Most organizations would agree that managing payroll and human resources at an enterprise level can be an incredibly complex and challenging task.
But with Workday Payroll, you can streamline and optimize these critical business processes to maximize efficiency, ensure compliance, and empower your workforce.
In this detailed review, we'll explore Workday Payroll's capabilities for automating payroll, seamlessly integrating HR data, providing robust reporting, ensuring implementation success, and more.
Introduction to Workday Payroll
Workday Payroll is an enterprise-level software solution that provides comprehensive payroll management and human capital management capabilities for medium to large organizations.
What is Workday Payroll?
Workday Payroll is a cloud-based system that enables organizations to efficiently handle all aspects of payroll processing, reporting, and analysis in one unified platform. It is designed to scale to support complex pay rules and large workforces while ensuring accuracy, compliance, and a great employee experience.
Main Features and Benefits
Key features and benefits of Workday Payroll include:
- Automated payroll processing with support for multiple pay frequencies and pay types
- Real-time payroll reporting and analytics
- Employee self-service portal for accessing pay statements and tax documents
- Time tracking integration to feed hours directly into payroll
- Customizable workflows to map business processes
- Single platform with HR, talent, and payroll functionalities
Intended Users and Use Cases
Workday Payroll is intended for medium to large enterprises with complex payroll and human capital management needs. Typical use cases include:
- Multi-state and global payroll processing
- Organizations with union contracts requiring complex pay rules
- Frequent mergers & acquisitions requiring payroll integration
- Companies looking to unify HR, payroll, and talent management
The system is designed to handle the needs of large workforces with flexibility to scale up as organizations grow over time.
Payroll Management Capabilities
Payroll Calculation Engine
Workday's payroll calculation engine is rules-based, allowing it to handle complex pay policies and automatically calculate paychecks based on those configurable rules. This ensures payroll accuracy while reducing the need for manual calculations. Some key capabilities include:
- Support for an unlimited number of pay groups, pay components, deduction rules, etc.
- Calculation of federal, state, and local taxes using up-to-date tax tables
- Retroactive calculation of adjustments to prior pay periods
- What-if analysis to model impacts of pay changes
Payment Options
Workday supports multiple payroll payment types, including:
- Paper checks
- Direct deposit to employee bank accounts
- Pay cards
- Electronic payment files compatible with third-party payment processors
This flexibility allows organizations to offer payment methods that best suit their workforce demographics and policies.
Payroll Reporting and Analytics
Workday has over 300 standard payroll reports included out-of-the-box. These cover areas such as:
- Spend analysis
- Tax liability
- Deductions
- Payroll audits
- Employee compensation summaries
In addition, the analytics dashboard provides visualizations for key payroll metrics. Users can also create custom reports using the embedded reporting tool.
Payroll Setup and Configuration
Key configuration options available for payroll policies and processes include:
- Pay groups, pay components, calculation rules
- Pay schedules (weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly)
- Bank account validation
- Tax locality setup
- Deductions, garnishments, other withholdings
- Reimbursements and special pay types
Built-in wizards streamline common configuration tasks like year-end tax updates.
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Human Capital Management Integration
Workday Payroll is natively integrated with Workday HCM, enabling seamless data sharing across HR, payroll, benefits, and talent modules on a single cloud platform. This eliminates duplicate data entry and ensures consistency across the entire workforce system.
Core HR Data Integration
Employee, job, and organizational data flows directly from Workday HCM into payroll. Key integrations include:
- Employee master data like personal details, job profiles, reporting structures
- Organization hierarchies for tracking payroll expenses
- Job and position data to calculate compensation and deductions
- Employment terms like worker types, union profiles
This means when a change like a promotion or new hire happens in HCM, payroll is automatically updated without any manual intervention.
Benefits Integration
Workday Payroll is embedded with Workday Benefits to enable robust support for benefits deductions and ACA compliance:
- Flexible deductions setup for health, dental, 401k plans and other voluntary benefits
- Benefits enrollment and life event changes flow to payroll deductions
- ACA measurement, tracking and 1094/1095 reporting integrated
With single-system benefits management, users avoid toggling between separate platforms to process benefits-related payroll.
Talent and Performance Data
Workday Payroll incorporates data from talent acquisition, goals and performance reviews, and compensation changes:
- New hire details from recruitment and onboarding feed into payroll
- Compensation changes from performance reviews or promotions integrate seamlessly
- Sales commission payments managed using performance data
- Payroll reporting on employee career development and retention
This enables unified data and processes for the entire talent lifecycle - from hire to retire.
Implementation, Support, and Pricing
Implementation Process
Implementing Workday Payroll requires careful planning and coordination across teams. Here are the key steps:
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Project Kickoff and Configuration - Workday specialists will work with you to understand your organizational structure, pay groups, pay cycles, benefits setup, integrations needed, and configure the system accordingly. This can take 2-4 weeks.
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Data Migration - Your existing payroll data will need to be mapped and migrated into Workday. This includes employee profiles, pay histories, tax information, deductions, etc. The complexity depends on your legacy systems.
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Testing and Validation - Thorough testing will be conducted across multiple payroll cycles to validate accuracy of pay calculations, integrations, and processes. This can take 4-6 weeks.
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Training - Key payroll staff will be trained on day-to-day system usage, reporting, and workflows. Training is typically 1 week before go-live.
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Go Live - The system goes into production use across the organization. Workday provides on-site support during the initial payroll runs.
The full deployment can take 3-5 months for mid-size organizations. Larger and global organizations can take 6+ months.
Ongoing Support
Workday and its partners provide extensive ongoing support:
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Customer Community - Online community to submit questions and exchange best practices with other customers.
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Assigned Support Team - Dedicated Workday support staff to respond to issues and change requests.
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Learning Center - Online training courses and resources for administrators and end users.
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Release Updates - Regular software enhancements and new feature releases.
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Maintenance - Scheduled upgrades and patches performed by Workday with minimal downtime.
Pricing and Contracts
Workday Payroll is priced using an annual subscription model based on number of employees, pay types, and country coverage. Contracts are typically 3-5 years in length. Standard pricing includes:
- Employee Record Management
- Payroll Processing
- Tax Filing and Compliance
- Integrations to HCM and Financials
- 24/7 Customer Support
Additional fees apply for extensive customization, third-party integrations, and add-on modules like time tracking, expenses, and recruiting.
Volume discounts may be available for large global deployments.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Key Takeaways
Workday Payroll provides a comprehensive, cloud-based payroll and HCM solution for large enterprises. Key capabilities and benefits include:
- Unified system for payroll, time tracking, absence management, and more on a single platform
- Configurable to complex pay rules and global compliance standards
- Scalable for organizations with thousands of employees
- Real-time, self-service functionality for employees
- Analytics and reporting across workforce data
Best-Fit Organizations
Workday Payroll is ideal for large, global enterprises such as:
- Multinational corporations with complex payroll needs
- Companies with over 1,000 employees
- Organizations seeking an integrated HCM platform
- Businesses that need scalability as they grow
- Companies with multiple pay groups/unions/pay frequencies
The unified platform streamlines payroll and HR processes for complex, dynamic workforces. The global capabilities also suit multinational corporations. Smaller businesses may find Workday Payroll overkill for their needs and budget.
