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Workday Finance glossary
Plain-language definitions of the terms that come up in finance workshops, from worktags to hypercare.
Account posting rule
A rule that decides which ledger accounts and amounts a transaction posts to.
Accounting Center
A Workday application for turning accounting data from other systems or processes into journals, using rules.
Accounting journal
The posting of debits and credits that records a transaction in the ledger.
Additional ledger
A ledger kept alongside the primary ledger to hold a different accounting basis, such as IFRS.
Asset book
A set of depreciation rules and values for an asset, used when different bases need different treatment.
Balancing worktag
A worktag whose values must balance, with debits equal to credits, within each journal.
Bank statement reconciliation
Matching lines on a bank statement to payments and receipts recorded in Workday.
BIRT
A reporting tool used to design printable business documents, such as customer invoices.
Business asset
A fixed asset record held in Workday with cost, depreciation and disposal details.
Business process
A configurable workflow of steps, approvals and notifications for a transaction.
Calculated field
A custom field built from other fields with functions, used in reports, rules and validations.
Company
The organization that books transactions, usually a legal entity, and the main balancing dimension.
Composite report
A report that combines the results of several reports into one view.
Custom organization
A configurable organization type used to build extra structures with their own hierarchy, such as business units.
Custom report
A report built in Workday's report writer from selected data sources and fields.
Cutover
The switch from the old system to Workday, including final loads and opening balances.
Depreciation
Spreading the cost of an asset over its useful life.
Drill-down
Moving from a total or a report line to the underlying transactions and their source.
EIB
Enterprise Interface Builder, a tool for inbound and outbound integrations using templates.
Hierarchy
A parent and child roll-up of accounts or worktag values, used for reporting.
Hypercare
A period of intensive support straight after go-live.
iLoad
A data-loading approach used on Workday Finance implementations to prepare and load conversion data.
Intercompany
Transactions between companies in the same group, which are eliminated on consolidation.
Ledger account
The account that records the nature of an amount, such as software expense or accounts payable.
Matrix report
A report that summarises data in a grid, such as totals by account and period.
Multi-book accounting
Keeping more than one set of books for the same business, such as US GAAP and IFRS.
Period close
Finishing the postings for a period and locking it against further change.
Revenue category
A grouping of what is sold, which maps to ledger accounts for revenue.
Security group
A set of permissions that controls who can see and do what in Workday.
Segregation of duties
A control that stops one person doing conflicting steps, such as creating and approving a payment.
Settlement account
The bank or other account used when paying suppliers or receiving customer payments.
SIT and UAT
System integration testing and user acceptance testing, the main late-stage test cycles.
Spend category
A grouping of goods and services that are bought, which maps to ledger accounts for expense.
Tenant
Your organization's own instance of Workday, with its own configuration and data.
Workday Launch
Workday's methodology for implementations, covering plan, architect, configure and prototype, test and deploy.
Workday Studio
A development tool for building complex integrations.
Worktag
A label on transactions that adds a reporting dimension, such as cost center, region or project.
Definitions are plain-language summaries. Names and options can differ by Workday release, so check your own tenant.