Workday Financial Management and ADP integration

What moves between them

The main flow runs from ADP into Workday Financial Management. After each payroll run, ml-connector reads ADP's general ledger documents and worker events and posts labor cost journals into Workday Financial Management's general ledger, mapped to the matching GL accounts and worktags. Worker hires, terminations, and status changes flow the same direction so Workday headcount reflects ADP records. Cost centers and GL account mappings are established upfront so every payroll journal line lands on a valid Workday account.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both credential sets encrypted. For ADP, it presents the client TLS certificate at the TLS layer on every request and refreshes the OAuth2 bearer token when a call returns 401. ADP rate limits per gateway node return HTTP 429, so ml-connector backs off and retries according to ADP's recommended pattern. For Workday Financial Management, it uses the ISU account over SOAP or the REST OAuth2 flow depending on the operation; journal posting requires SOAP for full submission support. Because Workday has no native webhooks, ml-connector polls ADP payroll documents and worker records on a schedule tied to your payroll calendar. It validates GL accounts and worktags before posting to avoid downstream rejects, and every record carries a full audit trail so failed journal lines can be replayed once the issue is fixed.

A real-world example

A mid-market professional services firm uses Workday Financial Management for procurement, AP, and GL, and runs ADP Workforce Now for payroll across multiple offices. Before the integration, the finance team pulled payroll GL registers from ADP after each pay run and manually created journal entries in Workday to record labor costs to the correct profit centers and GL accounts. The month-end close process involved reconciling Workday headcount against ADP, which surfaced discrepancies for terminations and rehires the finance team had to hunt down. With ADP and Workday Financial Management connected, each payroll run automatically posts labor cost journals to Workday allocated to the right profit center, and worker changes keep the two systems aligned. The finance team no longer re-keys payroll data or spends days on month-end reconciliation.

What you can do

• •Post ADP payroll GL documents into Workday Financial Management after every pay run, allocated to the correct GL accounts and worktags.
• •Keep Workday headcount and worker status aligned with ADP hires, terminations, and rehires.
• •Validate GL accounts and cost centers in Workday before posting payroll journals so entries land on correct financial dimensions.
• •Present ADP's required mutual TLS client certificate at the TLS layer and refresh OAuth2 tokens transparently when endpoints return 401.
• •Poll ADP on a schedule tied to your payroll calendar, with automatic retries and a full audit trail on every posted journal.

Questions

Which direction does data move between Workday Financial Management and ADP?

The main flow is ADP into Workday Financial Management. Payroll general ledger documents and worker records move from ADP into Workday Financial Management, allocated to GL accounts and worktags. GL documents are read-only in ADP, so ml-connector does not write financial entries back into payroll.

Does ADP's mutual TLS certificate requirement need special setup?

Yes. ADP requires a client certificate presented at the TLS layer on every call in addition to OAuth2 credentials. ml-connector stores the certificate encrypted, presents it on each request to ADP, and tracks certificate expiry so a renewal is handled before the certificate becomes invalid and causes outages.

How does the integration handle Workday Financial Management's polling model and ADP's event capabilities?

ml-connector polls ADP payroll documents and worker records on a schedule tied to your payroll calendar. ADP also supports event webhooks for worker status changes and pay input events; ml-connector can register to receive these notifications for near-real-time updates. Workday Financial Management has no native webhooks, so all reads from Workday use polling with date-range filters.