Payroll Integration: Why In-Tenant Beats Add-Ons

Most finance and HR leaders share a common goal: a truly unified system for payroll, benefits, and accounts payable. But poor data quality — including payroll data — costs companies an average of $12.9 million annually, according to Gartner. To avoid that risk, opting for a unified system allows companies to make faster decisions with better accuracy and reduced compliance risk. 

If you’re using Workday to achieve this goal, you’re already halfway there — and in good company, with more than 60% of Fortune 500 companies also using it.  

To go the rest of the way, you have two options: 

• Workday-compatible solutions, which rely on APIs, integrations, and file transfers to connect your systems to Workday. 

• Workday-native solutions, which are delivered directly inside your Workday tenant with no external connections required. 

Both promise connectivity and claim to be seamless. Yet one creates far more complexity than the other. 

What is the Workday-compatible approach? 

For a long time, most companies have chosen Workday-compatible solutions because they feel familiar and because they’re what most service providers offer. Compatible solutions can link Workday with third-party benefits administrators, accounting software, and ERP systems. The appeal is flexibility — you can theoretically choose best-of-breed providers for each function and tie them together through integrations. 

On a practical level, here's how this approach typically works: When an HR team member updates an employee record in Workday, that information is exported to the payroll provider's system through an integration. The payroll provider processes the data there and then sends the results back to Workday through another integration. The same pattern repeats for time and attendance data, benefits information, and financial reporting. 

This approach mirrors how legacy on-premise systems worked in the past, only this time in the cloud. The thinking goes that if you can build enough connections between your systems, you'll achieve the unified, single source of truth you're after. 

What is the Workday-native approach? 

The Workday-native path is fundamentally different. Instead of building bridges between separate systems, native solutions are delivered inside your Workday tenant. 

Native solutions deliver a unified experience by eliminating the gaps that integrations are designed to bridge. Instead of connecting Point A to Point B, everything happens at Point A. Your Workday tenant becomes the single source of truth, not just in theory, but in practice. 

Under this model, when your HR team updates an employee’s address, your payroll service provider can access that change immediately because they’re working in the same system. And when payroll is processed, the results appear instantly in Workday because that’s where the work happens — no waiting for integrations to run, no file imports to verify, and no reconciliation to worry about.   

This approach keeps your payroll, benefits, and accounts payable services within Workday's security framework. The same access controls and compliance measures that protect your HR data extend to these administrative services. Your team manages one system that does more, not multiple connections between separate platforms. 

Workday-compatible vs. Workday-native: What's the difference? 

Both approaches promise to connect your systems but result in very different day-to-day realities. 

Data accuracy and the single source of truth 

With Workday-compatible solutions, the same data exists in multiple places, and each transfer can lead to mismatches. A mismatch happens when a record is updated in one system but not the other, or when a sync fails without anyone noticing it. In both cases, your team has more work to do later.  

Workday-native solutions, on the other hand, preserve Workday as the single source of truth. Your team and your service partner see the same data in real-time. There’s nothing to reconcile because there’s only one version of the truth. 

IT burden and maintenance 

Integrations require ongoing care, and that responsibility falls to IT. They become the keepers of these connections, with each integration adding another potential point of failure and another item to maintain.  

Workday-native solutions don’t require additional connections or middleware. They’re delivered natively within Workday, significantly decreasing IT’s burden. When Workday updates, your services update too, so no compatibility testing is required. 

Speed and visibility 

Workday-compatible systems work in cycles: Data leaves Workday, goes to the service partner’s external system, then comes back to Workday. This process creates delays.  

Native delivery means real-time visibility. Changes made today are reflected immediately in Workday, allowing teams to be nimbler and more efficient. 

Compliance and auditability 

Auditing your data and seeing who’s made changes is harder when it moves between systems. You might need to log into multiple platforms and piece timestamps together to get the whole picture. Because Workday-native solutions are delivered in your applications, your audit trails are preserved. Everything’s in one place with consistent documentation of who did what and when. 

How does OSV deliver Workday-native payroll? 

OneSource Virtual (OSV) has built its business model around the Workday-native approach. For over 15 years, we’ve worked exclusively with Workday customers, delivering payroll, benefits administration, and accounts payable services directly within Workday. This allows our experts to work as an extension of your team while preserving your control and visibility.   

We handle payroll processing, garnishment administration, and much of year-end reporting directly in Workday, using your workflows. You maintain control and visibility of your data, with no files to reconcile and no waiting for your data to sync. 

We extend this same approach to our benefits and accounts payable services, as well, to provide you with comprehensive services that operate seamlessly within Workday. Whether you need full-service payroll management or targeted support for specific functions, our services scale to match your organization's needs. 

Because of how our team operates, HR can see payroll results immediately, finance can pull real-time reports, and IT can avoid month-end troubleshooting. That’s how we help organizations go from transactional to transformational and allow your team to focus on strategic initiatives that drive business value. 

The clear choice for unifying your data 

Achieving a trustworthy single source of truth for payroll isn't just about connecting systems — it's about how those systems connect. Workday-compatible solutions ask you to manage complexity through integrations, file transfers, and constant reconciliation. Workday-native solutions eliminate complexity by delivering services where your data already lives. 

For organizations using Workday, the choice between Workday-compatible and Workday-native shapes everything from daily workflows to audit readiness to how much time IT spends troubleshooting connections. One approach adds moving parts; the other removes them. 

OSV has spent over 15 years proving that Workday-native delivery works — not just in theory, but in practice.  

If you're ready to explore what payroll looks like without the integration headaches, contact us to discover how in-tenant delivery can transform your payroll operations.