Workday Financial Management and Paylocity integration

What moves between them

The main flow runs from Paylocity into Workday Financial Management. After each payroll run, ml-connector fetches payroll journal entries from Paylocity and posts them into Workday GL accounts, mapped to matching cost centers and worktags. Employee records flow in the same direction so Workday headcount reflects Paylocity hires, terminations, and rehires. Reference data such as company structures, work locations, and pay grades are aligned in both directions to ensure payroll allocations land on valid Workday dimensions. GL postings are read-only in Paylocity, so ml-connector never writes financial entries back to payroll.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both credential sets encrypted and orchestrates the two very different API surfaces. On the Paylocity side it obtains and refreshes the OAuth2 bearer token before each request. On the Workday side it chooses between REST for lightweight reads (employees, GL account validation) and SOAP for journal entry submission, since SOAP better supports the complex batch operations payroll requires. Because Workday has no native webhooks, ml-connector polls both systems on a schedule tied to your payroll calendar, starting with a webhook listen on Paylocity's payroll-processed event where it is enabled. Cost centers and worktags are fetched first so every payroll journal line references GL accounts and cost center combinations that already exist in Workday. Paylocity rate limits are handled with backoff and retry, and every record carries a full audit trail and can be replayed if a downstream journal submission fails.

A real-world example

A mid-sized services firm runs Workday Financial Management for procurement and GL, and Paylocity for payroll and HR across four regional offices. Before the integration, the finance team exported payroll registers from Paylocity every pay period and manually entered labor totals into Workday GL by cost center. Month-end close involved reconciling Workday headcount against Paylocity to chase differences. With Paylocity and Workday connected, each payroll run's GL entries flow automatically into Workday allocated to the correct regional cost centers, and employee changes keep both systems aligned. Month-end close starts with labor accounts already reconciled.

What you can do

• •Post Paylocity payroll GL entries into Workday Financial Management's general ledger after every pay run, mapped to the correct cost centers and GL accounts.
• •Keep Workday employee records synchronized with Paylocity hires, terminations, and rehires so headcount is always current.
• •Map Paylocity company structures, work locations, and pay grades to Workday worktags and cost centers so payroll allocations land on valid GL dimensions.
• •Authenticate Paylocity with OAuth2 client credentials and Workday with SOAP ISU or REST OAuth2, handling token refresh and credential rotation.
• •Poll on a schedule aligned with your payroll calendar with retries, cost center validation, and a full audit trail on every record.

Questions

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

The main flow is Paylocity into Workday Financial Management. Payroll GL entries and employee records move from Paylocity into Workday, while company structures and cost centers are aligned in both directions so payroll allocations land on valid GL accounts. GL entries posted to Workday are read-only on the Paylocity side, so ml-connector does not write financial entries back to payroll.

Why does ml-connector use both SOAP and REST for Workday?

Workday's REST API has narrower functionality as of version 46.1, so ml-connector uses REST for lightweight reads (employee validation, GL account lookups) and SOAP for the complex batch journal entry submissions that payroll requires. SOAP also allows WS-Security UsernameToken auth, which some Workday tenants prefer over OAuth2.

How does the integration handle Workday's lack of webhooks and Paylocity's webhook-only events?

ml-connector polls Workday on a schedule tied to your payroll calendar since Workday publishes no native webhooks. On Paylocity it listens for payroll-processed webhook events where available, but also polls to catch any events that fail delivery within the 24-hour retry window. Both polling intervals include cost center validation and automatic retries on transient failures.