Connecting Workday Financials to the rest of your enterprise is not optional. GL needs to talk to legacy ERPs and data warehouses, banks must receive payment files and send statements back, and payroll providers need accurate data and return pay results. Workday’s Integration Cloud, Cloud Connect packages and reporting layer are built to support this, but success depends on using the right patterns for each area: GL, Banking and Payroll.
This guide walks through proven integration patterns that Workday practitioners rely on to keep financial data flowing cleanly across the enterprise.
Foundation: Workday Integration Cloud and FDM
Before diving into patterns, two foundational pieces matter:
- Workday Integration Cloud
- Provides tools like EIB, Core Connectors, Cloud Connect packages and APIs to integrate with third‑party systems without additional middleware.
- Foundation Data Model (FDM)
- Your FDM (Companies, Worktags, hierarchies) is the common language GL, banking and payroll integrations should share.
- If FDM is inconsistent or poorly designed, integrations will continuously require mapping and manual fixes.
Good integration design assumes a stable FDM and uses Workday’s native integration capabilities where possible instead of custom point solutions.
GL integration patterns: feeding analytics and other ERPs
Even when Workday is the system of record for finance, other systems often need GL data: data warehouses, planning tools, legacy ERPs or industry solutions.
Proven GL patterns:
- Outbound GL summaries to data warehouse/BI
- Use report‑based outbound integrations or EIBs to export GL journals or balances by ledger, account and Worktags on a daily or intraday schedule.
- Keep extracts based on Approved/Posted journals only to avoid half‑baked data.
- Trial balance feeds to legacy ERPs or consolidation tools
- For transitional periods, export trial balance or chart-of-accounts‑mapped outputs from Workday to legacy tools until full decommission.
- Stabilize mapping between Workday accounts/Worktags and external dimensions; do not change it lightly.
- FP&A / planning integration
- For Workday Adaptive Planning, use native connectors; for other FP&A tools, publish GL and Worktag data via secure outbound integrations.
Key practices:
- Use a small number of standardized GL feeds (for example, one for detailed journals, one for balances) instead of many custom variations per consumer.
- Drive filters and time windows from Workday effective dates and accounting periods so external systems can easily reconcile to Workday financial statements.
The GL integration goal is to ensure every system that needs financial data sees a consistent view aligned with Workday.
Banking integration patterns: payments and bank connectivity
Bank connectivity has two main flows: outbound payments and inbound bank statements. Workday Financial Management supports both through its bank connectivity features and integration cloud.
Outbound to banks:
- Payment file integrations
- Use Workday’s Bank Connectivity and payment formats (ACH, SEPA, wire formats) to send payment files directly to banks or via treasury platforms.
- Payment runs (settlements) generate files including bank account, amount, remittance info and typically use SFTP or bank APIs for transmission.
- Standard patterns
- One integration per bank or per channel (for example, “US‑BOA‑ACH”, “EU‑SEPA”) rather than per business unit.
- Use Workday’s payment formats where possible instead of fully custom layouts to reduce maintenance.
Inbound from banks:
- Bank statement imports
- Reconciliation integration
- Workday’s reconciliation rules match bank lines to internal transactions (AP, AR, Payroll, journals). Clean integration plus good matching rules gives near real‑time cash visibility.
Best practices:
- Centralize Bank Account Management (owners, formats, security) and treat bank integrations as high‑risk, high‑control elements.
- Standardize remittance and statement reference fields so matching and cash positioning work reliably in Workday.
These patterns turn Workday into the hub of your banking flows rather than just another system generating flat files.
Payroll integration patterns: global payroll via Cloud Connect
For payroll, many organizations use Workday HCM + Workday Financials + third‑party payroll providers. Workday’s Cloud Connect for Third‑Party Payroll and Global Payroll Partner network provide predefined patterns.
Core patterns:
- Outbound HR and time data to payroll
- Use Workday Cloud Connect for Third‑Party Payroll (TPP) or Global Payroll Connect (GPC) to send worker data, compensation, time, absence and costing information to payroll providers.
- These connectors support effective‑dated change extraction (for example, using PECI) so all events in a pay period are captured.
- Inbound payroll results to Workday
- Import payroll results—gross to net, taxes, employer costs—back into Workday to feed GL postings, Costing and Payroll journals.
- Some partners (for example, CloudPay) support bi‑directional integration with scheduled data transfers.
- GL and costing integration
- Leverage standardized payroll costing and posting rules so payroll results integrate seamlessly into Workday’s GL with proper Worktags.
Why Cloud Connect matters:
- Workday’s Payroll Effective Change Interface (PECI) and related connectors deliver effective‑dated event sequences, simplifying integration logic and ensuring payroll sees every change in the right order.
- Certified Global Payroll Partners reduce custom mapping effort and bring prebuilt templates for major countries.
The pattern to aim for is simple: Workday HCM is the system of record for people data; payroll systems are engines; Workday Financials remains the system of record for payroll accounting.
Architectural tips: pattern choices, not one-offs
When designing integrations, think in patterns rather than point solutions:
- Use configurable connectors before custom
- Prefer Cloud Connect (for payroll, banks, tax providers) and Core Connectors where they exist instead of building every integration from scratch.
- Standardize event vs snapshot
- For GL and analytics, snapshot/balance feeds often work best.
- For payroll and worker data, event‑based feeds (effective‑dated sequences) ensure accuracy.
- Secure and monitor everything
- Use Workday’s integration monitoring and logging to track status, errors and runtime for financial and payroll interfaces.
- Treat GL, banking and payroll integrations as SOX/ICFR‑relevant and include them in your control framework.
- Keep an integration inventory and roadmap
- Document purpose, frequency, data domains and owners for each integration.
- Use that inventory to rationalize overlapping feeds and plan future changes (for example, decommissioning legacy ERPs as Workday adoption grows).
Done this way, “connecting Workday Financials to the rest of the enterprise” stops being a series of one‑off projects and becomes a coherent integration architecture: GL feeds powering analytics, bank connectivity enabling real-time cash, and payroll integrations keeping people and pay in sync across countries.
