Opening Workday Financials for the first time can feel like stepping into a new language. You see Company, Entity, Ledger, Worktag, Cost Center and wonder how it all ties back to your familiar trial balance and P&L. The good news: once you understand a few core concepts – entities, ledgers and worktags – Workday becomes a very friendly system for non-technical finance users.
This tour explains those building blocks using plain finance language, so you can confidently review journals, approvals and reports without needing to be a Workday expert.
Entities: who’s doing the accounting?
In Workday, an Entity (often surfaced as Company or Company/Entity) represents the legal or accounting unit where transactions post and financial statements are produced.
As a finance user, think of entities as:
- The companies or legal entities you already know from your statutory books.
- The units you produce balance sheets, P&Ls and trial balances for.
- The basis for intercompany relationships and consolidation.
Key points:
- Every financial transaction in Workday – supplier invoice, customer invoice, expense report, journal – belongs to an Entity.
- Entities drive things like functional currency, fiscal calendar and consolidation rules.
- When you see questions like “Which company is this invoice for?” in Workday, that maps to entity selection.
If you understand which entities exist in your group today, you are already halfway to understanding the Workday structure.
Ledgers: where transactions land
The Ledger is the place where accounting entries are recorded and balanced. In Workday, you may see Primary Ledger, Adjustment Ledgers, and specific ledger scenarios for local or management reporting.
For non-technical users:
- The Primary Ledger holds your main accounting entries for each entity.
- Additional ledgers can be used for adjustments, local GAAP vs group GAAP, or other management views.
Day to day, you will see ledgers in:
- Journals – each journal posts to a specific ledger and period.
- Reports – you can filter or run P&Ls and balance sheets by ledger if you have multiple.
You do not need to configure ledgers, but knowing which ledger a report uses helps you interpret if numbers are statutory, management, or adjustment-inclusive.
Worktags: Workday’s replacement for long account strings
The biggest conceptual shift in Workday Financials is Worktags. Instead of long account strings (Company-Department-Account-Project…), Workday attaches multiple Worktags as labels to each transaction.
Worktags are:
- Short labels that describe the “who, what, where, why” of a transaction.
- Used for routing approvals, posting entries and reporting.
Common Worktags include:
- Cost Center – which department or unit owns the cost.
- Fund / Program / Grant / Project / Gift – funding or project dimensions (often called Driver Worktags).
- Spend Category / Revenue Category – what you are buying or what income you are recognizing (similar to account/object codes).
- Location – where the cost or revenue occurs (office, store, plant).
- Assignee – who the cost is related to (for example, an employee for chargebacks).
In practice:
- Every requisition, invoice, expense report and journal uses Worktags instead of a single long code.
- One Driver Worktag (like Project or Cost Center) often auto-populates other Related Worktags, making entry easier and more consistent.
As a non-technical finance user, your job is usually to:
- Check that the Cost Center and Spend/Revenue Category are correct.
- Confirm the Project/Grant/Program if relevant.
- Make sure the Worktags match how you want to see the spend in reports.
How entities, ledgers and worktags meet in a transaction
Consider a simple supplier invoice in Workday:
- You select the Company/Entity – this determines which legal entity is booking the expense.
- The invoice lines use Worktags such as Cost Center, Spend Category, Project and Location.
- When the invoice is posted, Workday uses its accounting rules to create ledger entries in the correct Ledger with the right accounts and dimensions.
Behind the scenes:
- Accounting Rules map Worktag combinations (for example, Entity + Spend Category) to ledger accounts.
- Worktags determine routing (who approves), reporting (which department sees the cost) and analytics.
From your perspective, you can review an invoice and quickly answer:
- “Is this hitting the right company?” (Entity)
- “Is it going to the right department or project?” (Cost Center / Project Worktags)
- “Is the type of spend coded correctly?” (Spend Category)
Once you are comfortable “reading” a Workday transaction like this, reviews and approvals become much easier.
Worktags in reports: how finance actually uses them
Worktags are not just data entry fields; they are the backbone of Workday financial reporting.
Typical reports you will use:
- Trial balance and P&L by Worktag – for example, P&L by Cost Center, by Program, by Project.
- Spend by Worktag – spend by Supplier and Spend Category, or by Project and Cost Center.
- Budget vs actual – combining Worktags used in budgets and actuals to show variances.
Benefits for non-technical users:
- You can easily slice data without needing custom cubes or extra tools.
- Approvers can drill from a summary P&L down to individual transactions and see all Worktags on each line.
- Audit and compliance checks are easier because every transaction carries clear labels.
If reports do not look right, it is often a Worktag issue (wrong Cost Center or Spend Category) rather than a ledger problem.
Tips for non-technical finance users to get comfortable fast
To become fluent in Workday Financials without becoming technical:
- Learn your standard Worktag sets
- For example, which Cost Centers you support, common Spend Categories, and key Projects or Grants.
- Keep a simple cheat sheet for your area.
- Practice reading journals and invoices
- Use Workday reports and drill-downs
- Ask where Worktags are auto-populated
You do not need to know every configuration detail; you just need to know how Entities, Ledgers and Worktags show up in your day-to-day screens and reports.
Once those three pieces click, Workday stops feeling like a complex system and starts feeling like a flexible, label-based accounting tool that supports the way finance actually thinks about the business.
