The FDM is the backbone of Workday’s Finance (FIN), Research (RES), Human Capital Management (HCM), and Payroll system. The FDM serves as a multidimensional framework for organizing financial and people operations data, replacing the legacy PeopleSoft Chart of Accounts. It is helpful to view Workday as a new house, and the FDM serves as the foundation for the framework of the house.
The FDM establishes the foundation for all Workday transaction processing and reporting. Examples of key FDM data elements include:
Please note, some of the examples above are cross functional.
A Worktag is an FDM dimension that allows users to tag transactions with a label. Worktags assist in defining the purpose of a transaction. Worktags make transactions easier to find, help clearly label the business purpose of a transaction, and facilitate reporting and data summarization.
In the current myUFL system (PeopleSoft), ChartFields serve a similar purpose to Worktags in Workday, classifying and organizing transactions. Both systems use these elements to ensure detailed reporting and accurate data management.
Reporting in Workday will bring several enhancements and changes to the current reporting process. Workday’s reporting capabilities are designed to be more intuitive, flexible, and user-friendly, providing a more streamlined and efficient experience for users. Workday’s reporting capabilities include real-time data access, self-service options, and standardized templates.
Throughout the implementation, our team will prioritize data formatting consistency and will ensure all reporting data are uniform. As part of FDM governance, we will establish and maintain FDM dimension standards for Workday to ensure data consistency and accuracy. These standards will cover naming conventions, permissible characters, character lengths, sight logic, and more.
Finance maps cost centers for financial management, reporting, and transactional routing. HCM maps supervisory organizations for reporting relationships. HCM is focused on who reports to who and finance is about how you group your organization/unit for financials.
All FDM dimensions will have a defined list of associated values. When inputting these dimensions onto transactions, end–users can select the value by searching using a Workday ID or name, or by selecting from a picklist of values for that dimension. Only one value can be selected per dimension type when inputting dimensions onto transactions. Depending on the transaction type, certain dimensions and values will be permitted and/or required. As part of FDM governance, the Empowering UF team will define naming conventions and standardization rules to ensure the input of FDM values is straightforward for end users.
In most instances, no. The single data source of the FDM should meet most of your data needs, given the FDM is the “core” of Workday financials. All transactional information in Workday is centralized for streamlined access, simplified reconciliation, and reporting. However, it may depend on your specific data need. There may still be special instances in which external systems are used for processing outside of Workday. These integration points, system remediations, and processes for interacting with other systems will be further defined during the implementation. During the project, the project workgroups will define and backlog the historical data that will be available outside of Workday upon go-live in 2027.
Cost Centers are units used to hold revenues and expenses, have budgets and clearly defined responsible person(s), and whose activities are intended to be on-going or recurring.
There are five hierarchy levels, and cost centers sit below Level 5. Transactions occur at the cost center level.
Yes. Changes can be made after go-live, but they will need to go through a formal governance process.
Alternate hierarchies are being considered to capture auxiliary level of information. This will not be addressed in the current phase of FDM Mapping. Additional guidance will be provided in the future.
Transactions are routed to all assigned cost center managers. Some processes require approval from all managers, while others require approval from only one. In those cases, the first manager to respond can approve the transaction.
Yes. Projects in Workday will be vastly different than they are today. Workday introduces the concept of Operational Projects, where we’re isolating dollars, budgeting to that, and maintaining a balance.
In Workday, a Project is defined as an activity with a specified purpose that has a defined start and end date (such as a capital project or IT initiative). Projects may also be used as other trackable activities that could have multiple funding sources. Use of the Project worktag is optional in Workday.
Yes. A single cost center can include multiple projects to track distinct programs or activities.
Visit the Empowering UF Project website-FDM and Education page.