenting the flow of money into various ledger accounts. You can group student charge transactions to consolidate operational journals.

Setup for student financials accounting includes these major components:

Ledger accounts store related operational journals.

Account posting rules direct operational journals to specified ledger accounts.

Worktags are keywords that you can assign to financial transactions for reporting purposes. These keywords then display on your operational journals.

Example: At many institutions, the finance office sets up the accounting structure and worktags for the finances of the institution. The office of the bursar works with the finance office to configure the correct worktags, revenue categories, and spend categories on student transactions. This topic provides guidance on using existing accounting configurations to accommodate student financials transactions.

Business Benefits

Accounting gives you visibility into the finances of your institution, enabling you to:

Provide financial statements to your stakeholders.

Use the data to make financial decisions for your institution.

Effectively aggregate accounting data to improve performance while maintaining accuracy in your financial records.

Rather than configuring and maintaining additional ledger accounts, you can use worktags for reporting while using the same ledger account.

Set up accounting structures and worktags to manage Workday Student Financials.

Use Cases

Worktags enable:

A dean to consider revenue when deciding whether a program of study should continue.

The finance office to analyze expenses for each academic unit, and forecast budgets for the upcoming academic year.

The financial aid office to evaluate how many institutional scholarships and waivers each department is disbursing to its students.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
Where do you want to post student transactions?	To post student transactions to a company, associate the company to an academic unit. If you want to post: All student transactions to the same company, you can associate the company to the academic unit (AU). All subordinate AUs automatically inherit the company. Transactions for certain institutions to a different company, you must assign that company directly to the AU. Example: You can generate financial statements for a medical school by assigning the AU to a separate company. Transactions to companies that aren't associated with an institution, assign that company to the institution. Example: Your institution is affiliated with a hospital represented by a company in Workday, but not associated with an AU. You can also override: Revenue companies for student charge items. Spend companies for student award items and student waiver items.
Which ledger accounts do you want to see on financial statements?	Consult with your finance office to determine the ledger accounts to use for student transactions. Most institutions use separate ledger accounts for their student financial transactions and their overall financial transactions for the institution. Example: Store student transactions in the Student Accounts Receivable account instead of the general Accounts Receivable account.
Which worktags do you need for student transactions?	Review with your finance office to determine the appropriate worktags for student transactions. Consider: The insights you want to display. The worktags to use in place of granular ledger accounts. Whether you need worktags at all. Example: You want to report on tuition by academic period. Your institution has a single Tuition ledger account instead of separate ledger accounts for each academic period type. Add an Academic Period worktag to tuition charge items. When you report on tuition, you can drill into the account totals for the Tuition ledger account to view data by academic periods.
Where do you need to define default worktag values?	Workday populates default worktag values for student transactions. You can change the values for ad hoc transactions that you manually process, but not for transactions that Workday automatically processes. When your tenant uses worktag balancing, Workday recommends that you: Define a default value for the balancing worktag on student charges, student waivers, student awards, and student sponsor contracts. Consider making the balancing worktag required on student transactions.

Recommendations

Collaborate with:

Your finance office to understand their expectations for student financial transactions. They can advise you on the worktags and spend categories that enable account posting rules to route student transactions to the correct ledger accounts. When you’ve integrated a legacy student financial system with Workday Financial Management, you might have configurations in Workday Financial Management intended to support the legacy system. These configurations might not be necessary, and might even interfere with Workday Student Financials. Consult with your finance office to identify configurations that you no longer need and should remove. Example: You used the Revenue
account posting rule to route student transactions. You can now use the Student Revenue
account posting rule instead.

Your financial aid office to configure worktags and spend categories for student award items.

Requirements

Workday requires companies associated to all academic units for student financial transaction processing.

Limitations

Workday doesn't:

Effective date your worktag configurations.

Prevent you from changing worktags for an item after associated transactions exist. When you change a worktag on an item and adjust an associated transaction, Workday applies different accounting worktags for the adjustment and the original transaction.

Workday recommends that you:

Ensure that your worktag configurations are correct before processing transactions.

Don't change worktag configurations after transactions exist.

Tenant Setup

Tenant Setup Options	Considerations
Worktag Balancing	You can configure worktag balancing for your tenant. Worktag balancing assigns the required balancing worktag to the offset side of journals for all financial transactions that use balancing rules. Most institutions use Fund as the primary balancing worktag. When your tenant uses worktag balancing, you must: Configure worktag balancing before creating any transactions in Workday Student Financials. Define a default balancing worktag for excess student payments, because excess student payments don't inherit balancing worktags from associated transactions. Once you enable worktag balancing, you can't disable it.
Period Close Activity Groups	Group student transactions so that you can close them without closing an entire ledger period. See Concept: Ledger Close Activity Groups.
Group Student Transaction Journal Lines	Select this check box on the Edit Tenant Setup - Student task to group student charge transactions to consolidate operational journals. This aggregates individual student receivable journal lines created by the same job run into a single journal, and also aggregates related intercompany and interworktag journal lines. Once you enable this functionality, you can disable it later, but it won’t cancel or reverse journals for charges that Workday has already grouped. You might need to create some journal entries manually.

Security

Domains	Considerations
Set Up: Academic Structure in the Academic Foundation functional area. Set Up: Academic Units in the Academic Faculty functional area.	Enables you to associate companies to academic units.
Set Up: Enable Worktags in these functional areas: Common Financial Management Worktags	Enables you to configure the worktags and related worktags that are available for student transaction items.
Manage: Student Sponsor Contracts Processing in the Student Financials functional area. Set Up: Student Award Items in the Financial Aid functional area. Set Up: Student Charges in the Student Financials functional area. Set Up: Student Waivers in the Student Financials functional area.	Enables you to configure revenue categories, spend categories, worktags, and related worktags for student transactions.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

Reports or Dashboards	Considerations
Maintain Related Worktag Usage	Configure the worktag types that are available or required for student transactions, such as student charges or student awards.
Maintain Worktag Usage	Configure the primary and additional worktag types that are available or required for student transactions. These worktag types can include student charges or student awards.
View Account Posting Rule Set	Configure account posting rules for student transactions.
Worktag Types for Taggables	View the types of worktags that you can configure for student transactions.

Integrations

No impact.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features	Considerations
Workday Financial Management	Configures companies, accounting structures, and worktags in Workday Financial Management.
Workday Financial Aid	Financial aid administrators must configure accounting details for student award items.

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.