Setup Considerations: Bank Account Signatories

Administrator Guide

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of bank account signatories. It explains:

Why to set it up.

How it fits into the rest of Workday.

Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.

Security requirements and business process configurations.

Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.

Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What It Is

In Workday, you can set up bank account signatories to designate workers and external committee members as signers for individual bank accounts. You can maintain a record of signers who can access and operate an account on behalf of the account owner.

Business Benefits

Bank account signatories enable you to:

Create signers from your existing list of employees and external committee members.

Identify inactive signers on company bank accounts to decrease fraud and enhance controls.

Streamline the foreign bank account reporting process by identifying key signatory data points in custom reports.

Report on signatory changes to meet external and internal audit reporting requirements.

Use Cases

You can:

Easily and accurately identify signers for each company bank account.

Configure business processes to notify you when your signers change job positions or are no longer active.

Modify signatory information based on job changes to a signer that alter their authorities.

Use reports to track and identify inactive or terminated signers for your bank accounts over a defined period of time.

Questions to Consider

Question	Considerations
How do you select bank account signers in Workday?	Signers and their associated information are available in Workday as workers and external committee members. When you create signers, you select from your workers or external committee members already defined for your organization.
What levels of approval do you need for your signatories?	When you define signatories, you can assign the appropriate approval authorities and limits for each bank account. Example: You can assign a single approver authority type to a CFO who never requires secondary approval to issue a payment from a bank account. Similarly, you can authorize a cash analyst to always require a joint signer for secondary approval. You can also combine authority types with minimum and maximum approval limits. Example: A signer has single authority when making a payment under 100,000 USD, but requires joint approval for payment amounts more than 100,000 USD.
Do you need to track signatory approval limits in a bank account currency or user-defined currency?	Workday supports both types of currencies. When you create a bank account signatory, you can define signatory limits using the bank account currency. You can also override the bank account currency with a different currency. Example: You created a signatory using the bank account currency in EUR, but your organization now standardizes all signatory limits in USD.
Can you use bank account signatories for transaction and settlement processing in Workday?	Bank account signatory functionality is independent of settlement and other transaction workflows. To define which users can initiate, review, and approve Workday transactions, configure the business processes with the respective user for each transaction type.

Recommendations

For signatories requiring supporting documents, add them as attachments when you create or edit bank account signatories. Examples include passports or other forms of identification required from the financial institutions.

If you need to modify a signatory, use the

Change Bank Account Signatories

task to change any of the details. Workday applies the changes once they're approved.

Example: You replace an inactive or terminated signer with an active signer for a specific bank account. You can also remove all signatory lines with the terminated signers.

Requirements

Define all company bank accounts in Workday that require signatories.

Define payment types for signers such as check, credit card, or EFT.

Define workers or external committee members to designate as signers.

Secure access to Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) to configure business process notifications for job position or external committee membership changes to signers.

Limitations

To mass assign signatories to multiple accounts at once, you must use the bank account signatory web services. You can only manually create signatories for individual bank accounts.

Tenant Setup

Create signers using employees or external committee members.

Create signature approval methods for signers such as digital, physical, or scan.

Example: You authorize some signers to verify transactions using a digital signature. You require other signers to use physical signatures to approve payments from certain bank accounts.

Define authority types for signers such as single or joint approvers.

Security

Configure these security domains in the Cash Management functional area:

Domain	Considerations
Set Up: Signer	Users can set up workers and external committee members as signers for bank account signatories.
Set Up: Secured Attachment for Signer	Users can view secured attachments for signers.
Set Up: Bank Account Signatory Information	Users can: Define authority types to track the number of signers needed to approve transactions. You can define an authority type as single or joint. Create signature methods for signers.
Set Up: Bank Account Signatory	Provides access to these subdomains: Set Up: Bank Account Signatory Information Set Up: Secured Attachment for Signer Set Up: Signer
Process: Bank Account Signatory	Users can: Access bank account signatory reports and web services. Edit or cancel pending changes to signatory information as part of the Bank Account Signatories Event business process. Remove signers from specific bank accounts, or from all assigned bank accounts at once using the Mass Update Signatories task.

Business Processes

Business Process	Considerations
Bank Account Signatories Event	Configure to create or edit bank account signatories routed for reviews and approvals.
Change Job Submit Resignation Termination	Configure these Workday HCM business processes to receive notifications when workers change job status such as a transfer, promotion, resignation, or termination. Based on the changes, you can make the necessary updates to the corresponding signatory. Edit the business process definitions to add the Step Configuration Placeholder Service step after business process completion. Then, add notifications to this step with their recipients. The Step Configuration Placeholder Service step enables you to configure notifications before or after another step that doesn't include the configurations.
Manage Committee Membership	Configure this Workday HCM business process to receive notifications when external committee members become inactive or end their committee membership. Based on the changes, you can make the necessary updates to the corresponding signatory. Edit the business process definition to add the Step Configuration Placeholder Service step after business process completion. Then, add notifications to this step with their recipients. The Step Configuration Placeholder Service step enables you to configure notifications before or after another step that doesn't include the configurations.

Reporting

Report or Dashboard	Considerations
Bank Account Signatories Exceptions	View the inactive signers still assigned to bank accounts.
Find Bank Account Signatories	View your bank account signatories filtered by signatory details. The report displays all bank account signatories in Approved status.
Find Historical Changes in Bank Account Signatories	View all the changes to bank account signatories between the dates you specify. You can also filter the changes by the relevant signatory attributes. Example: You use the report for auditing purposes to verify that all changes to signatories were authorized.
View Signers	View all of the signers that you’ve created to add as signatories. The report displays signer details, and whether a signer has any attached documents.

We suggest using these report data sources to build custom reports:

Bank Account Signatory Snapshots

: Displays the historical changes made to bank account signatories.

Example: To determine when bank account signatories were added or updated, you can create a custom report that incorporates signatory details as of a specific date.

Bank Account Signatories

: Displays all bank account signatories.

Example: If you use foreign bank accounts, you can create a custom report to supplement Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) reports. You can use the custom report to identify all signers with cumulative bank balances of 10,000 USD or more within a specified date range.

Signers

: Displays all signers that you can track and manage for audit reporting requirements.

Integrations

Web Service	Considerations
Get Bank Account Signatories	Retrieves bank account signatories from Workday using your specified criteria. You can then export the signatory information to third-party systems.
Get Signers	Retrieves signers from Workday using your specified criteria. You can then export the signers to third-party systems.
Put Bank Account Signatory	Imports and creates bank account signatories for bank accounts.
Put Signer	Imports and creates signers for bank accounts.
Submit Bank Account Signatory	Creates an event for signatory additions, updates, or removals. Then, submits it through the Bank Account Signatories Event business process for review and approval.

Connections and Touchpoints

You use Workday HCM business processes to configure notifications for changes to signers.

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.

Concept: External Committee Members

Steps: Set Up Termination

Define Bank Accounts

Steps: Set Up Job Changes

Steps: Set Up Employee Resignation

The Next Level: Bank Account Signatories