UW-W Employee FAQs
Do you have questions about Workday? You've come to the right place! The most frequently asked questions about Workday are answered here. This FAQ list will be updated regularly as the project progresses, so remember to check here whenever you have a question.
You ask, we answer!
Send your questions to workdaysupport@uww.edu or call 262.472.2020.
General / Project / Training
Instructor-led training for HR, Finance, and Research Administration staff will begin March 26, 2025. Invites will be sent from UW-Madison.
Yes, all employees will have access beginning in March.
Answer in progress, please check back.
Rather than using the Search field to locate tasks and reports, Shortcuts allow you to access up to 10 reports, tasks, or external links in one location. Shortcuts are located under the Menu on the Workday home page.
- Select the + Add Shortcuts button. The tab will be empty if you have not previously created any shortcuts. Note: A max of 10 shortcuts can be configured.
- Search for the task or report you are creating a shortcut for, then select the (+) to add it to your Shortcuts tab.
- When you have successfully added a shortcut, it will show Added to Menu.
- When opening your Menu again, the newly added report will appear within the Shortcuts tab.
No, Workday does not do travel booking.
Managers can view the Team Absence Calendar; department teammates cannot.
Many of the Workday Job-aids are available in Spanish & other languages. If the job-aid is available in another language there will be a link at the page bottom of the English version job-aid.
Pay / Personal Info / Benefits
In Workday, go to Personal Information, select Payment Elections, select Edit for Direct Deposit, add or update your bank account information, confirm the changes and submit.
A new online benefits administration system called My Insurance Benefits will be available for all Universities of Wisconsin employees in July 2025. My Insurance Benefits will be accessed through the new Workday system starting on July 7. This new system allows secure access to benefits information and the ability for an employee to directly:
- Access the system 24 hours a day; 7 days a week
- Review, enroll and change benefits during a qualified enrollment period (reducing paper applications)
- Review and update dependent information
- Submit required documentation (for example, proof of a qualifying life event)
- Review breakdown of benefits costs
A worker’s Workday account access is ended after two years, meaning they can no longer log into Workday. It is left on or accessible for two years so that they can access tax and payroll documents.
Time Management
In the time and scheduling hub a manager can mass select all employees and mass submit/mass approve time and time off for one week at a time. There is also a mass operations management option for mass approving time and time off that may be used by Shared Servies if necesary.
Answer in progress, please check back.
UW Policy: Vacation, Paid Leave Banks, and Vacation Cash Payouts
Amount of vacation to be charged
- University Staff Not Exempt from FLSA
- Leave is charged in 15-minute increments.
- Faculty, Academic Staff, and LImitied Appointees and University Staff Exempt from FLSA
- Leave for full-time faculty, academic staff, and limited appointees and FLSA-exempt university staff is charged in half-day increments. Abesences of at least one-quarter up to three-quarters of a day should be charged as one half-day. Absences greater than or equal to three-quarters of a day should be charged as one day.
- Employees with less than full-time appointments should report actual hours absent
A "Worker without alerts message" means that a user logged into Workday is not seeing any notifications or alert pop ups, indicating there are currently no pending tasks, approvals, or important updates requiring their attention.
Yes. The "Assign Work Schedule" task is a function that allows managers to set a specific work schedule for an employee, including start and end dates, by selecting a pre-defined work schedule calendar from the system, essentially defining their work hours and days off within the platform; you can access this task by searching for "Assign Work Schedule" in the Workday search bar and selecting the relevant option.
In the time and scheduling hub a manager can mass select all employees and mass submit/mass approve time and time off for one week at a time. There is also a mass operations management option for mass approving time and time off that may be used by Shared Services if necessary.
The manager and manager's manager of all jobs that a worker has can automatically approve the hours for the corresponding job(s) on the timesheet. If additional managers should have access to the employees in the Supervisory Organization, they should be assigned the Unit Timekeeper UW role for that organization.
Answer in progress, please check back.
Answer in progress, please check back.
A "Workday Error: upaid time off is not allowed for Vacation" means that you are trying to request a vacation time off entry in Workday, but the system is set up to not allow you to mark that time off as unpaid; essentially, you cannot use your accrued vacation time for a vacation request, not unpaid time off under the "Vacation" category.
Request & Manage Absence
There is no limit on the number of hours you can carryover, but carryover hours must be used in the following year or else they are forfeited.
Yes. If an employee doesn't have enough of one leave type (like vacation) to cover the time, they can combine other leave types (like comp time, personal leave, or unpaid leave) to reach the desired total. For instance, they might request one hour of vacation and then 0.75 hours of personal leave to total 1.75 hours.
Similar to today, University and FAASLI staff will have their Allocated/Available Vacation front-loaded at the beginning of the year and will see a year-to-date balance showing what they have accrued minus used year to date. The year-to-date(YTD) balance may be negative during the year if they have used more than they have currently earned, but they may not overdraw the Vacation Available balance. This is the same setup for Postdoc time off which also displays Available and YTD balances. The decision was made by HR leadership that in Workday Legal Holiday time off will be accrued in the pay periods in which the holidays actually fall and employees will be able to use up to 16*FTE hours in advance of earning it, so that balance may be go negative up to that limit. The other time off balances cannot be overdrawn and will only go negative.
All 15 holidays that the University observes will be pre-populated in the calendar feature for all employees, however fall break and spring break and other milestones in the academic calendar will not be noted.
You can only carry a negative balance for vacation time. If you request a sick or personal day without any time accrued, Workday will not allow you to submit the request.
Time off requests that have been approved before go-live will transfer to Workday. Time off requests that have not been approved will not transfer.
All time off balances will transfer to Workday on the day of the transition.
- Access your Workday account.
- Select Menu in the top-left corner and choose the Manage Absence application.
- Locate the Legal Holiday you want to cancel (assuming you plan to take it on another day) and select it. Note: The Legal Holiday will be colored green if it is available to be cancelled.
- A new Absence Entries window will appear, select Cancel Absence.
- A new Cancel Absence window will appear; review the Details, add a Comment specifying why you are canceling the request, and select OK. The request will route to your manager for review and approval.
- Once approved, the hours will display as available hours to use under your Leave Balances Legal Holiday category. To use these hours, you would select the Legal Holiday as the Time Off Type of Absence.
- Select Menu in the top-left corner and choose the Request Absence application.
- A new Request Absence window will appear, click the day(s) on the calendar to report, and select Continue.
- Select the Type of Absence, in this case No Leave Taken.
- As needed review, edit, and add a comment. Select Submit Request. The request will go to your manager for review and approval.
Human Resources
Answer in progress, please check back.
Answer in progress, please check back.
TAM will be available for up to 1 year after go-live.
Finance
Answer in progress, please check back.
All P-card purchases will be reconciled in Expenses via an expense report. The ability to charge purchases over $5,000 will still need campus approval. Transactions are loaded into Workday as they are made and employees have 60 days to submit a an expense report.
Procurement
Answer in progress, please check back.
Yes. In Workday, purchase orders are called requestions. You will use the requestion task for anything that would have previously required a PO.
Answer in progress, please check back.
Yes, you are able to use the “My Requisitions” and “Find Purchase Order Lines and Line Splits for Organization” to find a list of PO’s.