Workday Reporting for Finance

Overview

Objectives

Build an advanced report using the Journal Lines data source.
Define business objects and data sources specific to financial reporting.
Access delivered financial reports.
Create custom reporting time periods.
Build a matrix operational report using a custom reporting time period.

Workday Reporting Concepts Review

Reports in Workday
Workday Standard Reports
Report Types
Reporting Terminology

Reports in Workday

Reports in Workday are designed for the functional user and have an easy-to-use, consumer-friendly interface. Reports are built into the application, which allows users to act on the report output directly from the user interface. Because they are built in and not bolted on, reports in Workday also use your security configuration, which allows you to access real-time, relevant data.

You can build custom reports using the Report Writer tool. You can embed reports in your business process transactions to provide relevant data to make decisions. You can also enable reports as worklets and display them on dashboards. In addition, you can use scorecards to display a snapshot of important metrics for a specific organization over a particular period. These metrics are sometimes called KPIs (or key performance indicators).

You can use reports in outbound integrations (Reporting-as-a-Service) and access them from mobile devices.

Workday allows you to associate layouts with your custom reports, which it uses to generate PDF files. In Workday, these designs are known as business form layouts. You can define a business form layout using the Report Designer (BIRT) tool in Workday Studio.

You can use PRISM to analyze data from both Workday and external sources.

Workday helps you automate your Excel processing and formatting when exporting a Workday custom report. Excel templates reduce the time and effort needed to deliver Excel workbooks based on Workday custom reports, particularly when you export a report regularly and reformat the data in Excel. This feature supports any macros, calculations, and formatting you define in the associated workbook template.

Reporting Terminology

Before you view or create financial reports in Workday, review the key terms and report components you will use.

Business Object

Workday stores data in business objects, which you can think of as database tables or worksheets in Excel. Just as a database table or worksheet has columns and rows, a Workday business object has fields and instances.

A primary business object (PBO) is the main business object for the report. It holds the data that will be displayed in your report. A related business object (RBO) is the object that is associated with the PBO. RBOs can have a one-to-one or one-to-many relationship with PBOs. A field on the PBO links the two business objects together.

Data Source

The report data source (RDS) provides a view into the primary business object (PBO). You can think of the data source as the starting filter for reporting on the given PBO. Choosing your data source is the first and most important step in developing a custom report.

Class Report Field

When working with Workday custom reports, you can select available fields called class report fields (CRFs). These fields can be Workday-delivered fields, calculated fields, or custom fields.

Class report fields can be simple types or object types. Simple types are not actionable and appear as black text. Object types are actionable and appear as blue text. Security controls access to class report fields.

The following table shows the field type icons and their definitions.

Icon	Definition
	Text - Represents a simple text field, such as First Name.
	Rich Text - Represents a rich text field, such as Overall Comment - Manager.
	Numeric - Represents a numeric field, such as Employee Count.
	Currency - Represents a currency field, such as Base Pay.
	Date - Represents a date field, such as Hire Date.
	Time - Represents a time field, such as End Time.
	DateTimeZone - Represents a date and time (in a specific time zone) field, such as End Date/Time.
	Boolean - Represents a True/False field, such as Active Status.
	Single instance : Represents a one-to-one (1:1) relationship between two objects. For example, a Custom Report Definition can have only one Report Owner or one Created By Worker.
	Multi-instance : Represents a one-to-many (1:M) relationship between two objects. For example, one worker can have multiple dependents.
	Self-referencing instance : A reference back to itself. For example, a self-referencing instance of worker identifies the worker and allows you to drill into the details and access Related Actions.

Instance

Instances of a business object in Workday are like rows in a table or spreadsheet. Each instance represents a unique occurrence of that type of object, such as a given organization or worker.

Securing a Report

Configurable security allows you to provide Workday system users with access to reports, tasks, and business process steps. Users gain access to these securable items via membership in security groups, which are given permissions to domain and business process security policies. You might be familiar with the following picture, showing the components of the configurable security framework:

The Workday configurable security framework.

A security domain is a predefined set of related securable items that include reports, tasks, report fields, data sources, and data source filters. You cannot change the securable items that make up a domain.

Each domain has a domain security policy where you can add (or remove) security groups to give (or take away) access to secured items.

A security group is a collection of system users that have access to specific instances in Workday. Security groups are added to security policies to give members permissions to secured items in Workday, such as reports.

In this course, we will reference two types of security groups. The first is the report owner. When a user creates a custom report, they become the report owner. When the report owner selects the data source for the report that determines which domain the report is secured in. Ultimately this determines which security groups have access to that report.

The second security group is the group who controls all custom reports in the Workday tenant, the Report Administrator security group.

Using Report Tags

You can use report tags to easily categorize and find reports. When editing a custom report, you can create a new report tag by selecting Create Report Tag from the Report Tags field. When searching for a report tag name, all associated reports are displayed.

Use the "rdt" prefix to display only custom report definitions in the global search results.

Note

: To create report tags, a user must have access to the Report Tag Management security domain. When using report tags to find custom reports, users will only see reports of a given tag that are shared.

Advanced and Matrix Reports

Advanced Reports

Advanced reports display fields from primary business objects and related business objects with advanced design options. Advanced report types offer a lot of functionalities while being relatively easy reports to create.

Some advanced design options include:

Filtering
Subfiltering
Prompting
Sharing
Outlining

Advanced report results can display on charts and worklets with multiple headings and subtotals. Data from advanced reports can also be sorted and filtered.

Below is a list of common advanced reports for Workday Financial Management.

Report	Definition
Find Journals	This report lists all the journals for a selected company, year, and period.
Find Suppliers	This report allows you to find suppliers based on key supplier attributes, such as supplier name, ID, status, supplier category, supplier group, spend category, etc.
Find Customers	This report allows you to find customers based on key customer attributes, such as customer name, status, customer category, customer group, payment type, payment terms, parent customer, etc.
Find Payments	This report allows you to find payments based on key payment attributes, such as company, bank account, payment category, status, currency, payment dates, payment amount range, etc.

Components of an Advanced Report

After selecting your data source, you can begin to build the other components of your report.

Tab	Definition
Columns	The Column tab is where you select the fields to display on the output of your advanced report. The available fields depend on the business object for your advanced report.
Sort	The Sort tab is where you can set the sort order for data groups.
Filter	The Filter tab is where you can filter the data that displays on your report.
Subfilter	The Subfilter tab allows you to further define filters for your report.
Prompts	The Prompts tab is where you define what prompts the user will see at runtime. You can configure the default prompts for the business object selected. Use the Populate Undefined Prompt Defaults checkbox to populate prompt values.
Output	In the Output tab, you can set up output display options. This includes help text, output types, time series, and worklets.
Share	The Share tab has options to share your report.
Advanced	The Advanced tab has some advanced report options.

Sharing Reports

By default, custom reports are not shared. A custom report is visible only to its owner and users who have access to manage all custom reports.

The Share tab allows the report owner to share a custom report with authorized users. The domain securing the custom report's data source determines which security groups the report owner can share the custom report with.

You can share the report in different ways, such as:

With all users who have access to the report data source and data source filter.
With specific groups and users who have access to the report data source.

When you share a report with users, they can run the report but cannot edit the report. Only the report owner, and those who can manage all custom reports, can edit their own report.

For financial reporting purposes, sharing the report with all authorized users will generally be the best choice. To verify which security groups have the appropriate access to view the report, you must check the allowed security groups for the data source. The image below highlights the security groups for the Journal Lines for Financial Reporting data source.

Matrix Reports

Matrix reports provide the foundation for custom analytics and interactive reporting in Workday. This report type allows for grouping, aggregation, and interactive drilling across different dimensions, enabling the user to gain new insights into the data and act on the results.

Matrix results can be displayed as a table or chart that you can drill into, enabling you to perform custom analytics and interactive reporting across dimensions.

Matrix reports are similar, but not identical to, pivot tables and crosstabs. You can group data by column or row and configure cells to display summary values where groupings intersect.

You can use matrix reports to:

Explore data relationships to identify correlations.
Identify patterns that could predict future behavior.
Locate anomalies and exceptions and determine their cause.
Show data in charts and graphs to find specific quantities and relationships.
Validate assumptions about how your organization behaves.

Using Worktags for Filtering

Worktags are a key aspect of financial reporting. They classify transactions and supporting data to make their business purposes clear. For financial reporting, they provide a simple method for accessing information, filtering searches to focus results, and analyzing data in aggregated and summarized reports. You can assign worktags to any line item that generates a financial update.

Resource

: Workday delivers many worktag types that you can use to tag your business transactions and supporting data. You can search Workday Community for "worktag types" to see a list of delivered worktag types.

In the screenshot, each expense report line includes worktags that you can use to access and filter the data in a report. This expense report line contains worktags for Cost Center and Region, as well as several other worktags.

You can create a report that filters on worktag values. In the following screenshot, the report filters the data to show only worktags that contain the cost center 71200 Field Sales - North America.

Financial Reporting Business Objects

Choosing a Data Source

Reporting Periods

Delivered Reporting Time Periods

You can review a list of Workday-delivered reporting time periods using the

View Reporting Time Period (Workday Owned)

report. The resulting report displays a definition of the selected reporting time period.

Lookup Date Rollup Calculated Field

The Lookup Date Rollup calculated field aggregates, groups, or summarizes data for a time period, fiscal schedule, or weekly schedule. It looks up dates in Workday and displays the value in the format you specify.

Example

: You can use the Lookup Date Rollup calculated field to have Workday return:

2025-Q1 as the fiscal year-quarter rollup format for the date 01/01/2015 in a fiscal schedule or period.
The week-end date so you can use it as the repeating field in a repeating column group in a composite report.

A Lookup Date Rollup calculated field is similar to a Format Date calculated field. The main difference is that a Format Date calculated field results in a Text type field while a Lookup Date Rollup calculated field results in a single instance. If you need to express a date as a period, a Lookup Date Rollup calculated field is the better choice because it enables you to select specific periods when filtering (as opposed to needing to type out the value). If you need to add a Repeating Column Group to a composite report, use a Lookup Date Rollup calculated field because a repeating column group requires a single instance field.

Note

: Workday does not support Lookup Date Rollup calculated fields on the discovery board sheet and visualization filters or the Report Writer filters.

Chapter Summary

You can run the
Workday Standard Reports
task to find Workday-delivered reports. With the report output, you can:
Filter by Report Categories to view financial reports.
Narrow results by downloading and filtering output columns.
You can run the
All Workday Delivered and Custom Reports
report to view all reports in the tenant.
You can copy and modify standard reports as a starting point when creating custom reports.
Reporting time periods define the years and periods that you can use to report on financial, award, and project transactions.