As WVU moves to Workday, the University will begin using new terms to describe how work gets done across Finance, HR and related areas. Some of this language may be unfamiliar or different from what is used today. Learning these terms will help create a shared understanding, reduce confusion, and make it easier to navigate new processes in a single, integrated system when Workday launches in summer 2027.
| Workday Term (Future) | Definition | WVU Term (Current) |
|---|---|---|
| Academic Appointment | The record of a faculty member’s formal relationship with an academic unit such as a department or school. An Academic Appointment consists of the academic track, rank and tenure status. A person can hold multiple academic appointments. | Faculty/Academic Appointment |
| Academic Unit | A Workday organization type that represents a school, college, university or other unit. These units can recruit prospective students, admit students, offer programs of study or courses, or administer financial aid. Academic units are also used with academic appointments in Workday. | ORG (MAP) |
| Academic Unit Hierarchy | A hierarchical grouping of academic units primarily used for roll-up reporting. | No current WVU term |
| Activity | A financial worktag used to classify and track the specific work, project, event, or operational effort associated with a transaction. It provides an additional layer of detail beyond cost centers, helping organizations analyze spending or revenue tied to particular initiatives. | Departmental Activity (Activity) |
| Business Process | A business process (BP) is a sequence of one or more tasks that accomplishes a desired business objective. In Workday, a business process is a built-in workflow that allows a transaction to pass through a series of reviews and approvals. A business process defines the steps that must be completed, the sequence, and who must complete each step. | Business Process |
| Company | The legal entity of record for a business transaction or financial report (either WVU or Research Corp). | Entity |
| Contingent Worker | Workday defines users who are not paid via payroll but need access to systems as contingent workers. Contingent workers include Affiliates, Courtesy Appointments, Independent Contractors, and Volunteers. | Affiliate, Courtesy Appointment, Sponsored Account, Independent Contractor, or Volunteer |
| Cost Center | A core Foundation Data Model worktag identifying a distinct, budget-responsible organization unit (such as a department or team) used to track revenues and expenses. | Departmental Activity (Department) |
| Cost Center Hierarchy | The structured, multi level grouping of cost centers that an organization uses to outline financial responsibility, reporting, budgeting, and business process routing | A B C D Parent of Departmental Activity |
| Costing Allocation | The process of distributing a worker's earnings across various cost centers, projects, grants, or other organizational types and locations. | Modified Total Direct Costs, Total Direct Costs |
| Driver Worktag | A keyword that is the required primary classification assigned to transactions and supporting data that drives or automatically populates related worktags based on the configuration set in Workday. (Ex: Gift, Grant, Project and Program) | General Ledger Accounting String |
| Expense Item | A classification used on an expense report to define a specific type of cost, such as a meal, mileage or airfare. | Line Item |
| Foundation Data Model (FDM) | A flexible classification system that lets users attach descriptive, word-based labels (worktags) to transactions rather than complex code strings to identify the purpose, project, or cost center. | Chart of Accounts |
| Function | A specialized driver worktag used to classify transactions based on their purpose or activity (ex. Instruction, Research, Public Service, etc.), independent of the department (Cost Center) making the purchase. | Function |
| Functional Area | A collection of tasks and information related to the same set of product features, for example, Talent & Performance, Time Tracking, or Benefits. | No current WVU term |
| Fund | A specialized driver worktag used to classify financial transactions for reporting at a more granular level to ensure a balanced set of financial statements. Defines the purpose, restrictions or source of money associated with a transaction. (Ex. general operating funds, restricted funds, designated funds, etc.) | Fund |
| Gift | A specialized driver worktag used to track all financial activity associated with a specific donation/gift from the WVU Foundation. | Grant |
| Grant | A specialized driver worktag used to track all financial activity associated with a specific, externally funded sponsored award. (Ex. Each federally funded research grant has its own grant worktag.) | Award and Tasks |
| Home Page (Landing Page) | The primary dashboard a user is brought to upon login, acting as a central space for navigating the system. | Home |
| Initiation Step | The first step of a business process. | No current WVU term |
| Initiator | The role responsible for starting a business process. Each business process typically has multiple people who can initiate the process; however, each transaction will only have one initiator. | Requestor |
| Leave of Absence | A long-term absence from work for specific reasons. | Leave |
| Ledger Account | A specific, numerical code within the Foundation Data Model (FDM) that categorizes financial transactions (assets, liabilities, equity, revenue, and expenses) for the general ledger. | Accounting String |
| My Tasks | A centralized hub for managing actionable items including approvals, to-dos, and business process requests, allowing employees and managers to view, filter, sort, and complete tasks, as well as manage delegations, in a single location. | No current WVU term |
| Notification | Automated, informational messages within the Workday system that alert users about the status of business processes, events, or system updates. Some notifications also arrive via email. | No current WVU term |
| One-Time Payment | A single payment to an employee, on demand and outside of their regular salary. | Special Pay |
| Operational Worktag | Non-driver worktags used to classify, tag and analyze business transactions to provide specific, granular detail, often on expense reports, supplier invoices, or journals. (Ex. Spend Category, Revenue Category) | No current WVU term |
| Optional Worktag | Non-mandatory, user-defined, or system-provided data tags used to add specific, granular details to financial transactions beyond core required information like Cost Centers or Funds. (Ex. Assignee, Location, Detail Code, etc.) | No current WVU term |
| Payslip | A term used for pay statement shown in Workday. | Paystub |
| Program | A specialized driver worktag used to group and track ongoing revenue and expenses at the Cost Center level that are not associated with a gift, grant or project. (Ex. Tutoring Program or Visiting Scholars Program, other departmental programs) | Departmental Activity/Fund |
| Project | A specialized driver worktag used to group and track revenue and expenses associated with specific initiatives with a defined scope and lifecycle, such as capital projects and faculty start-ups, usually having a defined start and end date. (Ex. building renovation) | Capital Project (GL/POETA) |
| Related Actions (Actions) | A context-sensitive menu that lets users perform additional actions, view data, or initiate business processes directly from an object, report, or search result without navigating away from the current page. | No current WVU term |
| Related Worktag | Complementary data tags that automatically populate based on the selection of a primary "Driver Worktag" (e.g., Grant, Project) during a transaction. | No current WVU term |
| Revenue Category | An attribute in customer contracts and billing used to search for and report on goods and services you sell. Also a dimension in account posting rule types for customer contracts, billing, and accounts receivable that drives accounting behavior. | No current WVU term |
| Reviewer | An individual or role that is assigned to review, validate or provide input on a business process task before it moves forward. Reviewers do not approve or deny the transaction; instead, they examine the information for accuracy, completeness, or compliance and may add comments or make corrections. | No current WVU term |
| Security Role | Defines the specific permissions, data access, and business process actions a user can perform within Workday. | MAP Responsibilities |
| Spend Category | An optional worktag used to classify the goods or services being purchased in a transaction at a more specific or granular level. (Ex. Office Supplies, Travel, etc.) Also a dimension in account posting rules for procurement and spend that drives accounting behavior. | No current WVU term |
| Supervisory Organization (Sup Org) | Grouping of employees into a management hierarchy providing structure for how employees are hired and organized. Departments may have multiple supervisory organizations (one per unique manager). All employees must belong to a supervisory organization, and each supervisory organization must have a manager. The manager does not belong to the same supervisory organization that they manage, but instead generally belongs to the Supervisory Organization directly superior to the one they manage. | HR Organization |
| Supervisory Organization Hierarchy (Sup Org Hierarchy) | The Workday structural component which defines the management structure within an organization, grouping employees into a hierarchical tree that mirrors the organizational chart. | HR Organization Hierarchy |
| Task | A business process step that must be completed for a workflow to move forward. | No current WVU term |
| Total Rewards | Total combination of employee salary and benefits. | Total Rewards |
| Total Salary & Allowances | Shows the annualized salary for employees. | Compensation/Base Salary |
| Transaction | Any business processes, actions or events that take place in the system, including activities such as purchasing, invoicing, payroll processing, and other staffing or financial operations. | No current WVU term |
| Withholding Elections | The process of setting the amount of income tax and other elections to be withheld from an employee's paycheck. | Tax Withholding |
| Worker | An employee or a contingent worker. | No current WVU term |
| Worker Profile | A worker profile contains employee information such as contact information, job information and work anniversary. Only limited information, such as work telephone number or email address is available to other employees. This information acts as a directory for all employees. | People Record |
| Worktag | Keywords that you can assign to transactions and supporting data to make their business purposes clear and establish common relationships through classification. | Departmental Activity Number, Program Organization Expenditure Type Task Award |