Workday Financial Management and Tipalti integration

What moves between them

Supplier invoices flow from Workday to Tipalti on a daily or bidaily schedule, mapped to matching suppliers and GL accounts. Purchase orders move the same direction so Tipalti knows the spend authority. When Tipalti approves and submits a payment batch, ml-connector receives the webhook event, reads the payment details, and creates corresponding journal entries in Workday's GL to record the cash impact. GL accounts and worktags are reconciled in both directions so payments always post to valid Workday dimensions. Suppliers themselves are synchronized periodically so onboarding changes in either system propagate.

How ml-connector handles it

ml-connector stores Workday ISU credentials and manages OAuth2 token refresh on the Workday side, polling invoices and POs via SOAP for the full breadth of financial data. It validates PO authority against Workday worktags so invoices land on cost centers that exist. On the Tipalti side, ml-connector encrypts the API key and listens for webhook events at a registered HTTPS endpoint, verifying each event with HMAC-SHA256 to ensure authenticity. When a payment_submitted or completed webhook fires, ml-connector reads the payment batch from Tipalti, converts it to Workday journal entry format with GL accounts and worktag allocations, and submits it via SOAP so the cash outflow posts without manual intervention. Supplier records are kept in sync through bidirectional mapping, and polling intervals align with your approval cycles to avoid throttling. Every record carries an audit trail of source, event type, and timestamp.

A real-world example

A mid-sized consumer goods company uses Workday for finance and procurement across five distribution centers. AP processes invoices by hand each week, coding them to cost centers and POs in both Workday and Tipalti, then at month-end reconciles supplier statements across two systems. With Workday and Tipalti connected, invoices from vendors automatically flow into Tipalti from Workday with the right PO and GL coding, the AP team approves and batches them in Tipalti, and approved payments trigger journal entries in Workday so the GL reflects every payment without re-keying. Month-end takes one day instead of three.

What you can do

• •Automatically sync supplier invoices from Workday to Tipalti with PO and GL account mapping.
• •Create Workday journal entries from Tipalti payment events so your GL records cash outflows in real time.
• •Keep supplier records and GL accounts aligned between Workday and Tipalti through bidirectional reconciliation.
• •Authenticate Workday with ISU credentials and OAuth2 refresh tokens, and Tipalti with HMAC-SHA256 webhook verification.
• •Poll Workday on a schedule that respects rate limits, receive Tipalti payments via webhooks, and track every invoice and payment with a full audit trail.

Questions

Which direction do invoices and payments flow between Workday and Tipalti?

Invoices and purchase orders flow from Workday to Tipalti, where your AP team processes them. When Tipalti approves a payment batch, ml-connector receives the webhook and creates the corresponding journal entry in Workday's GL. Supplier and GL account data sync bidirectionally to keep both systems aligned.

How does ml-connector handle Workday's lack of native webhooks for financial entities?

ml-connector polls Workday on a schedule aligned with your approval cycles, typically daily or bidaily, using date-range filters on SOAP API calls to fetch invoices and payments. Polling intervals respect Workday's 5-minute minimum to avoid triggering tenant-level rate throttling, and every poll is logged so you can audit what was read and when.

Does ml-connector verify that Tipalti webhook events are authentic?

Yes. Every webhook event from Tipalti is verified using HMAC-SHA256 with your Tipalti API key before any record is created in Workday. If the signature does not match, the event is rejected, so you can be certain the payment approval came from Tipalti and not a third party.