Implementation Decisions

The leadership of the Modernization Initiative will make and provide updates about key decisions for the Workday Implementation throughout the project. Implementation decisions are defined as those having a large impact on the WSU community, or where there is high community interest in the subject matter.

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Multi-year salary encumbrances on grants

WSU’s legacy system encumbers salaries on grants for the full duration of the faculty member’s assignment resulting in multiple years of salaries encumbered. Effective July 1, 2021, Workday functionality will be enabled to support multi-year commitments on grants allowing faculty and post-award administrators to more closely manage grant funds.

How will Workday handle account receivables?

Only grant receivables will be managed in Workday. All other receivables will continue to be managed in myWSU/PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. An integration will exist to bring summarized accounting data from myWSU into Workday.

When will WSU begin multi-state income tax withholding?

With the change in go-live date, it is recommended that deployment of multi-state tax withholding be deployed at a separate date from Workday launch in order to reduce changes to gross and net pay calculations at go-live. It is expected that state income tax withholding will not be available until calendar year 2022.

Workday Training will be remote

Due to the uncertainty about the impact of current conditions with COVID-19 on group activities in the fall, Modernization leadership has decided that all Workday training will be remote this fall. All in-person instructor-led training and practice labs will happen virtually.

Budget Checking

Workday has a built-in function called “budget checking” that can confirm a budget has adequate funds before a particular transaction can be approved. However, this budget checking tool has limitations and does not meet WSU’s business needs.

Instead, WSU will use Workday’s robust reporting capabilities to monitor spending and make sure budgets have enough funding. We’ve also designed business processes in Workday so that someone in the appropriate Workday security role must review and approve every transaction before it can go through. Together, these methods will ensure proper fiscal management.

Budget Planning System

The Budget Office will continue to use the Budget & Planning System (BPS) for base budget monitoring, documentation of special F&A allocations, and commitment tracking. Allocation journal entries will be processed directly in Workday.

Comp Time

Compensatory (“comp”) time balances will not be converted into Workday before it launches. Employees who have accrued comp time should work directly with their department to request comp time off or receive payment for their comp time balance. Comp time must be used by December 31, 2020. Requests to pay out comp time must be submitted to Payroll Services by December 11, 2020. Comp time payout processes will stay the same, and are covered in BPPM 60.60. For more information, please see this FAQ handout.

myWSU

We will activate the general ledger functionality in myWSU. This will allow us to integrate myWSU with Workday, and seamlessly transfer summarized financial data into Workday on a daily basis. Currently, transferring of information between myWSU and AIS requires translation from myWSU item types to AIS ledger codes. Going forward, Workday ledger codes will also exist in myWSU.

Workday will be the source for the majority of financial reporting. More detailed information about transactions will still be in myWSU for reference.

Administrative Information Systems (AIS)

Prior to launch, we’ll convert key finance and human resource data from Administrative Information Systems (AIS) into Workday. Once Workday launches, AIS will no longer be our mainframe software. Instead, historical data that is not needed to support business processes or integration systems or to meet regulatory/legal requirements will remain in AIS with read-only access.

Laptop inventory

We will continue to track and inventory laptop, notebook, and tablet computers as small and attractive assets, but we’ll be able to do this in Workday. We are setting up Workday so that laptops can managed at the local (i.e., department) level instead of centrally. Inventorying these items is required by policy in BPPM 20.50.

Nonservice payments

We’ll continue to process non-service payments through Accounts Payable. Nonservice payments include things like fellowships or internships. Access BPPM 30.30 for more information about this policy.

Facilities and Administrative distribution policy

The Facilities and Administrative (F&A) distribution policy won’t change. The Budget Office will continue to collect F&A revenue in a central account and distribute it on a quarterly basis.

Benefits accounting will be semi-monthly instead of monthly

Impact to department: Budgets will be charged benefit contributions semi-monthly instead of monthly.

Impact to employee: There will be no impact to net pay. The amount WSU contributes to your benefits every month is shown on only one of your paystubs (usually the one on the 25) as the full amount of $939.00. When we switch to Workday, this amount will be shown on both of your monthly paystubs in equal halves ($469.50 each).

Business Objects data warehouse (Webi)

The Business Objects data warehouse will continue to exist after the implementation of Workday to allow users access to historical HR, payroll, and financial reporting. Workday tools and functionality will be used to meet the reporting and analysis needs of process users, management, and leadership for data after launch. The future plan is to export data from Workday into a data warehouse and combine it with data from myWSU and other systems for more robust analysis. A launch date for this has not yet been assigned.

MyResearch

MyResearch will not be integrated with Workday. Workday includes a copy award feature that expedites award setup. We’ve tested this feature, and it saves more time in award setup than integrating the two systems. Proposal/pre-award activities will continue to be managed in MyResearch. All post-award functions and reporting will be performed in Workday.

Cobblestone

The Cobblestone system is used to support contract management at WSU by central Purchasing, Accounts Payable and Real Estate. Use of Cobblestone will be discontinued due to Workday’s built in ability to manage customer, supplier and non-monetary contracts for initiation, tracking documents and workflow. Select existing contract information currently stored in Cobblestone will be brought into Workday. More input will be required in the future when setting up a contract, but a streamlined approval process will be enabled. Additionally, departments will have greater transparency into contracts that is not available in Cobblestone.

“9 Over 12” Faculty Pay

When Workday launches, it’s critical for the project to focus on reviewing payroll calculations between the two systems in parallel to ensure accuracy. WSU has decided to maintain our current payroll structure, and 9-month faculty will continue to be paid over 9 months. WSU will continue to explore this option after the system stabilization period.