Workday Financial Management and PayPal integration

What moves between them

The primary flow runs from Workday into PayPal for invoice collection. Workday supplier invoices are read on a polling schedule and pushed to PayPal as invoices, tagged with the Workday invoice ID for later reconciliation. When PayPal receives payments against those invoices or processes refunds, the payment records flow back into Workday as journal entries, allocated to the same supplier and AP account. Reference data such as supplier emails and payment terms are aligned in both directions. Transaction search queries in PayPal are keyed to Workday invoice IDs to match inbound payments to the original invoices.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores both credential sets encrypted: Workday's refresh token is refreshed on each call if needed, and PayPal's OAuth2 bearer token is cached per the advertised lifetime. Because Workday has no webhooks, ml-connector polls the Workday supplier invoice endpoint on a schedule you define, typically 30 minutes apart, and filters by creation or modification date to avoid re-processing. When invoices are found, they are sent to PayPal with the Workday invoice ID in the PayPal invoice metadata so the payment can be matched back. On the return side, PayPal can push webhook events when payments occur, or ml-connector can poll the PayPal transaction search endpoint within the 31-day window. Workday journal entry creation requires SOAP because the REST interface has narrower capabilities, so ml-connector switches to SOAP when posting the reconciled payments. Every reconciliation attempt includes idempotency keys to prevent double-posting if a request times out and is retried. Payment amounts are matched against the original Workday invoice total to catch partial or overpayments.

A real-world example

A mid-sized e-commerce distributor runs Workday Financial Management for accounts payable and procurement, and accepts payments from customers worldwide through PayPal. Before the integration, the finance team received Workday supplier invoices, manually created corresponding PayPal invoices or sent payment links, then when payments arrived, they searched PayPal for matching deposits and re-entered them into Workday's general ledger by hand. Reconciliation at month end was slow because the two systems had no common key. With Workday and PayPal connected, supplier invoices flow from Workday to PayPal automatically, PayPal payments are captured with the Workday invoice ID attached, and when money arrives, journal entries post into Workday without re-keying. Month-end accounts payable close now starts with cash and invoices already aligned.

What you can do

• •Send Workday supplier invoices to PayPal as invoices for payment collection, tagged with Workday invoice IDs for reconciliation.
• •Capture PayPal payments and refunds as Workday journal entries, allocated to the correct supplier and AP account.
• •Match inbound PayPal transaction records against Workday invoices using invoice ID keys to keep accounts payable synchronized.
• •Authenticate Workday via OAuth2 or WS-Security and PayPal via OAuth2 Client Credentials, with token refresh and webhook signature verification.
• •Poll Workday invoices on a schedule and reconcile PayPal transactions within the 31-day search window, with full retry and audit trails.

Questions

What happens when PayPal receives a payment against a Workday invoice?

ml-connector captures the PayPal payment record and creates a corresponding journal entry in Workday, allocating the amount to the supplier and AP account from the original invoice. The payment is keyed using the Workday invoice ID so the two records remain linked. If the payment is partial or a refund is issued, those adjustments also flow back into Workday.

Does ml-connector use PayPal webhooks or polling?

Both. PayPal can push webhook events when payments occur, which is faster. ml-connector validates every webhook signature using the RSA-SHA256 certificate PayPal provides. For backup or to reconcile transactions outside the webhook window, ml-connector can also poll the PayPal transaction search endpoint, which looks back up to 31 days.

How does the integration handle Workday's lack of native webhooks?

ml-connector polls the Workday supplier invoice endpoint on a schedule you define, typically every 30 minutes, and filters by creation or modification date to avoid duplicate processing. Journal entry posting in Workday is done via SOAP because REST has narrower capabilities. Idempotency keys prevent double-posting if a request times out and is retried.