Workday Financial Management and Salesforce integration

What moves between them

Workday Financial Management supplies customer, supplier, and invoice records to Salesforce. Customer records from Workday are mapped to Salesforce Account objects with financial attributes (credit limit, payment terms, year-to-date invoice total). Suppliers are also created as Accounts in a designated folder or record type so the sales team can distinguish vendor masters from customer masters. Recent invoices and payments are synced as related records or custom fields on the Account, providing a financial trail within the CRM. The flow runs on a polling schedule (typically daily or after each business process in Workday) since Workday publishes no webhook for financial events.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores Workday ISU credentials and Salesforce OAuth2 credentials encrypted. On each polling cycle, it queries Workday using the REST API with a date range filter to fetch customers, suppliers, and invoices modified since the last run. It then maps each Workday customer to a Salesforce Account based on a matching external ID (such as the Workday ID). For suppliers, it creates or updates Accounts with a special record type or lookup field to identify them as vendors. Invoice records are attached as related records (via a custom Invoice object) or stored as roll-up fields on the Account, depending on your Salesforce license and preference. If the Workday API returns a 401 (token expired), ml-connector refreshes the OAuth2 token and retries the request. Salesforce rate limits are checked; if a call returns 429, ml-connector backs off and retries. Every record carries a full audit trail showing the source Workday ID, the Salesforce record it mapped to, and the timestamp of the last sync. Failed records are queued for replay on the next cycle.

A real-world example

A mid-market business services firm uses Workday Financial Management for accounts receivable, billing, and vendor management, and Salesforce for sales and account management. Before the integration, the account management team exported customer lists and invoice summaries from Workday each month and pasted them into Salesforce notes, while the finance team logged into Workday separately to check a customer's payment status when a sales opportunity came up. Payment disputes and sales forecasts were analyzed across two disconnected screens. After connecting Workday Financial Management to Salesforce, each Account record in Salesforce now shows the customer's credit limit, payment terms, and a summary of recent invoices and payments. Upsell opportunities are identified faster because the sales team can spot patterns in customer payment behavior without asking finance, and month-end billing reconciliation is simpler because invoice records in Salesforce match Workday's source of truth.

What you can do

• •Sync customers from Workday into Salesforce Account objects with credit limits, payment terms, and financial history.
• •Bring supplier master records from Workday into Salesforce as vendor-flagged Accounts to distinguish them from customers.
• •Attach recent invoices and payments to each Account, with full financial detail, so sales teams see payment trends without leaving Salesforce.
• •Authenticate Workday with ISU credentials and Salesforce with OAuth2 Client Credentials, refreshing tokens and retrying on rate limits.
• •Poll Workday on a flexible schedule tied to your business process cycle, with a complete audit trail on every customer, supplier, and invoice record synced.

Questions

Which direction does data flow between Workday Financial Management and Salesforce?

Data flows primarily from Workday Financial Management into Salesforce. Customers, suppliers, and invoice records are synced from Workday as Salesforce Accounts and related records. Salesforce does not write financial data back to Workday, since invoice creation and modification belong in Workday's accounts payable and general ledger.

What authentication does ml-connector use for Workday Financial Management?

ml-connector accepts either SOAP or REST endpoints and handles the corresponding authentication. For SOAP, it uses the ISU (Integration System User) credentials with WS-Security UsernameToken. For REST, it uses the OAuth2 refresh-token flow, with the refresh token stored encrypted and exchanged for a one-hour access token on each polling cycle.

How does Salesforce's Invoice object requirement affect this integration?

Salesforce's Invoice object is available only in Revenue Cloud and Order Management orgs, not in basic Sales Cloud. If your org lacks the Invoice object, ml-connector creates a custom Invoice object to hold invoice records, or stores invoice summary data as fields on the Account. This is configured during setup based on your Salesforce edition.