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Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Setup Considerations: Expense Rate Tables

Setup Considerations: Expense Rate Tables

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of expense rate tables. It explains:
  • Why to set them up.
  • How they fit 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 They Are

Expense rate tables use rules, criteria, and ranges to calculate expense item amounts automatically on:
  • Expense reports.
  • Spend authorizations.

Business Benefits

  • Calculate reimbursement amounts automatically to reduce manual effort.
  • Centralize reimbursement rules to minimize review time and maintain historical data for auditing.
  • Prevent payees from entering erroneous expense data that delays approval.
  • Remain compliant with per diem requirements and your travel and expense policy.

Use Cases

  • Apply maximum amounts to prevent payees from claiming excessive expenses.
  • Calculate per diem allowances for payees on business trips.
  • Control compensation for distance-based expenses, such as fuel allowance.
  • Use travel destinations to determine expense reimbursement rates.

Questions to Consider

Questions
Considerations
How do you want to calculate rates for different expenses?
You can configure rate tables to calculate expense rates that are based on percentages, or:
  • Fixed amounts.
  • Graduated amounts.
  • Maximum amounts.
Depending on the number of rate tables you configure and the rate table types that you use, they can be:
  • Base rate tables: Primary rate tables for expense items, containing standard reimbursement rates.
  • Adjustment rate tables: Additional tables you associate with base tables to adjust base rates in certain scenarios.
When you configure rate tables for different expenses, consider which existing expense items need rate tables and whether to configure any new expense items.
When you don't configure rate tables for your expense items, Workday doesn't calculate expense item amounts automatically.
Which of your expense items use the same rates?
You can use 1 base rate table with multiple expense items when these items have the same reimbursement rates.
When you don't use the same base table with expense items using the same rates, you might have to maintain and create more rate tables.
In which scenarios do you want to adjust base rates?
You can configure adjustment rate tables to increase and decrease base reimbursement rates for payees.
Examples:
  • Decrease base per diem amounts when customers provide employees with a meal.
  • Increase base per diem amounts when employees travel to cities with higher living costs.
What spend thresholds does your company use?
You can set spend thresholds using the
Maximum
 rate table type. You can also enable payees to exceed these thresholds so they can submit unexpected expenses, such as last-minute flight bookings.
How do you manage changing rates?
You can change effective dates on your rate tables and calculate rates using revised rules and criteria.
When you change effective dates, Workday takes snapshots of your rate tables so you can:
  • Audit rates.
  • Remain compliant with legislation and your travel and expense policy.

Recommendations

  • Organize lines on each rate table from most-to-least preferred. When Workday evaluates rate table lines, we apply rates using the first line that matches.
  • To reduce configuration effort, set up your configurable expense item attributes and rate table rules before you create rate tables.
To prevent configuration errors, review your rate tables to avoid:
  • Omitting values from a set of ranges.
  • Splitting related ranges across different rate table lines.
When you import expense data into Workday, use the relevant web services in this sequence to reduce configuration effort:
  • Rate table rules.
  • Rate tables.
  • Expense items.

Requirements

  • Set up expense items for your rate tables.
  • Enable rate tables for spend authorizations manually.
  • Set ranges on graduated rate tables using either decimal or integer values entirely.

Limitations

You can only use Workday to edit rate tables with 1,000 lines or fewer. Use the
Import Expense Rate Table
 web service to edit rate tables with more than 1,000 lines.
You can't:
  • Assign adjustment rate tables to multiple expense items.
  • Inactivate expense rate tables. You can group unrequired rate tables by adding prefixes to their names, such as
    z - do not use
    .
  • Use multicurrency rate tables with expense items that have travel journals.

Tenant Setup

No impact.

Security

Domains
Considerations
Set Up: Expense Item
Enables you to set up:
  • Expense items.
  • Expense rate tables.
  • Rules for expense rate tables.
View: Expense Item
Enables you to view expense items, including their associated rate tables.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

Reports
Considerations
View Expense Rate Table
Use to:
  • Track rate table information for auditing purposes, such as effective dates and rules.
  • View, edit, and copy expense rate tables.
View Expense Rate Table Rule
Use to view, edit, and create condition rules on expense rate tables.

Integrations

Web Services
Considerations
Get Expense Rate Tables
Get Expense Rate Table Rules
Use to retrieve data for expense rate tables and rules.
Import Expense Rate Table
Put Expense Rate Table Rule
Use to upload data for expense rate tables and rules.

Connections and Touchpoints

You can use rate tables to calculate expense item amounts automatically on the travel journals you use on expense reports.
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.