Workday Glossary of Terms

Business Process:
The set of tasks that need to be completed for an event to occur, the order in which they must be done, and who must do them.

Company:
Usually represents a legal entity, and is the primary entity for recorded business transactions and financial reports.

Custom Validations:
Errors and Warning to guide users and enforce policies.

Delegation (business process):
The ability of an employee to assign steps of a business process to another person to complete on their behalf.

Driver Worktag:
FDM worktags that are mutually exclusive and derive certain associated worktag values (i.e. Cost Center, Fund) within Workday.

Foundation Data Model (FDM):
A multi dimensional data structure used for accounting and financial reporting; contains elements known as worktags.

Functional Area:
A functional area is a collection of domain or business process security policies that are related to the same set of product features, for example, Talent & Performance, Time Tracking, or Benefits.

Roles:
A group of people with specific responsibilities and permissions.

Positions:
A seat that a specific worker occupies. A position is not a job title.

Security Group:
A collection of users assigned specific permissions to certain tasks and data.

Worklet:
A compact app displayed as an icon on an employee's Workday Home page.

Worktag:
Keywords assigned to transactions and supporting data to make their business purposes clear and establish common relationships through classification.

Accounting Journals:
Accounting journals are manual journals that may be used to move funds from one account to another.

Activity:
A catchall for any previous dimensions required for reporting that are not covered by another dimension of the FDM.

Ad Hoc Bank Transactions:
A business process to record after the fact cash deposits or withdrawals, including wire transfers.

Agency:
Represents funds held by the University on behalf of a University club, organization or group.

Cost Center:
Identifies financial responsibility and management for business units (departments, centers, etc.).

Fund:
Represents the high-level source of funds for external financial reporting.

Gift:
Indicates the funding source is a gift or a private grant.

Grant:
Indicates the funding source is a grant.

Function:
Captures functional expense categories required for audited financial statement reporting.

Ledger Account:
Replaces the detailed accounts used for financial reporting.

Operational Journals:
The journals that Workday creates automatically for operational transactions that are entered through the various Workday transaction tasks.

Program:
Ongoing programs that do not necessitate a separate cost center but rather roll up to the existing cost centers.

Project:
Accumulates costs for Capital Projects as well as other selected projects over a length of time.

Revenue Category:
Provides a more granular view of the revenues incurred for transaction analysis.

Spend Category:
Provides a more granular view of the expenses incurred for transaction analysis.

Budget Check:
Step in the business process where the budget balance is reviewed and the transaction can be stopped.

Budget Amendment:
Any change to an original approved budget made by moving available funds from one dimension of the FDM to another.

Position Budget:
An annual budget for planned compensation for a position. Spend and projected spend for the position can be tracked against the budget.

Position Budget Checking:
Validates that funds are available when opening a new position.

Budgetary Control:
Describes the transaction systems process of executing against established budgets via budget checking.

Award:
Support from sponsors, including grants, contracts, cooperative agreements.

Grants Management:
In Workday, a full lifecycle contract management application built on a cost accounting and billing engine.

Letter Of Credit:
A payment method that authorizes award recipients to request an electronic drawdown or an advance of funds approved by the sponsor for anticipated award cash needs.

Principal Investigator (PI):
A common point person for an award recipient.

Sponsor:
An external funding source which enters into an agreement with the institution to support research, public service, or other sponsored activities.

Sub-award:
An agreement with a third-party organization performing a portion of a research project or program.

Ad Hoc Requisition:
Request a non-standard good not found in the catalog.

Commitment:
Accounting that reflects an organization's desire to acquire something or to earmark a budget early in the process to make other internal stakeholders aware of the intention to spend.

Expense Reports:
A business process used to facilitate expense reimbursements. Can be used to create new expense reports, copy previous expense reports or create expense reports from Spend Authorizations.

Expense Item:
The field in the expense report that identifies the type of expense that was made and determines which fields are required by the user to complete.

Obligation:
Accounting to reflect that an organization has obligated itself to spend funds on something for which it has yet to receive consideration, or earmarking.

Punchout:
A supplier’s link within Workday that allows you to shop on suppliers websites, while completing checkout, approval, receiving and payment processes in Workday.

Purchase Order:
Financial obligations with a Supplier to deliver a certain amount of items by a certain day for an agreed amount of money.

Requisition:
Request to purchase goods, services, and contingent labor. To request contingent worker services, use job requisitions.

Resource:
A catalog of available goods, as well as supplier catalog items. Organization's catalogs will vary.

Spend Authorization:
Equivalent to a purchase order (PO) for travel or reimbursement.

Spend Categories:
Provides a granular view of expenses incurred at the University. Grouped into hierarchies and mapped to ledger accounts for financial reporting. Required on all expense transactions.

Supplier Groups:
A proposal made out to the source of goods and/or services that are requested.

Supplier Request:
A business entity from whom you purchase goods or services.

Voucher:
A document that acknowledges a liability or provides authorization to pay a debt. Used to denote an approved Accounts Payable invoice.