What are Workday Reports and how to do Workday Reporting

ERP Cloud Training Online Author

Oct 08, 2024 |

Learn what Workday Reports are, their types, and how to create them to do Workday Reporting effectively to drive informed decision-making.

Workday reports holding high significance in all modern and progressive business organizations in their endeavor of organizational management. Workday reports provide several invaluable insights that drive informed decision-making. As more and more businesses are increasingly adopting Workday for their operations in HR, finance, & several other operational needs, understanding Workday reporting becomes very important.

In this blog, we will discuss various types of Workday Reports and Workday Reporting Tools, exploring the kinds of Workday reporting and ways to create them effectively.

What is meant by Workday Report?

Workday Reports are created to be utilized by functional or end users across Workday Human Capital Management (HCM), Financial Management, and Spend Management. They are easy to deploy and come with a user-friendly interface. In the application, reports are built-in which allows people to take action directly from the user interface based on the report output. Also, these reports are “built-in” and not a separate addition or afterthought, Workday reports take advantage of security setup therefore enabling access to real-time data where it matters most and when it’s needed most. Reports may additionally serve integrations, accessed through mobile devices, embedded in business process transactions for decision-making at decision time, and further formatted into business forms and pixel-perfect layouts via the Report Designer tool in Workday Studio.

Workday reports work with data in Human Capital Management (HCM); this allows people to scrutinize employee information, compensation, and organizational structure. These reports are created for ease of use and quick understanding to give real-time decision-making abilities that rely on precise data about the workforce.

Workday Report can be customized within the Workday platform. They enable users to extract and analyze all relevant data for specific purposes. These particular reports generally cover different areas like HR, time tracking, recruitment, payroll, performance management, administration benefits, and several others.

It is important to follow all the stated guidelines while writing a Workday report. These guidelines are as follows:

• Consistency: Following guidelines ensure that all reports across the organization have a uniform structure and format. This consistency makes it easier for readers to understand and compare information from different reports.

• Accuracy: Guidelines often include standards for data collection, analysis, and presentation, which help ensure the accuracy of the information presented in the report. This is essential for making informed decisions based on the report's findings.

• Relevance: Guidelines typically outline the scope and objectives of the report, helping writers focus on relevant information that aligns with the intended purpose of the report. This ensures that the report provides valuable insights to its audience.

• Compliance: Some guidelines may include regulatory requirements or internal policies that must be followed when creating reports. Adhering to these guidelines ensures that the report meets legal and compliance standards.

• Clarity: Guidelines often include recommendations for clear and concise writing, as well as formatting preferences that enhance readability. Following these guidelines helps ensure that the report is easy to understand for its intended audience.

• Efficiency: Adhering to guidelines can streamline the report-writing process by providing a structured framework to follow. This can save time and effort for both writers and reviewers.

Types of Workday Reports

Standard Reports – Workday has produced standard reports that are available to all the stakeholders and users of the software within that organization. You can create Standard reports by using either Workday Report Writer or with the help of XpressO, depending on the requirements of reporting. The traditional words of the Report Writer can be duplicated to produce custom reports that are catered to meet your unique requirements.

Workday offers a number of Standard Reports that can be easily customized to meet the needs of the end users. Reports that are based on in-depth real-time data are usually displayed on Workday’s dashboards. For engaging with the data, the generated reports can easily be stored in Workday or can easily be exported to Excel.

Workday provides two types of standard reports: Report Writer and XpressO.

• Report Writer reports can be copied and customized via the Workday Report Writer tool.

• XpressO reports are generated using a proprietary programming tool, which offers features for report development and cannot be replicated and adjusted using the Report Writer tool.

8 Types of Workday Custom Reports

Business owners can create custom reports with the help of Workday Report Writer. They can be created from scratch a replica of a personalized account or an already-written standard account. Workday provides a varied reporting option for various organizational needs.

The several types of reports that are used for constructing custom Workday reports are listed below. Using the various composite pieces, we can easily combine different advanced or existing matrix reports into a single word. Every message has a sub-report & each of the accounts comes from a source. Let's explore these different types:

1. Basic Reports - It has a very simple design and can be made with different options for novice or infrequent users to enable them to make essays quickly & using a simple procedure with just a few options. We can use the same to show, filter and sort the information from the main Business Object.

2. Advanced Reports - The advanced reports help in assisting and enabling the data from the primary & linked business items for the purpose of display. You may also group & filter the available data, display the groups & subtotals, add charts, filter and sort the data, display grand totals, & share the data with other users to enable the report as an app & also use it as a web service.

3. Composite Reports - A composite report is a type of Workday report that allows you to combine different existing matrix reports into a single report.

4. Matrix Reports - Matrix reports are interactive reports and analytics across dimensions. They facilitate in-depth data exploration and can function as sub-reports.

5. Trending Reports - The Trending reports in Workday are very similar to matrix reports. It thoroughly examines & presents trending data of employees, like attrition and headcount over time.

6. Transposed Reports - The information’s related rows & columns are switched around. You can easily build reports for items of side-to-side business with transposed pieces.

7. Search Reports - Used as web services in outbound EIBs, search reports display the various search results that are based on the choices made for the report’s facet filters.

8. nBox Reports - These reports are used to calculate all the information & display the findings of the two-dimensional matrix.

Workday Reporting Tools

Workday has different reporting tools and features that enable employers to examine their HR, Finance, and SCM data. The following is a summary of some reporting tools in Workday:

Workday Report Writer

Report Writer in Workday is used to create custom reports. Reporting Writer is versatile enough for ad hoc or scheduled report generation. Users can configure comprehensive reports by defining report fields, filters, and sorting criteria. These include:

~ Pre-built Standard Reports
~ Ad-hoc Reporting
~ Workday Data Sources
~ Drill-down, metrics, and charts
~ Scheduling

Workday Dashboards

These show key metrics and performance indicators visually. Real-time data monitoring and goal tracking can be done using personalized dashboards containing graphs, charts or widgets.

Scorecards

In Workday, scorecards allow businesses to appraise and gauge their overall achievements about established objectives or benchmarks. People can establish scorecards for different sections or branches of their company to evaluate performance at various hierarchies.

Workday BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools)

Workday BIRT provides drag-and-drop features to allow users to build custom reports on the Studio canvas to customize per client's needs. Powerful reporting capabilities are provided through formatting options including visualization and discovery tools.

Workday Prism Analytics

Workday Prism analytics combines internal native data with external sources to report from Workday as a single system of record which allows blending data for visualizations and predictive modeling for finding patterns.

Best Practices to develop an effective Report using the Workday Reporting tool

By following these best practices, organizations can create accurate Workday reports that meet their needs while giving them real insights into their workforce.

1. Define Report’s Scope & Objectives – Before creating a Workday Report, it is essential to clearly define the objective that needs to be achieved from this Report & also the specific scopes that are to be covered. This involves explicitly identifying all the key questions that the Workday report will answer, the audience it is intended for, & and the parameters or timeframe it should ideally focus on.

2. Selecting the Right Type of Report – Workday offers different types of reports that are well-tailored to analyze the different needs of data, such as financial reports, payroll reports, HR reports, etc. You should ideally choose the type of Report that aligns with the defined objectives & the data that you require to analyze. For instance, if you are analyzing the performance of the employees, you might opt for the format of the performance evaluation report.

3. Choosing the Appropriate Source of Data – After the selection of the type of Report, you ideally need to identify the most relevant source of data within Workday that contains relevant information for generating your Report. This could be some specific Workday module, such as the financial module in case of financial data or the HR module in case of employee data.

4. Building the Report Utilizing Sources of Data, Fields, & Filters – Once you have identified the source of data, you need to begin building your Workday Report by judiciously selecting various necessary fields & elements of data to be included. Workday provides a very user-friendly interface to construct reports and allows you to drag and drop fields. It also allows you to apply calculations, & add filters as required to refine your available data.

5. Optimize Performance: Design a performant report i.e., consider this factor during the development phase such that unnecessary calculations, too many calculated fields, or processing that might cause slowness during execution time are avoided; also note effects imposed by filtering, sorting, or summarization in relation with performance issues.

6. Using Filters for Customizing Output – Filters allow you to narrow down the available data that are included in your Workday Report based on certain specific criteria. You need to utilize the filters for customizing the output of the concerned Report & focus on the most relevant information. For instance, you might opt to filter data of employees by department, status of employment, location, etc. to feasibly analyze the performance within the specific segments of the concerned business organization.

7. Sharing Your Workday Report – Once the Report you are working on is complete, it is time to share it with all the relevant stakeholders within the organization. Workday offers different options for sharing reports including exporting them to various file formats, opting to schedule the report delivery in an automated mode, or sharing them directly within the platform of Workday. You need to ensure that you share the Report securely & that the recipients have all the necessary access and permissions to view all the data in the shared Workday Report.

8. Ensure Data Accuracy: Test against known datasets or do data reconciliation to verify the accuracy of figures appearing on your reports. Also, ensure calculations/aggregations are rightly done according to business rules besides being correct all through.

9. Provide Context & Documentation: A technical and functional design document must be signed off by SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). You should give titles that describe what each section talks about plus headers/footers which can provide context for understanding the report itself. Document any assumptions made, calculations done, and even limits/caveats tied to data or reports.

10. Test & Validate: Test thoroughly via unit test, system test, and UAT in order to confirm whether it works as required and gives accurate results. Try different scenarios along with input parameters plus edge cases so that robustness, as well as reliability, gets validated through such tests.

11. Solicit Feedback: Share this document with others who may have something valuable to say about its contents then refine where necessary based on their feedback.

12. Document the Report: Write down how you designed your report, where did data came from (sources), what calculations were performed if any, and finally note all customizations carried out or settings changed during the creation process; keep such documents safe because they will be helpful when updating/ modifying reports later on.

13. Monitor Performance: Keep an eye on how this report performs over time so that areas needing optimization can easily be identified; make necessary adjustments always if need be in order to maintain optimal performance levels throughout.

How Can ERP Cloud Training Help in Workday Reporting?

At ERP Cloud Training, our experienced team of Workday professionals offers the most specialized training & guidance to organizations & individuals to create Workday Reports by leveraging their capabilities effectively. Our Workday Report Training courses largely cover the different aspects of Workday reporting which also includes the creation of Reports, customization, & optimization.

Conclusion

Workday reports have become indispensable tools for business organizations seeking to gain the most actionable insights from the available data. By thoroughly understanding the different types of Workday reports that are available & mastering the art of Workday reporting, several progressive businesses can drive the desired efficiency, improve the process of decision-making, & stay ahead in the highly competitive landscape of today’s time.

Categories: : Workday Report