An employee team has completed a months-long project in Workday Adaptive Planning that brings budget planning and analysis for all university funds into Workday. Workday Adaptive Planning supports integrated financial planning, which allows users to create budgets, in-year forecasts, scenario analysis and other financial models. It's a more automated process, saving time and resources during the budget planning cycle.
Iowa State launched the system in April 2020 for its general fund operating budget -- roughly half of the university's overall budget. Since June, an employee team has worked to update Workday Adaptive Planning so all university funds, regardless of source, can be managed with it. The result is a seamless, interactive experience between budget teams and the central financial planning and analysis team.
Key new features include:
- Tuition and mandatory fee revenue projection models
- Budget planning for: auxiliary units, fee-for-service, ISU Foundation gifts, grants, capital projects, faculty startups and carry-forward balances
- Automated budget loading from Workday Adaptive Planning to Workday Finance
Two pieces to the ISU budget
General fund: The university operating budget
Restricted use funds: Sponsored research, endowment income, sales and service, building projects and auxiliary units (for example, athletics, residence, printing, parking, utilities, bookstore, Reiman Gardens, Memorial Union)
All funds: General fund + restricted use funds
Previously, projection models and restricted fund budgets were manually uploaded to Workday Finance, where they could be shared with a broader set of users. Employees would create Excel spreadsheets or extract data from Workday Adaptive Planning and send it to the financial planning and analysis team for manual uploading to Workday Finance. The Workday Finance report process hasn't changed, but campus users now can compare budgets to actuals across the various fund types in those reports.
Ongoing training for user group
To accommodate all-funds budgeting, additional finance employees received access to Workday Adaptive Planning, and training was provided to all users during December and January. Staff in the financial planning and analysis unit will offer additional training sessions and office help hours throughout the FY26 budget planning cycle. The project team will collaborate to develop a standardized budget reporting package for university leaders generated from Workday Adaptive Planning.
Bonnie Whalen, associate vice president for financial planning and analysis, expressed her gratitude to the team that worked on the project -- 31 employees representing various departments across campus.
"The project team has shown exceptional dedication over the past several months, investing countless hours in collaboration with campus partners, implementation consultants and project management to ensure a successful launch," Whalen said.
Questions about the Workday Adaptive Planning deployment can be sent to workday_planning@iastate.edu.
