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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2026-03-13
Steps: Set Up Student Financials

Steps: Set Up Student Financials

You must:
  • Set up academic foundation. See Steps: Set Up Academic Foundation.
  • Be live on Workday Financial Management or go live concurrently with Workday Financial Management.
The Student Financials functional area in Workday Student enables you to manage:
  • Student charges
  • Payments from students
  • Sponsor contracts
  • Waivers
  • Refunds
  1. Configure business processes and their security policies in the Student Financials functional area.
  2. Set up financial accounting structure.
  3. Access the
    Edit Academic Unit
     task and associate companies with academic units.
  4. Set up worktag balancing.
    Consider the worktag you want to define as your primary balancing worktag. Once you define the primary balancing worktag, you can't change it, but you can change optional balancing worktags at any time.
  5. Configure related worktags that administrators can select on student financial setup objects. At minimum, consider selecting your primary and optional balancing worktags.
  6. (Optional) Enable journal aggregation for student charges.
    Access the
    Edit Tenant Setup - Student
     task and select the
    Group Student Transaction Journal Lines
     check box to group student charge transactions into a single journal.
    Security: Set Up: Tenant Setup - Student domain in the System functional area.
  7. Configure worktags that users can select on student financial transactions.
  8. You can use spend categories and revenue categories when configuring account posting rules. Waiver items and some award items require a spend category. Charge items require a revenue category.
  9. Set up settlement.
    On the
    Maintain Payment Types
     task, you can map third-party credit card payments for student payments to a payment method of
    Credit Card
    . This ability differs from third-party credit card payments in Workday Financial Management, which must map to a payment method of
    Manual
    . If you'd like to map student credit card payments to
    Credit Card
     instead of
    Manual
    , consider configuring a separate payment type for student credit card payments.
  10. Set up payment election rules for student payments and refunds.
  11. Set up student charge items.
  12. Set up student payments.
  14. Access the
    Configure Disbursement Eligibility Condition Policy
     task.
    If you're using a third-party financial aid vendor, bypass Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) checks so that Workday can disburse and refund students for federal student aid awards. You are responsible for ensuring that the awards you import into Workday are eligible to disburse and refund.
    Security:
    Manage: Disbursement Processing
     domain in the Financial Aid functional area.
  15. Set up student self-service in the Student Financials functional area.
  16. Set up third-party access to student accounts.
    You can enable third-party users to make payments for students, view their account activity, and view student statements.