Payroll Reporting in Workday: How to Eliminate Data Quality Issues

Payroll reporting is crucial for businesses across all industries. It's part of how organizations manage employee compensation, ensure compliance, and make informed, data-driven decisions. When they're detailed and accurate, payroll reports reveal valuable insights about labor costs, employee trends, and regulatory obligations.

Workday customers have a built-in advantage when it comes to payroll, with real-time visibility into their payroll report data and access to over 5,000 prebuilt reports and 175+ dashboards.

But your reports are only as good as your data, which needs to be clean and accurate to deliver real insights.

This overview explains what payroll reporting is, its benefits, and how Workday can help you streamline your current efforts to save time, money, and resources. It also covers how OneSource Virtual (OSV)'s Workday-native services — delivered directly within your Workday tenant — eliminate the obstacles that compromise data quality and support accurate reporting results.

What is payroll reporting?

Payroll reporting provides valuable information about employee compensation, deductions, taxes, and other payroll-related metrics. They're vital for understanding how much payroll is costing your business. They're also important for tracking your compliance requirements and maintaining transparency with stakeholders. Some state or federal agencies even require that payroll reports be filed on a quarterly or annual basis.

For Workday customers, payroll reporting goes beyond basic data collection. With the platform's real-time data model, every report reflects your current state. When a manager approves a pay increase, for example, that change shows up immediately, enabling faster and more informed decision-making. This eliminates the need for overnight batch processing or manual updates.

Key components of Workday payroll reports include:

• Gross wages and net pay for employees
• Tax withholdings and employer tax contributions
• Deductions for benefits, retirement plans, and garnishments
• Overtime and bonus payments
• Payroll compliance metrics and filings

Payroll reporting plays a critical role in several ways:

• Compliance and regulatory readiness – Payroll reports help businesses adhere to federal, state, and local tax regulations by providing accurate documentation for filings and audits, making it easier to file tax forms and demonstrate compliance with wage and hour laws.
• Cost management – Analyzing payroll data helps you monitor labor costs, overtime trends, and benefit expenses to improve budgeting and predict future costs.
• Employee trust – Transparent payroll reporting builds trust by providing clear records of earnings and deductions, which also improves job satisfaction.

Yet as powerful as Workday is, data hygiene is critical. Errors in time entry, earnings calculations, or tax withholding can flow directly into your reports. This is no small thing. According to the IRS, 33% of employers make payroll errors each year, with 1 in 4 being penalized for them.

Workday provides comprehensive reporting tools to help you identify issues, maintain compliance, and make informed decisions — if your data is reliable.

What are the obstacles to reliable payroll reporting?

Workday has exceptional reporting capabilities, but many organizations struggle to fully leverage them. The issue isn't the platform — it's how payroll services connect to it. Most payroll vendors operate outside your Workday tenant and rely on integrations, APIs, and file transfers to move data back and forth. These connections can compromise the accuracy and timeliness of reporting.

• Integration delays and data silos – When payroll vendors process data in their own systems and sync the results back to Workday, the data is always slightly outdated. Reports reflect what happened hours or even days ago, not what's happening right now. You might run a payroll report, thinking you have current data, only to discover later that pending transactions are absent.
• Manual file transfers create version control issues – File-based integrations raise certain questions. Did the overnight transfer complete? Is this the most recent version? Which dataset should we trust? Questions like these become routine when data moves between systems. Version control problems can lead to reporting discrepancies that require investigation and reconciliation.
• Reconciliation between systems – When payroll processing occurs outside of Workday, someone on your team has to reconcile the data when it comes back to ensure nothing was lost or changed incorrectly. This manual process is time-consuming, error-prone, and creates a second source of truth, defeating the purpose of having a unified system in the first place.
• The lag between payroll events and reporting visibility – When a garnishment gets processed or a tax rate changes in your vendor's external system, how long does it take for that change to appear in your Workday reports? There will always be a lag, which could impact your ability to make informed decisions. Lag time is especially problematic during year-end processing or audits, when the need for immediate accuracy is critical.
• Data issues multiplying across reports – When an error occurs upstream in an external system, it has a way of spreading across reports. Suddenly, one mistake becomes dozens, or more. Troubleshooting this requires tracing the error back through the integration, which takes time and expertise.

These obstacles exist because of how most payroll service providers connect to Workday. They claim to be "Workday-compatible." But compatibility isn't the same as being native. Typically, compatibility means they've built APIs or file-transfer processes to move data in and out of the platform. The difference between “compatible” and “native” determines whether you're constantly managing integration issues or whether your reporting simply works.

How OSV's Workday-native services solve these obstacles

Most payroll vendors claim to be “Workday-compatible.” This usually means they're moving data in and out of Workday with APIs or file transfers. OSV works differently. We're Workday-native. That means our services are delivered inside your Workday tenant.

This matters because it eliminates the obstacles to accurate reporting.

• No integration delays or data silos – Because we work directly in your Workday tenant, there are no delays. When a payroll transaction happens, it shows up immediately in your reports. We see what you see, in real time, and vice versa, with no overnight batch processing.
• No file transfers or version control issues – We don't extract data, process it elsewhere, and push it back. We work inside your Workday environment using our own tools and apps. When a process ends in Workday, we pick it up and continue with it. Because of this, you never have to worry about version control.
• No reconciliation burden – Since we never extract data, there's nothing to reconcile. Your Workday tenant is your single source of truth. This cuts out the time-consuming work of comparing what left your system against what came back.
• Data quality monitoring prevents errors from spreading – We use automated audits and regular business reviews to catch issues early. This way, we can flag problems as they happen, equipping you to fix issues quickly instead of having to search for errors across reports.

This approach works across all our payroll services — administration, tax filings, garnishments, and treasury. By cutting out the integration layer, we let Workday's reporting work the way it should.

How Workday and OSV together drive business value

Workday has powerful reporting capabilities. OSV makes sure those capabilities deliver real results. Together, we transform payroll reporting from a compliance task into a tool that helps you:

• Drive faster decisions – Because OSV works directly in your Workday tenant, every report uses live data. You can track trends, refine strategy, and make forecasts based on what's happening right now.
• Manage costs and forecast budgets – Since payroll is one of your largest expenses, being able to spot trends and predict costs with confidence is important. Our proactive audits and regular business reviews help you identify and correct errors, ensuring your data is reliable, and the cost insights you get from Workday are trustworthy.
• Stay compliant – OSV's payroll tax and garnishment services handle filings, track withholdings, and manage garnishments accurately, all within Workday. This reduces your risk of IRS penalties and gives you audit-ready documentation.
• Earn employee trust through transparency – Not only can employees see their earnings and deductions in Workday, but our accuracy means fewer paycheck questions and complaints. As a result, HR spends less time troubleshooting payroll issues, and overall job satisfaction among employees improves.
• Prepare for audits – You can quickly pull historical data and demonstrate compliance over time without worrying about other sources of truth or version control issues, giving auditors documentation they can trust. This can mean the difference between spending days or weeks on an audit.

These benefits don't happen just because you have Workday. They require clean data, streamlined processes, and a partner that works within your Workday tenant. That's what OSV delivers.

Make payroll reporting a strategic advantage

Workday gives you powerful payroll reporting tools. But those tools don't automatically translate to accurate, actionable insights. That depends on data quality.

Because most payroll vendors rely on APIs and integrations, they create the obstacles we've discussed — integration delays, data silos, and errors that multiply across systems. The result? Teams spend more time troubleshooting than analyzing.

OSV eliminates those obstacles. Our services are delivered within your Workday tenant, with no third-party integrations or file transfers required. When we process payroll, handle tax filings, or manage garnishments, the changes appear immediately in Workday, and your team gets the accurate insights they need.

The difference between Workday-compatible and Workday-native isn't just technical — it's the difference between constantly managing integration issues and reporting that simply works.

Ready to stop fighting data quality issues and start using your payroll reports strategically? Talk to an OSV expert to learn how our in-tenant services ensure your Workday reporting delivers the insights your business needs.