Optimize Reporting and Compliance in Workday Financial Management

Article Summary

• Learn how to activate underused Workday Financials features that save time and reduce reliance on Excel or manual workarounds.
• Streamline compliance by automating audit trails, enforcing controls and updating workflows to reflect evolving regulatory requirements.
• Keep Workday aligned with your business by reconfiguring reports, structures and workflows to match changing models and growth.

Why Workday Optimization Starts After Go-Live

Six months (or more) after your Workday Financial Management implementation, the dust has likely settled. The system is live, teams are trained and standard processes are humming. But for many finance leaders, this is when a new challenge arises: getting beyond the basics to unlock the full value of the platform.

Workday isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it solution. It’s true ROI emerges not only from initial deployment, but from how you continue to evolve it to match your organization’s needs. In particular, reporting and compliance are areas where many organizations fall short post-go-live — not because of flaws in the system, but because advanced capabilities haven’t been fully activated or aligned to changing business conditions. If you’re like many, these were relegated to a future Phase 2.

If this is where you’re at, you’re not alone. After go-live, the relief of no longer being intensely focused on implementation makes it hard to shift back into learning, training and testing modes. But once you and your team come up for air, it’s important to re-energize around the deeper value that Workday’s advanced features offer — because they not only improve ROI and decision-making, but they also save your team valuable time by streamlining processes. So, rally around a vision of what life will be like after you go through another round of learning, because optimizing Workday is well worth it.

In this article, we explore some of the common post-implementation hurdles and offer guidance on how you can make Workday Financial Management work harder (and smarter) for your business.

Underutilized Features: The Value You Might Be Leaving on the Table

It’s common for organizations to go live with core functionality but leave advanced tools like Accounting Center, Forecasting or Compliance Automation on the shelf. The result? Teams continue exporting reports to Excel, managing forecasts in disconnected spreadsheets and scrambling to prepare for audits manually. This isn’t what you hoped for when you chose Workday Financials and it’s not what you need to settle for.

Unlocking the full value of Workday means taking the time to activate these advanced features and integrating them into day-to-day workflows:

• Workday Accounting Center can transform operational data into journal entries, streamlining reconciliations and improving accuracy.
• Built-in forecasting tools can replace static spreadsheets and allow you to run rolling forecasts within the platform.
• Audit automation features can reduce compliance risk and preparation time with configurable audit trails and embedded controls.

If your team is still doing workarounds outside of Workday, it’s time to reassess what features are available and how to start using them.

Audit Readiness: Streamlining Compliance With Automation

Workday includes powerful compliance and audit features, but many organizations default to manual processes simply because they aren’t aware of what’s possible or simply haven’t ventured there yet in the platform. It’s not uncommon to have misconfigured workflows, lack of post-go-live training or evolving regulations that weren’t accounted for in the original system setup.

Ask yourself:

• Are our audit logs configured correctly and regularly reviewed?
• Do our workflows enforce segregation of duties and approval chains?
• Are we using exception reports and controls to flag compliance risks in real time?

Enhancing audit readiness starts with reexamining how your compliance processes are built into Workday. Automating controls, access reviews and exception tracking can significantly reduce audit burden.

When Your Business Evolves, Workday Must Too

The business you implemented Workday for may not be the business you are today. Workday Financial Management implementations can take upwards of 12 months, leaving a lot of time for your business to have evolved. Growth, restructuring, new revenue models or geographic expansion can easily render original configurations obsolete.

For example, if your company has launched a subscription model or entered a new vertical, your reporting needs, cost structures and compliance requirements may have changed. Workday’s flexibility is a strength, but it requires active configuration to reflect your current business model.

Steps to take:

• Review current org structures, hierarchies and dimensions
• Map new business processes to Workday capabilities
• Ensure new compliance requirements (e.g., ESG or global tax rules) are reflected in workflows and controls

How to Start Optimizing Your System Today

If you want Workday to do more for you, here’s how to begin the optimization journey:

1. Assess Usage vs. Capability: Conduct a post-implementation health check, ideally after your first post-go-live month end close. What Workday tools are being used? What’s available but inactive? Where did the reports not meet your needs? How many workarounds took place? A gap analysis can identify quick wins.
2. Engage Stakeholders: Work with your finance, compliance and IT teams to surface reporting or audit pain points – and “wouldn’t it be great if…” discussions. This ensures optimization efforts are tied to real business needs.
3. Prioritize Based on Value: Not every feature needs to be rolled out at once. Focus on changes that reduce manual effort, improve decision-making or mitigate compliance risk.
4. Engage a Workday expert: A Workday partner, like Armanino, can build custom reports, simplify your overall reporting process, tailor reporting for compliance needs and train your teams to utilize Workday’s advanced features.
5. Revisit Your Roadmap: Your Workday roadmap shouldn’t end at go-live or even after a Phase 2. Make optimization a recurring agenda item in your IT-finance alignment meetings.

Optimization Is a Journey, Not a Phase

Workday Financial Management is a powerful platform, but like any investment, it requires care and ongoing strategy to deliver full value. For CFOs, finance leaders and controllers, the opportunity lies in treating post-go-live as a new beginning, not an endpoint.

With a focus on reporting and compliance, you can reduce reliance on manual processes, improve audit posture and ensure that your financial systems evolve in lockstep with your business.

Because the real transformation doesn’t happen at go-live. It happens after.

Ready to Do More with Workday?

Armanino Workday experts are here to help you identify and derive deeper value from your Workday Financial Management platform and support you and your team in learning how to use advanced features. From managed services to consulting engagements, our Workday experts deliver the right amount of support to help you optimize what matters.