Workday FINS 2020R2: What 's New & Noteworthy in Banking, Projects & Customers
Date posted
14 October 2020
Reading time
18 Minutes
Workday FINS 2020R2: What 's New & Noteworthy in Banking, Projects & Customers
Banking
There are lots of great new features for Workday Fins users to catch up on for 2020R2. The first new change worth mentioning is within the banking module. It is a delivered warning validation when entering the bank identification code also referred to as your BIC or swift code on your bank account details. This code ensures your money is directed to the right place and so it's important to ensure this code is captured correctly.
Previously, the system required payee override configuration where banking information was loaded to the system to provide a restricted dropdown list of valid banking information to be selected. Now, you can apply BIC validations with a simple tick of a box and the option is automatically available in your financials tenant setup.
As you can see above, this is a supplier settlement bank account and '999' has been entered into the BIC field. This automatically generates a warning to inform the user that the BIC is incorrect and must be reviewed based on the specific BIC format. This validation is applied when entering supplier, customer, and worker bank account details. But please note, this is a soft warning validation only and won 't stop the record from being submitted. This additional feature makes it easier to control data input into your tenant.
Further Banking Considerations
Performance for Banking and Settlement Integrations Workday has delivered performance improvements to banking and settlement integrations, enabling the integrations to support larger files, therefore reducing the number of unnecessary errors relating to the file size. Settlement Run Filter for Expenses This has also been updated to now allow you to create filters based on expense reports with approval dates before today, which can result in more accurate automated payment of expenses. This allows you to identify expense reports with approval dates that are a specific number of days in the past and older. Fast Track Settlement Runs for Miscellaneous Payment Requests Web Services This will enable you to process an individual miscellaneous payment request to settlement run, therefore automating the settlement run process when you create the request. This eliminates the need to manually create a settlement run, making it easier and faster to process a single miscellaneous payment request. Invalid BIC Functionality This reporting field is now available, but you must configure the report or add this field to an existing report.Consolidated Project Budgets for Control and Reporting
This is a great new feature for Workday Fins 2020R2, allowing you to further increase the flexibility of your reporting consolidation at a more useful level for Senior Management all at the click of a button. The main benefit of this new functionality is that you can link projects with a virtual parent and child relationship, allowing reporting on project budgets at a summarised level. For example, where project plans are detailed down to project and spend category level but the budget is controlled at project level only, you now have the ability to link projects through plan structures and plan templates and report at the project level. To configure this in the system you must complete four steps, outlined in the diagram below.
- The first step is to create a plan structure for the virtual parent. You will now see 'Company ' available as a structural dimension, which was added specifically for this feature and is now a required dimension. For example, using the structural dimensions, company and project, will allow you to control all costs to the projects for all companies under the company hierarchy.
- Next, this structure becomes a parent structure when you link the virtual parent to a child structure.
- By creating a plan template from the child structure, this will pre-populate the relevant information. You must select the companies you want to include in the budget template.
- Finally, this virtual parent is now available within the project plan and you must configure your budgetary control options and enable budget check option. A new reporting field is also available for this budget check option to allow you to track if projects are enabled for this feature or not. Once these four steps have been completed, you can report at the company hierarchy level by project.
Project Task Configuration
The second exciting new feature worth considering in Workday Fins 2020R2 is the project task configuration, as this is beneficial to the usability and control of the tasks available within each project. As you may know, every project is driven by tasks and these tasks were previously open to all projects within all companies which could lead to incorrect tasks being selected and timely scrolling.
With this update, under 'Maintain Project tasks', ensure you click 'search' to view all available tasks. You will now see a new field 'Restricted to Project Hierarchies' which allows you to restrict each task to one or more primary project hierarchies. This restricts the task to only be available for projects within the primary project hierarchy selected and any related child links that are configured. If no restrictions are applied, the functionality will continue to work as it does today and each task will be available on all projects.
As you can see in this example for 'Website Redesign', it is restricted to the 'GMS Projects' hierarchy under the task 'Maintain Project tasks'. Because this is now restricted to GMS hierarchy projects, it is no longer available for use for projects outside of this hierarchy.
As you can see below when trying to select this 'website redesign' task under a project within the 'Level 10' project hierarchy, it is no longer available for use. These restrictions will reduce the task list available for selection within the project ensuring better usability and accuracy, and reduce the time spent scrolling through irrelevant tasks when updating the project plan.
Project Budget Templates
Some other project features that are available are project budget templates and scheduling project resources. Project Budget templates are automatically delivered within the tenant and are created off the plan structure to allow the common dimensions to be defaulted on the project budget when creating a budget within a project. When creating the template, you can detail the required and optional dimensions for the project, but this information can also be defaulted from the project in which the template is created. When selecting the template, you can apply it to all tasks or phases within the project or restrict this by task or phase. This new template will reduce the manual effort required when creating a project budget.Scheduling Project Resources
With this release, scheduling of project resources is available with minimal configuration. You will now be able to view and manage resource assignments from a central location in Workday. This will enable you to create a balanced distribution of worker allocation across your workforce. This will also streamline the process of allocating your resources to project work.Customers
Transfer and Split Non-labour Billable Project Transactions
An exciting new feature within the customer functionality for Workday Fins 2020R2, users now have the ability to move non-labour costs or even split costs between projects. This is a great benefit as it allows you to manage your customer billable transactions and easily make any amendments that are required. This should allow changes to cost allocations to be much more efficient. Under the 'Manage Project Billing Transactions' task, you can see tabs for time, expenses, supplier invoices, and miscellaneous expense costs where you can update the project cost allocations on each. As per the example below, under the expenses tab, the option to transfer to 'Project, Phase, or Task' is now available. Beside this column is the split option you would commonly see on invoices to allow splits by quantity or amount. Select the project, phase, or task in which you want the costs to be transferred.
You can review the worktags associated with the line under the worktags tab. This will detail the change to worktags associated with the transfer.
Once submitted, in the confirmation view, you can also see the details of the cost moving projects, with details of the old and new worktags that are now assigned on the transaction.
If you view the transaction, you can see the expense has also been updated with the new project details. Your non-labour project costs are now available to bill correctly to your customer.
Schedule Interest and Late Fees Processing
A welcome change, that for a lot of companies will reduce a significant amount of manual effort or workarounds, is the ability to schedule the interest and late fees process. This will improve overall accuracy and performance when processing interest and late fees on past due invoices. This feature is automatically available and similar to current scheduled tasks, and can be run daily, weekly, or monthly as required by your business.