Workday Glossary¶
Source: Admin Guide – Glossary (Product Summary, May 14, 2026)
A¶
Academic Date Range — Period of time associated with a student recruiting cycle.
Academic Level — Level of an educational objective a student can pursue (e.g., Undergraduate, Graduate, Professional, Associates, Baccalaureate).
Academic Unit — Workday org type representing a school, college, or institution unit. Used for recruiting, admissions, programs, financial aid, and academic appointments.
Academic Unit Hierarchy — Hierarchical grouping of academic units for roll-up reporting.
Accounting Cash — Group of cash ledger accounts used to check cash balances during settlement.
Accounting Cash Pool — One or more primary balancing worktag hierarchies used to pool cash ledger balances for cash balance checks during settlement.
Active Candidate — Person with an application for a specific job requisition. Must be linked to a requisition for Workday to initiate a job application event.
Aggregation Security Group — Security group granting access to members of included security groups; revokes access from excluded security groups.
All Ledgers Journal — Accounting journal not configured as a single ledger; posted to both primary and alternate ledgers.
Applicant Pool — Subset of applications within an application grouping; controls workload for application reviewers.
Application Grouping — Grouping of applications for the same admitting level, academic unit, and anticipated start date. Can have 1+ applicant pools with an admissions counselor per pool.
Approve — Business process action that designated participants select to progress the event to the next step.
Assignable Roles — Positions that can be assigned to organization roles.
Auto-fill — Time entry option that copies time blocks from a worker's schedule or previous week.
Award — Contract agreement with a sponsor providing funding to perform an activity for a public purpose. Defines direct/F&A cost capture, revenue recognition, and sponsor billing.
Award Costs Processing (ACP) — Processing of facilities and administration costs and revenue recognition related to spend transactions on awards.
Award Credits — Percentage of award or award lines allocated to specific worktags for reporting.
Award Line — Line of authorized amount on a grant within an award. Includes effective date, spend restrictions, basis limit, salary cap, and F&A cost rates.
Award Tasks — Administrative tasks tracked for a sponsor to support award contract terms (e.g., Quarterly progress report, financial report).
B¶
Basis Limit — Maximum amount of direct costs used to calculate facilities and administration costs.
Base Pay Element — Compensation components included in base pay calculation for compa-ratio and target penetration.
Benefit Credit Bundle — Defined group of benefit credits awarded together.
Benefit Defaulting Rule — Rule identifying default benefit plans, coverage targets, and amounts when employees don't complete an enrollment event.
Benefit Event Rules — Rules specifying coverage increase limits, EOI requirements, waiting periods, and other enrollment conditions.
Benefit Event Type — Identifies events that trigger benefit enrollment (e.g., open enrollment, new hire, birth of child) and the coverage types available per event.
Benefit Group — Group of employees qualifying for benefits based on eligibility rules. Employees must be in a benefit group to enroll in a plan.
Business Object — Object used to store data in Workday (e.g., organizations, workers). Has fields and instances (analogous to rows/columns). Workday links related business objects.
Business Process Definition — Tasks composing a business process, their order, and who can perform them.
Business Process Instance — A started business process. The definition becomes an instance when the initiator uses it (e.g., Hire Employee for Organization X).
Business Process Security Policy — Secures business process steps and process-wide actions (view, rescind, cancel, correct). Specifies which security groups have access to each action.
C¶
Calculated Time — Result of applying time calculations to a worker's reported time. Automates application of company or regulatory rules.
Calendar-Based Time Entry — Time entry method using the time entry calendar as the focal point for entering, editing, and submitting time.
Cancel (business process) — Stops the workflow in progress and reverses data changes. Cannot cancel a completed business process (must rescind). Securable action in a business process security policy.
Candidate — Includes both prospects and active candidates.
Candidate Pipeline — All active candidates.
Candidate Pool — Candidates grouped by specific criteria.
Cascading Leave — Sequence of related leave types linked together. When end conditions are met, Workday generates a return from leave request and a request for the next leave.
Company — Organization representing an internal business entity within the enterprise. Primary organization for all business processes in Workday Financial Management. Level at which a balanced set of books is held; should reflect Legal Entities.
Company Hierarchy — Parent-child or reporting relationship between Companies. Influences role assignments, planning, and reporting.
Compensation Basis — Grouping of compensation components (salary, commission, allowance plans) defining estimated earnings for an employee population.
Compensation Component — Umbrella term for compensation packages, grades, grade profiles, and plans associated with eligibility rules.
Compensation Defaulting Rule — Rule establishing criteria for how compensation components default to worker compensation during staffing transactions (hire, job change).
Compensation Element — Links Compensation to Payroll. When attached to a plan assigned to an employee, determines which earnings to use for payment.
Compensation Package — Grouping of compensation guidelines (grades, grade profiles, steps) and plans assignable to workers as a set.
Compensation Rule — Guidelines determining which workers are eligible for which compensation components.
Compensation Step — Specific monetary amount within a grade or grade profile.
Compensation Target Rule — Rule used to segment employee population for compensation plan assignment.
Conditional Calculation — Time calculation that tags time blocks meeting certain conditions.
Conditions — One or more logical matches (True/False) used to decide if an action should be taken; can be added to business process steps.
Connection Map — Tool on a customer profile for establishing and managing relationships between business entities and ship-to addresses.
Connector — Set of 1+ integration templates providing a framework for building integrations in a functional area (e.g., Salesforce.com, Okta).
Consolidated Billing Schedule — Billing schedule type combining all charges for multiple projects/services within a billing period into one invoice.
Contextual Custom Report — Custom report created from the related actions menu of a Workday object via Reporting > Create Custom Report from Here.
Contract Rate Sheet — Document outlining contract billing hourly rates per role with optional billing rules.
Conversation Tag — Descriptor (e.g., Dietary Restrictions, Special Needs) assignable to an engagement conversation to identify its topic.
Conversation Topic — Conversation tag or recruiting event name associated with an engagement conversation.
Correct (business process) — Changes a specification or data in a workflow while in progress. Securable action in a business process security policy.
Cost Reimbursable Spend — Billing item Workday creates to bill sponsors for award-related spending (original spend + overhead costs).
Course Section Cluster — Group of 2+ course sections students must complete in the same academic period.
Coverage Target — Defines whether a health care or insurance plan applies to employee only or also to dependents, spouse, family, etc.
Cross Plan Dependency — Limits coverage options during an enrollment event based on choice of other benefit plans and coverage amounts.
Custom Report — Reports not delivered by Workday, built using Workday Report Writer. Can be created new or copied from a standard/custom report.
Customer Payment Matching — Feature using historical payment applications to suggest matching invoices and adjustments for customer payments with insufficient remittance advice.
Customer Refund Payments in Settlement Runs — Refund payment generated by the settlement run with a payment date reflecting the settlement date.
D¶
Dashboard (landing pages) — Specialized landing page containing pre-configured worklets for a functional area; can be copied, modified, or extended with custom worklets.
Data Source — Defines a set of business object instances for reporting. Provides reporting access to all related business objects.
Day Breaker — Time of day on which a worker's work day and work week begins. Default is 12am.
Deny (business process) — Terminates the business process and restores all Workday data to its pre-process state. Requires resubmitting to restart.
Depreciation Profile — Configuration determining how Workday depreciates assets (method, convention, useful life).
Designation — Attribute (e.g., Community Learning Partner, Honors, STEM) associated with educational institutions and external associations for search/reporting.
Discrete Composite Asset — Combination of related but distinct assets with individually tracked cost, depreciation, and lifecycle events.
Disposition — Status of candidates rejected for hire or who declined a job during a job application event.
Domain — Collection of related securable items (actions, reports, report data, data sources, custom report fields). Secured by a domain security policy.
Domain Security Policy — Collection of related securable elements of different types with user-specified security groups having access to each type.
Dynamic Period — Date identifying the anticipated start date for a student of online or asynchronous education.
E¶
Educational Taxonomy — Taxonomy scheme and codes assignable to programs of study and concentrations to meet state/local/other classification requirements.
Effort Grant — Sponsor-funded grant associated with a worker's certified effort.
Effort Recertification — Process to recertify employee effort after payroll accounting changes occur post-certification.
Eligible Investigator — Role type assignable to individuals on awards, grants, and grant hierarchies; remains intact even when the person's position or organization changes.
Engagement Action Item — Requirement that must be met for an admissions application to be considered complete (e.g., Submit transcripts).
Engagement Item — Engagement email or printed item included in engagement plans; supports student recruiting events.
Enrollment Event Rule — Rule defining coverage start/end dates, waiting periods, coverage increase limits, EOI requirements, and other coverage rules per event type.
Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) — Integration tool for creating simple, secure, customizable integrations with Workday. An EIB consists of an integration system, data source, transformation, and transport protocol.
Estimate at Completion (EAC) — All logged/approved project hours plus future hours the worker expects to complete.
Estimate to Completion (ETC) — Future hours the worker expects to complete.
Event — Business process transaction within an organization (e.g., hiring, terminating).
External Association — Nonprofit, community-based, or noneducational organization associated with student prospects or identified as a location for recruiting events.
External Engagement Item — Used to send and track third-party engagement items for recruiting events, communication plans, or ad hoc communications.
F¶
Fast Path — Streamlined approach to moving admissions applications from submission to matriculation as quickly as possible.
Field Overrides — Tool to customize integration systems based on a connector template. Managed through an integration service; use calculated or report fields to supply values.
Financial Aid Period Record — Record containing academic unit, academic level, and program of study data used to process financial aid for an academic period.
Functional Area — Collection of domain or business process security policies related to the same set of product features (e.g., Benefits, Compensation).
G¶
Grade Profile — Breakdown of a compensation grade by functional task, geographical region, or other categorization. Enables more granular compensation ranges.
Grant — Worktag used to charge award-related expenditures to an award line.
H¶
Headcount Plan — Provides visibility into the number of workers necessary to achieve business goals within a specified time period.
I¶
Individual Target — Individual bonus or merit target for a worker during a compensation review; overrides the target defined on the compensation plan.
Integration Attribute — Integration component specifying the tenanted value of a data element in Workday (e.g., Plan Sponsor Name in benefit provider integrations).
Integration Data Source — Indicates the type of data Workday receives from or exports to an external system and its location.
Integration Event — Record of an integration process (current or past, import or export, successful or not). Contains all information including status.
Integration Map — Integration component specifying how values in Workday map to values in an external system (e.g., Pay Rate Frequency in third-party payroll integrations).
Integration Service — Group of related integration attributes, maps, and XSLT providing a framework to transform Workday data into the format required by an external system.
Integration System — Tenanted definition of an integration between Workday and an external system based on a template.
Integration Template — Collection of integration services enabling communication between Workday and an external system. Categories: Benefits, Financials, HCM, Payroll, Payroll Interface, Procurement, Recruiting, Security, Settlement.
Integration Transformation — Converts data into a format Workday or a receiving external system can understand.
Integration Transport Protocol — Controls how Workday exports/imports data to/from an external endpoint. Supported types: email, FTP/SFTP, HTTP/SSL, Workday attachments, Workday Web Services.
Intersection Security Group — Security group whose members must be members of ALL included security groups to receive access.
Initiation Step — First step of a business process.
J¶
Job-Based Security Group — Security group including job-related attributes (job profile, job family, job category, management level, exempt/non-exempt status).
Job Management Staffing Model — Staffing model defining 1 set of hiring restrictions for all jobs in a supervisory organization with no specific limit on jobs filled.
Job Profile — Generic features and characteristics of a job or position (management level, pay rate type, compensation, skills, qualifications).
K¶
Knowledge Article — Article accessible to workers based on assigned audience. Used to document, share, and manage HR information.
Knowledge Article Audience — Group of employees who can view designated Knowledge articles; access determined by condition rules.
L¶
Landing Page — Displays a collection of worklets. May have grid or bubble display formats. The Home landing page is for common self-service worklets.
Leave Family — Set of similar leave of absence types (e.g., disability leave + bereavement leave; or jury duty + FMLA).
Leave of Absence Rule — Rule defining worker eligibility for leaves of absence.
Line Tax Rate Application (LTRA) — Collection of tax amounts applying to a given transaction line or supplier invoice line split on a taxable document.
Linked Customer Contracts — Child customer contracts associated with a parent contract for revenue allocation.
Linked Leave — Leave type sharing an entitlement with other leave types or time offs. Also known as coordinated leaves and time off.
Location Membership Security Group — Security group whose members are any workers assigned to that location.
M¶
Match and Merge — Process to eliminate duplicate student prospect information in Workday.
Micro-edit — Ability to edit existing or add new time blocks directly to a day by clicking the time entry calendar.
Multiplier-Based Coverage — Insurance coverage based on multiples of salary (1x, 2x, 3x).
N¶
Nonbillable — Internal project not invoiced to customers.
O¶
Object Class — Spend categories that award sponsors agree to reimburse award recipients for maintaining their projects.
On-Account Document — Generated when a payment amount is placed on an existing customer account; applicable to future payments.
Organization Security Group — Security group whose members are any workers assigned to that organization.
P¶
Parent Customer Contract — Customer contract associated with child contracts to add contract lines to the same schedule. Displays linked child contracts.
Passive Event — Events resulting from passage of time rather than from specific changes to employee data.
Payment Group — Payments resulting from a settlement run.
Payment Tax Rate Application (PTRA) — Collection of tax amounts applying to a given payment on a taxable document.
Position Management Staffing Model — Staffing model defining different staffing rules and restrictions for each position in an organization.
Position Restrictions — Attributes and conditions applying to an unfilled position in a supervisory org using Position Management (e.g., job profile, location, qualifications, worker type).
Pre-Hire — In Staffing: individual tracked before employment. In Recruiting: candidate in Offer, Employment Agreement, Background Check, or Ready for Hire stage.
Procurement Contract — Defines preferred suppliers, analyzes spend, standardizes purchasing, and enforces discounts/terms.
Procurement Contract Type — Contract type dictating how a procurement contract is used across the procure-to-pay chain (e.g., Scheduled Purchase Orders).
Pro Forma Effort Certification — Report run before effort certification to review estimated effort; allows corrective action (e.g., payroll accounting adjustments) prior to certification.
Project Advanced Labor Costing — Prorating project labor costs using standard or fully burdened costing.
Project Asset — Container capturing ongoing costs of a capital project in progress.
Project Billing Rate Sheet — Document outlining hourly/daily rates per project role with optional categorization (Region, Skill Level, Project Size).
Project Plan Phase — Phase in a project plan representing a stage of work (e.g., Plan and Strategize).
Project Plan Task — Work details within a project plan phase (e.g., Define Project Objectives).
Project Transaction Source — Source of project billing transactions (e.g., Supplier Invoice, Expense, Time).
Prospect — Individual tracked who isn't associated with a specific job. Trackable via tags, prospect types, and statuses.
Q¶
Quick Add — Time entry option to create a time block and copy it to multiple days in a week.
R¶
Recipient Threshold — Maximum number of prospects to whom an engagement item can be sent at once without requiring approval.
Recruiting Cycle — Recruiting period for 1+ academic levels of an academic unit. Associated with campaigns to measure effectiveness per cycle.
Reference ID — Unique identifier used to look up data for integration purposes.
Reference Pay Range — Range of pay established for a compensation grade or grade profile.
Related Customer Contract — Customer contract associated with another for reporting purposes. Must share the same company and sold-to customer.
Reported Time — Worker's time entered but without time calculations applied.
Revenue Category — Attribute in customer contracts and billing for searching/reporting on goods and services sold; dimension in account posting rule types for customer contracts, billing, and AR.
Risk Insight — Provides the reason Workday identifies an expense report as High or Medium risk (Amount Anomaly, Duplicate Expense, Incorrect Expense Item).
Risk Level — Value (Low, Medium, High) from Workday risk evaluation. Configurable based on Risk Score.
Risk Score — Numerical value (0–100) from Workday risk evaluation identifying anomalous expense reports.
S¶
Salary Over the Cap Basis — Worktag type representing the effort grant on over-the-cap salaries when salary over the cap is enabled.
Salary Over the Cap Suballocation — Worktags and distribution percentages allocated on the portion of salary over the salary cap.
Saved Schedule — Class schedule drafted by students before registering for courses.
Single Ledger Journal — Accounting journal for a single primary or alternate ledger currency for the given company.
Source — Duplicate record to be merged in the Duplicate Management Framework.
Spend Category — Logical grouping for searching/reporting on acquired items and services; dimension in account posting rules for procurement and spend.
Staffing Model — Structure defining how jobs and positions are created and filled in a supervisory organization. Types: Job Management, Position Management.
Staffing Organization — Organization category including supervisory organizations, matrix organizations, or retiree organizations.
Stage — Value (Lead, Inquirer, Applicant) identifying where a student prospect is in the recruitment or admissions process.
Student Financials Period Record — Record with academic unit, academic level, and program of study data used to process student financials transactions for an academic period.
Student Prospect Profile — Worklet displaying prospective student information including contact info and recruitment details.
Student Prospect Type — Value (e.g., First Year, Adult Returning) assignable to prospective students for automatic matching to admissions counselors.
Student Recruiting Region — Workday term for recruiting territory. Represents a geographical area, 1+ schools, or schools in selected school districts.
Student Tags — Attributes (e.g., Veteran, Athlete, Scholarship Recipient) assignable to student prospects; used for automatic matching to recruiters.
Supplier Contract — Defines preferred suppliers, analyzes spend, standardizes purchasing, and enforces discounts/terms.
Supplier Contract Type — Contract type dictating how a supplier contract is used across the procure-to-pay chain (e.g., Scheduled Purchase Orders).
System User — Account required to launch a Connector or Studio integration. Not associated with a person in Workday. Required for authentication and web service calls.
T¶
Target — Record into which the source is merged in the Duplicate Management Framework.
Tax Code — Combination of tax rates selected on transaction lines.
Tax Rate Application (TRA) — Collection of tax amounts across all lines on a taxable document with the same tax applicability, code, option, point date, rate, and recoverability.
Tax Recovery Pro Rata Factor Percentage — Company-specific percentage that modifies configured tax recoverabilities for the tenant.
Termination Adjustment — Time off adjustment that automatically sets a worker's time off plan balance to zero upon termination.
Time Block — Carries information about a portion of time (hours worked, in/out times). Can be reported or calculated; only calculated time blocks are pulled into Workday Payroll.
Time Calculation — Set of rules applying time calculation tags to calculated time blocks for Payroll or other purposes.
Time Calculation Tag — Applied to time blocks during time calculations. Maps to payroll earnings; can be included in time off and accrual calculations, and displayed on the time entry calendar.
Time Clock Event — Describes a worker's actions on the web time clock or external time clock (check-in, check-out). Workday matches events to form time blocks.
Time Code Group — Determines which time entry codes a worker is eligible for. Assigned to a worker or position through eligibility rules.
Time Entry Calendar — Self-service pages workers use to enter, edit, and submit time (calendar-based entry); also used to view and submit time in high-volume time entry.
Time Entry Code — Describes the type of time a worker enters (e.g., worked time, meal allowance). Must be attached to time code groups (except the default code on a time entry template).
Time Entry Template — Defines how a worker's time entry calendar is configured. Workers are matched to templates through eligibility rules.
Time Entry Validation — Errors or warnings preventing invalid time entry. Critical validations block submission; warnings display but don't block submission.
Time Off — Rules applying to a specific type of time off: eligibility rules, whether adjustments are allowed, and limits differing from the time off plan.
Time Off Plan — Rules for entering and tracking 1+ related time offs. Identifies unit of time, eligibility requirements, balance tracking, and whether position-based or worker-based.
Time Period Schedule — Defines dates available for entry at a given time and which dates are paid in which pay periods. Can align with pay periods or be paid on a lag.
Time Proration Rule — Prorates employees' target compensation in a bonus or merit increase event according to time-based criteria (e.g., leave of absence, time since hire).
Time Shift — Grouping of consecutive time blocks used in standard overtime calculations, conditional calculations, and validations.
U¶
Unbillable — Billing transaction with an issue preventing billing; requires issue resolution before action can be taken.
Unnamed Resources — Placeholders for project resources used to assign tasks and perform resource forecasting without specific resource assignments.
V¶
Value-Based Project — Customer contract line type used when project billing installment values are unknown at contract creation.
W¶
Wave Picking — Groups picking lists together to better organize and prioritize inventory picking.
Week Breaker — Day of the week on which a worker's work week begins. Default is Sunday at 12am.
Work Schedule Calendar — Calendar defining the days and hours a worker is scheduled to work. Affects time entry options, calendar displays, and time calculations in Time Tracking.
Workday Studio — Eclipse-based development environment for building complex integrations with Workday.
Workday Web Services (WWS) — Workday's public API. Based on open standards; the core method for integration with Workday.
Worker — An employee or a contingent worker.
Worklets — Mini applications represented by clickable icons in Workday. Provide quick access to frequently used tasks and data (e.g., Inventory, Time Off, report-based worklets).
Z¶
Zone Picking — Picking method for orders from different zones at an inventory site. Stock requests can be split into multiple zone picking lists for efficient picking and shipping; lists can be shipped separately or merged.