Setup Considerations: Cash Forecasting with Worksheets
You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of
cash forecasting with Worksheets. 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
You can set up cash forecasting with Worksheets to create cash forecasts for viewing in cash
forecast reports and dashboards. You can use Worksheets to model what-if scenarios
in a spreadsheet format using your operational transactions, bank statement
transactions, and external cash activities. Cash forecast reports provide visibility
into your future cash activities for making accurate projections and decisions on
funding and investing needs.
Business Benefits
Cash forecasting with Worksheets enables you to:
- Collaborate with other users to model cash forecasts more efficiently and streamline the process.
- Link supplier invoices, customer invoices, expenses, payroll, or other custom payment reports to automatically populate forecasted data and reduce manual data entry on model workbooks.
- Compare and analyze your forecasts versus actuals to increase accuracy for projecting future cash flows.
- Schedule and automate the cash forecast generation process on regular intervals to produce predictable and reliable cash forecasts.
Use Cases
You can use cash forecasting with Worksheets to:
- Define a cash forecasting structure to prepare projected cash inflows, outflows, and balances for current and future cash positions.
- Schedule Workday to automatically generate a rolling, 12-month cash forecast every month to determine the liquidity requirements for supporting strategic company initiatives.
- Output your cash forecasts to reports or a Cash Management dashboard to track liquidity, identify future cash shortfalls, and make funding and investing decisions.
Questions to Consider
Question | Considerations |
|---|---|
Can you replicate an existing non-Workday cash forecast outline
structure to use for cash forecasting with Worksheets? | You can replicate your cash forecast structure that exists outside of
Workday exactly as it appears in production. You can also use your
existing spend categories or revenue categories to define forecasted
cash activities such as rent, interest, or domestic and international
payments. |
Why is it important to construct a hierarchical outline structure with
multiple levels? | A hierarchical cash forecast outline with multiple levels enables you
to:
|
How can you use non-Workday data sources for modeling your cash
forecast data? | You can record external cash activities using the Create
External Cash Activity task, or the Import External Cash
Activities web service. You can also upload ad hoc data from
local storage into Worksheets. Workday then converts the data into a
model worksheet that you can merge with your cash forecast
worksheet. |
How can you collaborate with other users to prepare forecasted data
related to payroll, tax, and other secured cash activities? | The owner of the worksheet can assign view, edit, and comment
permissions in Worksheets. |
How can you keep your in-progress cash forecasts current with the
latest updates in Workday? | You can link Workday source data as live data in Worksheets and
schedule automatic refreshes to keep cash forecast changes up to
date. |
Recommendations
- Because you can only assign 1 time span profile to an outline, we recommend that you define multiple cash forecast outlines for specific usages. Example: A monthly forecast at a high level and a daily forecast at a more detailed level.
- If you use a company hierarchy in the outline, the cash forecast displays amounts and balances separately for each company. It’s a good practice to keep the companies that you want to compare in 1 workbook, since the cash forecast displays the companies side by side. You can generate other workbooks for the companies that you’re not comparing.
Requirements
To display your published cash forecast in the standard reports, map your outline to
Workday aliases using the
Map Standard Aliases
task. Select
Cash Forecast Outline Row
on the Business Object
prompt.Example: Map these standard aliases to the associated rows in your outline
structure:
Standard Alias | Mapped Tenanted Value |
|---|---|
_FC_Outline_Top_Level
| Daily Cash Forecast
|
_FC_Opening Balance
| Opening Balance
|
_FC_Inflows
| Cash Inflows
|
_FC_Outflows
| Cash Outflows
|
Limitations
You can only map the Workday standard aliases to a single cash forecast outline. If you're
using more than 1 outline for cash forecasting, you can copy the standard reports as
custom reports to link to the other outlines. We recommend that you contact Workday
Professional Services or a Workday Consulting partner for assistance.
Tenant Setup
No impact.
Security
Domain | Considerations |
|---|---|
Worksheets in the System functional area | Users secured to this domain can create, upload, edit, share, and
collaborate on workbooks. |
Drive in the System functional area | Provides access to Workday Drive for storing workbooks and other file
types, such as CSV files, for use in Worksheets. |
Set Up: Cash Forecasting in the Cash Management functional
area | Provides access to all cash forecast outline functionality. |
Process: Cash Forecast Reporting in the Cash Management
functional area | Provides access to all cash forecast generation functionality. Users
can also maintain cash activity categories and external cash activities. |
Process: Cash Forecast Data Automation in the Cash Management
functional area | Provides access to cash forecast data sources and reports to use for
automated data accumulation in Worksheets. |
Reports: Cash Forecast Reporting in the Cash Management
functional area | Users secured to this domain can view published cash forecasts and
standard reports. |
Aliases in the System functional area | Users secured to this domain can use the Map Standard
Aliases task to map cash forecast outline rows to Workday
aliases for reporting purposes. |
Business Processes
Business Process | Considerations |
|---|---|
Cash Forecast Event 2.0
| Publishing the cash forecast launches this business process to send the
completed cash forecast for notification and approval. When you add a review
step in the business process definition, reviewers can update the report
during review and approval. All reviewers must have security access to
the Process: Cash Forecast Reporting domain. |
Cash Forecast Intercompany Event 2.0
| Configure this business process if you use intercompanies in your
organization. Reviewers from each company must approve the cash forecast for
the publishing process to complete. |
Reporting
Report or Dashboard | Considerations |
|---|---|
Cash Forecast by Reporting Currency report | Displays your forecasted cash activities and published cash forecast
workbook using the specified reporting currency. |
Cash Forecast by Transaction Currency
report | Displays your forecasted cash activities and published cash forecast
workbook using the transaction currency. |
Cash Forecast to Actuals in Reporting Currency
report | Displays your forecasted cash activities, actual cash positions, and
their variances based on the cash forecast outline. Variances in the
forecasts and actuals can indicate shortfalls or surplus funds. Upload or
manually enter prior day and intraday bank statements to display the
actuals. |
Cash Management dashboard | You can create custom worklets to display on this dashboard using the
Cash Forecast Cells 2.0 report data
source. |
We suggest using these report data sources to build custom reports with cash
forecasts:
- Cash Forecasts 2.0
- Cash Forecast Cells 2.0
- External Cash Activity Group
Integrations
You can use the
Import External Cash Activities
web service to import cash activities
from third-party systems into Workday. You can then build a custom report using the
External Cash Activity Group
report data source and
business object, and link the report to your model worksheet to prepopulate your
cash forecasts with the cash activities.Connections and Touchpoints
You can link custom reports with these cash activities from outside cash management to your
model worksheet:
- Customer invoices
- Expense reports
- External cash activities
- Payroll payments
- Supplier invoices
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.