Future-Proofing Your Workday Time Tracking Configuration

When a new Workday customer goes Live, they don’t know if their tenant has been configured with the future in mind. They were focused on ensuring their requirements were configured, but they typically don’t have the in-house expertise to confirm if what was set up was best practice or if it will be easily maintained.

This blog was written with that in mind and is intended to give any new or existing Time Tracking customer a high-level understanding of how their configuration should look, no matter which industry or company size. You don’t have to be an expert; you just need to understand your business and be able to navigate in Workday.

To start, there are some foundational pieces you need to be familiar with:

1. Time Entry Templates – these house what employees see when entering time. Based on eligibility, they typically include pay rate type, pay group, company, or time type.
2. Time Code Groups – groups of workers eligible for the same time entry codes. Often based on the same criteria as the Time Calculation Groups, these are for the codes or entry types employees can see when logging time, such as Regular Hours, Call Out, or exception time types.
3. Time Calculation Groups – groups of workers eligible for the same time calculations. This is often based on State/Province or Pay Rate Type/Exempt Status, depending on the calculations the groups are entitled to, such as Daily Double Time in British Columbia or a shift premium based on a location or work schedule.
4. Time Calculations – what matters most to employees! Time Calculations drive what appears in their weekly summary and what ends up in Payroll and subsequently, in their bank account; they’re the result of time entries made in the period.

Here is a simple visual to help explain:

The most important exercise you should undertake before building out your Time Tracking functional area (or when adding workers to your existing configuration) is to gather your requirements and place them in hypothetical Time Code and Time Calculation Groups. Producing a visual – even in spreadsheet format – will be helpful to ensure you have them grouped effectively.

Every client will be different but at a foundational level, key Worker or Position Data elements are often grouped together. They may include (but won’t be limited to) the following:

• Within Time Entry Templates:
  • All hourly or non-exempt employees, paid only for hours worked and entered into Workday
  • Employees in a specific state, such as California, who are eligible for different time calculations (i.e. 7th consecutive day overtime) or a trade union
  • Employees who track time for a particular reason, such as tracking project hours vs. not, or those who enter exception time only. 

• Within Time Code Groups:
  • Employees in establishments who need to track time to particular job types, versus those who just enter Regular Hours
  • Employees in jobs that are eligible for certain time entry types based on their collective agreement or job type, such as premiums

• Within Time Calculation Groups:
  • Employees in different states or provinces who require different calculations depending on their jurisdictional legislation
  • Employees working in different types of business operations who earn certain shift premiums or differentials

An example of effective grouping is an organization that operates in multiple provinces and has employees in both facility and retail operations. Each operation type should have its own time code group for the types of work they do, and each province should have its own time calculation group for their differences in overtime calculations. Common groupings can be for codes or calculations that employees in both groups are eligible for OR they can be kept separate. The key is to consider how your groups may be impacted by legislation changes or business acquisitions, divestitures, and mergers. What you don’t want to do is rebuild your foundation every time a new group of employees is added to your tenant.

Keep It Simple and Dynamic

Another important consideration when building out your foundation is not over-complicating it. You don’t need to create separate groups for managers vs. employees or operational groups if they don’t differ. A company that has a straightforward population of time trackers should keep it simple. 

That also goes for creating separate groups for different legislations. Many organizations choose to implement a policy that provides their various groups with one set of rules that’s at least as good as the minimum of all. State and Provincial legislation is in place to ensure employees are paid fairly, not dictate that you can’t offer more. 

For example: overtime rules may differ by province (i.e. weekly based on 44 or 40) but a company policy can state that all employees simply receive overtime pay after 40 hours. As long as they meet or exceed the minimum, all-encompassing policies are not only common, they make managing your Workday tenant a lot easier. No matter what you decide, ensure you document it and share the rules organization-wide so everyone understands and can comply together.

The final consideration in keeping configuration simple is ensuring you also have it dynamic. Far too often, consultants come across rules in which lists have to be updated to ensure calculations or eligibility work properly. Anyone who wants to use a custom list to define a requirement should always consider another method first.

A common example is Work Schedule Calendars. Your legacy system may use these to determine how to process Shift Differential; in Workday, there are other, more preferred, ways. Perhaps simply clocking into a shift and working between a set time of day can be used, or if the work schedule is still the only way, define a Work Schedule Calendar Group instead. Never go to the most granular eligibility first; look at what higher-level configuration can be used to keep it dynamic.

Think Ahead

Unless you have the gift of foresight – or access to a time machine –  there’s no way to know what will happen after your configuration is set and actively being used. You can, however, be as prepared for it as possible in a few key ways:

1. Name everything in common English. A pet peeve of mine is seeing that someone with a developer mindset configured an entire functional area. Prefixes that include the company name are redundant (we know who it’s for), and leaving out key pieces about what you’re looking at (is it a group or a rule?) creates unnecessary fact-finding missions. For example: a Time Entry Template used only by Hourly employees in a Manufacturing facility should be named “Hourly Manufacturing Time Entry Template”. If the same group has a Time Calculation Group that only they use, call it “Hourly Manufacturing Time Calculation Group”. Abbreviate to TET or TCG if you’d prefer, but you get the point. 
2. Don’t use Time Calculation-Specific calculated fields in non-Time Tracking areas. If a time calculation requires a change and it’s tied to unrelated areas, you can’t simply change it. Reviewing proposed updates for potential negative downstream impacts is a way of life when in Workday. Get in the habit of creating calculations that are specific to the things you’re creating them for, then name them appropriately.Remember that only certain components can be effective dated, so simply adding or removing calculations is not always as simple as it sounds.
3. Document your Time Tracking structure. Even if changes are made in the tenant, at a point in time, a written document will have matched it. It could be as simple as a spreadsheet that lists out each group and what’s included in each, then saved to an internal drive. To supplement the document, include comments within Workday wherever possible. Not every piece of configuration allows for comments, but rather than trying to decipher the audit trail, including what was changed and why can be helpful for anyone working in the tenant without you.

Use this list of delivered reports to start your time tracking development, and keep it handy for future review:

• All Time Entry Templates
• All Time Code Groups
• All Time Calculation Groups
• All Time Calculations

Many of us will be responsible for making Workday Time Tracking configuration changes, be it large or small scale. It’s a lot easier when we know what we’re working with. Future-proofing your tenant doesn’t come from seeing the future: it comes from setting up what you have at the time with the intention that someone else will see it—and have to understand it—later.

While this guidance is especially helpful for new customers, existing Workday users can also review and reconfigure their current setup to improve it. Contact Kognitiv today if you’d like support with doing so!