Workday Financial Reporting: Tips and Tricks (Part 1)

In the fast-paced world of finance, accurate and timely reporting is crucial for decision-making and maintaining regulatory compliance. Workday offers robust reporting capabilities that can streamline processes and enhance efficiency for finance professionals. Whether you're new to Workday financial reporting or looking to optimize your existing reports, here are some essential tips to consider:

1. Understand Your Data Structure

Before diving into reporting, it's essential to have a solid grasp of your organization's data structure, aka FDM, within Workday. This includes understanding how financial data is organized, where it resides, and how it flows through the system. Do you have a custom object or organization which needs to be reported on? Workday's unified platform typically integrates financials with HR and other operational data, providing a comprehensive view of your organization.

2. Utilize Standard Reports

Workday offers several standard reports tailored to various financial functions, such as balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements. These reports are pre-built and can be a quick starting point for generating essential financial insights. Explore the standard reports relevant to your needs and customize them as necessary to fit your specific requirements. Because every company’s FDM is built differently, the delivered reports provide an example which is easier to modify then building a financial report from scratch.

3. Customize Reports for Your Needs

While standard reports provide a good foundation, customization allows you to tailor reports to your organization's unique requirements. Workday's reporting tools are robust, offering capabilities to add or remove data fields, apply filters, and format outputs with outlining to match your preferences. Take advantage of these options to create reports that provide actionable insights for decision-makers. It is very important to understand how to use and maximize report prompts and prompt sets within the reports. Defaulting values in the prompt fields allows the number of fields to be narrowed down which makes a better end user experience as well as ensure the correct data is being returned.

4. Stay Compliant with Regulatory Requirements

Compliance with regulatory standards is non-negotiable in finance. Workday offers functionalities to support compliance with various regulations and standards, such as GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards). Ensure your reports are configured to reflect these standards accurately, minimizing compliance risks and audit discrepancies.

5. Monitor Performance and Iterate

Regularly monitor the performance of your financial reports and gather feedback from end users. Identify areas for improvement or additional reporting needs based on evolving business requirements. Workday's reporting tools are designed to be agile, allowing you to iterate and refine your reports over time to better support strategic decision-making. A common recommendation is to ensure there is a 1-to-1 subreport to composite report for each data source such as actuals and budget. The subreports, generally matrix report types, gather the data to pull into the composite report. Having only the necessary fields for grouping in a sub-report ensures the composite will render efficiently in the UI.

Conclusion

Mastering Workday financial reporting involves understanding your FDM data, leveraging delivered reports and customization options, ensuring compliance, and monitoring performance. By following these tips and continuously improving your reporting practices, you can harness the full potential of Workday to drive financial transparency, efficiency, and strategic insights within your organization. More tips coming, in Part 2 of this blog series.

Happy reporting!

Author: Melissa from Illinois