Workday typically follows a semi-annual release schedule, with updates rolling out approximately twice a year. The spring update was released on the first weekend of March. The release introduced new features, enhancements, and fixes to the Workday platform to improve user experience, functionality, and overall performance.

These updates are important for Workday customers as they ensure that their systems remain up to date with the latest features and improvements, helping them to stay competitive and efficient in their operations. In this article, we specifically review the new Payroll and Compensation updates introduced by the Workday 2024 R1.

Payroll

Prior Period Tax Adjustments

Prior Period Tax Adjustment Calculator to reduce manual effort. PPTA is accessible through the related action icon of an original completed pay result.

• Select Prior Period Tax Adjustment > Run

PPTA Calculator streamlines the process for retro tax authority adjustments. If multiple pay results need to be adjusted, always start with the earliest completed period first.

PPTA can be used anytime users are retroactively adding, changing, or deleting the following for an employee:

• Primary home or work state
• Tax elections for work or home city
• Local other authority
• County local taxes
• Home school district
• Domicile state

The new Prior Period Tax Adjustment (PPTA) calculator will help to calculate tax and wage differences effortlessly due to retro tax authority changes in completed periods. This provides greater efficiency when adjustment for wages or taxes is needed due to retroactive tax authority changes.

Payroll Insights

Real-time smart tool for reviewing payroll results. It has multi-faceted filtering capabilities:

• Once a pay calculation has been run, the Payroll Insights report will pull predictive pay data.
• Allows easier review of historical payroll results to identify what are true abnormalities and what is not.
• Feedback can then be provided on predicted results to improve accuracy over time.

New Tasks:

• Maintain Payroll Insights Configurations
• Maintain Payroll Insights Custom Tags

New Reports:

• Payroll Insights Results Report
• Historical Payroll Insights Results Report

Payroll Insights provides a real-time prediction and evaluation tool to analyze payroll results based on historical payroll result patterns. This feature helps to reduce the amount of time and effort spent manually reviewing and identifying payroll exceptions.

Payroll Third-Party Payments

Generate and Settle Payments for Deduction Recipients of IWO and Court Orders. Workday can now process payments for IWO and Court Orders:

• When a pay calc is run, Workday generates a payable item for the deduction recipient’s line result.
• A new tab is produced on the pay result “Payroll Third-Party Payments.”
• After payroll is completed, the payable will be available to pull into Settlement Run using the new filter “Payroll Third-Party Payments.”
• Payments can be processed electronically via integration or through the print check feature.

Utilizing the normal payroll processing and settlement methods, Workday can now identify, process, and produce payments to deduction recipients. Previously, customers were required to handle these payments manually outside of the payroll process or rely on third-party vendors to complete them. Customers can now produce these payments internally with Check Printing or utilize their existing bank integrations. This feature is a time and cost-saver for clients currently managing the maintenance of their IWOs.  

Compensation

Workday Docs for Compensation Statement Layouts. With Workday Docs, users can now create a custom Compensation Review Statement layout within Workday:

• Workday Docs for Layouts is a visual editing tool for designing, creating, and previewing document layouts for use with custom advanced reports in Workday.
• Users can insert data fields and even apply condition rules to any piece of the layout.

As one of the more highly anticipated updates, users can now completely customize the compensation review statements without the need for any outside reporting tools.  Once created, users will be able to make updates to the compensation review statements more easily year over year.

Total Rewards Statement Redesign

Design for Increased Customization. Redesigned Layout:

• Users can now configure section groups that will display on the statement as cards. 
• Each section group can include lists, tables, and calculated values.
• Users can arrange the cards on the statement in any order they like.

The updated design of Total Rewards Statements will allow users to customize how they show employees their compensation. This will allow employees to understand their compensation more easily and how it is broken into different components.

Percent-Based Calculated Plans

Manage Complex Percent-Based Compensation Plans. Target Percentage or Ceiling Amount:

• Manage complex percent-based compensation plans to configure and report on a target percentage and a ceiling amount for amount-based calculated plans and process them in Payroll.

Calculated plans can now be included in salary-dependent Primary Compensation basis calculations for workers managed by Basis Total. New display text for Calculated Plans with ceiling calculations or percentage calculations.

Dynamic Plan Type Display

Dynamic Compensation Transactions. Propose Compensation Change:

• Workday 2024R1 makes it easier to assign employees compensation during the Propose Compensation Change process by displaying only the relevant plan types for the employee.

By only seeing what is relevant to a specific employee when processing a Change Job or staffing transaction, the processor can decrease manual error while condensing what it sees and maximizing efficiency.

Grid Profiles for Compensation Review

Grid Configuration Profiles. Grid Profiles & Conditional Calculations:

• There is increased flexibility of grid configurations in compensation reviews. Users can now configure multiple grid configurations for the same compensation review process.

Flexibility within the Compensation Review Grid Configuration allows Planners to view fields that are more relevant to the participants in the process.

Conclusion 

The Workday release will have a major impact on your current Workday environment, and new features will enable better user adoption for your team. It is critical that your team thoroughly researches and tests the new updates in your Preview environment.

Getting the most out of these features will require a thorough understanding of what you are trying to get out of Workday and how Workday will work within your organization. With FinServ, you have a trusted advisor with experience in both Workday and the industry to help you make informed decisions about what functionality to leverage, ensuring that you make the most out of your Workday investment. FinServ has advised both Workday HCM and Financial clients through Major Semiannual releases. In addition to release consultations, FinServ Consulting offers operational assessments and Workday implementations. FinServ has experienced HR and Finance consultants who have worked with clients on vendor selections and implementations of various HR and Finance platforms.