Workday Adaptive Planning

How to Use the Audit Trail feature in Web Reporting

October 1, 2025 by Sarah Hildenbrand

Audit Trail Search in Workday Adaptive Planning is a feature that logs every change made within the instance. This includes updates to data, setting, and user interactions. It captures detailed information such as:

Who made the change?
What changes were made?
When did the changes occur?

By maintaining a historical log of these changes, Audit Trail Search provides transparency and control over financial data, which is especially important when generating reports for audits, compliance checks, or internal assessments.

Here’s how to use Audit Trail Search.

1. Add Permission Set and Make sure the versions you want for it has it checked:

Log into Instance -> Administration -> Permission Sets -> Decide which permission set with users you want to have access -> Check the box for “System Audit Access” in permission set.

Go to Model Management -> Select Versions -> Click on Version to check box “Audit Trail.”

2. Have users make changes to the instance/budget/data updates.

3. Create Audit Trail Search in Reporting:

Go to Reports -> Select “Audit Trail Search” ->Select “Version”, “Levels”, and time range:

OR → Select “Switch to Advanced Search” in top right corner:

->Fill out all sections and option to choose specific accounts/more details.

4.Click “Search Audit Trail”

Best Practices for Using Audit Trail Search in Reporting

1. Regular Monitoring: Make it a habit to regularly monitor and review the Audit Trail Search logs. This proactive approach can help identify potential issues early, preventing larger problems down the line.

2. Use Access Rule Control: To prevent unauthorized modifications, leverage Adaptive Planning’s Permission Sets, User Assigned Levels, and Access Rules to restrict who can access certain financial data or make changes to your planning models. Audit Trail Search will help you track any unauthorized activities or mistakes that may have occurred.

3. Train Team Members: Ensure that all users are trained on the importance of the Audit Trail feature. Understanding the value of keeping accurate logs will motivate employees to provide detailed explanations for changes, ensuring the logs are as informative and useful as possible.

The Audit Trail Search in Adaptive Planning is an indispensable tool for organizations seeking to improve the accuracy, transparency, and accountability of their financial reporting. By providing a clear, searchable log of all changes within the system, it empowers auditors, financial planners, and business leaders to produce more reliable reports, perform faster audits, and meet compliance requirements with ease.

Revelwood is more than just a Platinum Workday Adaptive Planning partner — we’re a trusted advisor to the Office of Finance. With 30 years of experience and award-winning expertise, we bring together powerful software, proven best practices and pre-built, ready-to-deploy solutions that accelerate time to value. Our team doesn’t just implement technology — we help finance teams transform the way they plan, analyze and make decisions. Discover how Revelwood can help you get the most out of Workday Adaptive Planning — and achieve results that matter.

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Cumulative Translation Adjustment Accounts

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Virtual Version – Report Toggling

Add Additional Years to your Time Strata

Cumulative Translation Adjustment Accounts

September 24, 2025 by Revelwood

If your company has international operations, Workday Adaptive Planning provides you an easy to set up feature to track gains and losses from translating foreign currencies. Rather than having to create a calculated account with a formula, Adaptive makes it easy with just a click of a button to calculate the Cumulative Translation Adjustment.

Step 1: Navigate to Modeling and then Currencies

Step 2: Check the Enable Cumulative Translation Adjustment (CTA) box

This page allows you to add, edit, or delete any currencies that you will need in your Adaptive instance. Additionally, it allows you to choose the exchange rate type. Once you check the Cumulative Translation Adjustment box, it will give you an option to edit the CTA account details

Step 3: Edit CTA Account Details (Optional)

The edit page will allow you to change several different settings such as account name, roll-up, balance type, account attributes, and decimal places

Evaluated Formula

Above is the formula that is being evaluated for the Cumulative Translation Adjustment account. This formula could not be altered in any way.

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Virtual Version – Report Toggling

September 17, 2025 by Michelle Song

Virtual versions are used mainly for constant currency reporting in Workday Adaptive Planning. However, there’s a hidden advantage of virtual versions that most customers don’t know! It is updating version selection in reports/dashboards.

For example, say you have many reports that reference the forecast version and the version changes from time to time because you might have a new forecast version every month. Instead of updating it manually for each of the reports, you can use Virtual Version to update the selection once and it will automatically update all the reports.

In this screenshot, I have a virtual version that’s called Current Forecast. It’s referencing the most recent forecast version.

Then, instead of using the Forecast 1+11 version in reports, I used this Current Forecast virtual version for all my reports. See below.

When the next forecast is ready and I need to change all my reports to Forecast 2+10, I will update the selection in the Virtual Version setup and all the reports will refresh with the Forecast 2+10 data.

Add Additional Years to your Time Strata

September 10, 2025 by Julia Seelin

Managing time strata effectively is key to long-term financial planning in Workday Adaptive Planning. But what happens when your current calendar doesn’t extend far enough into the future? In this Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks video, we walk through the steps for importing additional years into your Adaptive instance.

Why You May Need to Extend Your Time Strata

Business planning doesn’t stop in the current fiscal year. Many organizations need to plan five, ten, or more years ahead. By adding new years to your Adaptive calendar, you ensure your models, versions, and reports remain aligned with your long-term financial goals.

Steps to extend your time strata

1. Navigate to the time settings
- From the Adaptive home page, go to Modeling and select Time.
- Depending on whether you’re using a legacy or newer instance of Adaptive, you may see different options.
2. Legacy instances: Quick extend option
- Legacy instances allow you to simply select Extend five years forward (or backward).
- This is the most straightforward approach when available.
3. Newer instances: Use the calendar export/import method
- For newer environments where the extend option isn’t available, you’ll need to:
  - Export your current calendar.
  - Open the file in Excel and trim down to a manageable set of years.
  - Replace old years with the future years you want to add (for example, changing 2010 to 2032).
  - Double-check your edits to ensure they align correctly.
4. Re-import the adjusted calendar
- Return to your Adaptive instance and select Import Calendar.
- You’ll see a warning that changes may affect frozen or locked versions—be sure you understand the impact before proceeding.
- For this task, select the Append option (rather than update or reload) and upload your adjusted file.
5. Confirm and finalize
- Once imported, your Adaptive environment will reflect the additional years you’ve added.
- This allows your planning processes to extend seamlessly into the future.

Extending your time strata ensures that Adaptive Planning continues to support your organization’s long-range forecasting. While the process differs slightly between legacy and newer instances, both approaches give you the flexibility to look further ahead and keep your planning future-ready.

Why Strategic Headcount Planning Is the Missing Link in FP&A

September 4, 2025 by Revelwood

In a recent episode of FP&A Done Right – The Podcast, the focus is on strategic headcount planning. This episode delves into the critical role of aligning workforce planning with organizational strategy, emphasizing the importance of integrating financial planning and analysis (FP&A) with human resources to drive business success.

Transforming Headcount Planning into a Strategic Advantage

Strategic headcount planning goes beyond filling roles—it’s about aligning your workforce with your organization’s long-term goals. This episode explores how incorporating workforce planning enables more agile decision-making, improves resource allocation, and ensures your people strategy keeps pace with business demands.

1. The Importance of Strategic Headcount Planning
Effective headcount planning is essential for aligning talent acquisition and management with the company’s strategic objectives. By forecasting workforce needs and understanding the financial implications, organizations can make informed decisions that support growth and adaptability.

2. Leveraging Workday Adaptive Planning
Enterprise planning solutions facilitate real-time collaboration between finance and HR departments. These tools enable dynamic modeling and scenario planning, allowing organizations to respond swiftly to changing business conditions and workforce requirements.

3. Integrating FP&A with HR for Better Outcomes
By integrating FP&A processes with human resources planning, you ensure that financial forecasts account for workforce trends and HR strategies are grounded in financial realities, leading to more cohesive and effective organizational planning.

4. Navigating Challenges in Headcount Planning
The episode addresses common challenges such as data silos, communication gaps between departments, and the complexities of modeling various workforce scenarios. It offers strategies for overcoming these obstacles, emphasizing the need for transparent communication and integrated planning systems.

5. Real-World Applications and Success Stories
We share practical examples of how organizations have successfully implemented strategic headcount planning. These success stories illustrate the tangible benefits of aligning workforce planning with financial strategies, including improved agility and resource optimization.

For finance professionals, HR leaders and organizational strategists, this episode offers valuable insights into the interplay between workforce planning and financial management. It underscores the necessity of integrated planning approaches to navigate the complexities of modern business environments effectively.

Tune in to this episode of FP&A Done Right – The Podcast to explore how strategic headcount planning can serve as a cornerstone for organizational success.

Mastering Merged Cube Sheets in Workday Adaptive Planning

September 3, 2025 by Revelwood

Merged cube sheets are a powerful tool in Workday Adaptive Planning that combine data from up to three modeled or cube sheets. They enable advanced calculations, simplify data management, and enhance forecasting. Let’s dive deeper into understanding their purpose, characteristics, and how to build them.

Why Use Merged Cube Sheets?

Merged cube sheets are especially useful for:

Creating calculated accounts without requiring data presence in the sheet itself. This feature ensures that formulas calculate accurately, even when data is absent in the merged cube’s standard accounts. Usually, a lack of data in the cube’s standard accounts forces formulas to evaluate at zero. Merged cube sheets bypass this rule by using the data presence of the source sheets.
Building simpler source sheets that focus only on necessary dimensions, then merging them to manage complex data across multiple dimensions efficiently.

Additional benefits include:

Allocations across dimensions using formulas.
Serving as calculation identifiers for other cube sheets.
Chaining merged cubes, where one merged cube acts as a source for another.

*Disclaimer: Using merged cube sheets in these additional ways can increase complexity of your model and may cause unexpected behaviors.

Example of a Merged Cube Sheet

Suppose you need to calculate revenue based on quantity and price across dimensions like customer, region, and product. Instead of managing this in one massive sheet:

1. Create a modeled sheet with the Customer dimension for forecasting total product purchases without breaking it down by product.
2. Create a cube sheet with the Product dimension for forecasting prices and mix by product.
3. Build a merged revenue sheet that combines these two sources to calculate total revenue by multiplying quantities and prices for each customer and product.

Characteristics of Merged Cube Sheets

Merged cube sheets:

Are read-only with no data entry support.
Require at least one calculated account. Data entry overrides are not available for this account.
Only allow account groups, calculated accounts, and metric accounts.
Can merge up to three source sheets (modeled or cube).
Contain only dimensions already present in the source sheets.
Must include any common dimensions across all source sheets.
- Ex: if both sheets contain the product dimension, the merged cube must also include the product dimension.
Cannot include cube restrictions.
Only calculate intersections where data exists in the source sheets.

Steps to Build Cube and Merged Cube Sheets

1. Create Dimensions, Attributes, and Levels you want to add to the sheet.
- Follow standard procedures for adding these elements to your planning model.
2. Create Source Sheets for Merged Cube Sheets.
- Source sheets can be either modeled or cube sheets.
3. Start a New Sheet.
- Select cube sheet and check the box for a merged cube.
4. (For Merged Sheets) Select Source Sheets.
- Identify the sheets you wish to merge. This is located in the settings under “Dimensions, Attributes and Levels.”
5. (Optional) Create Account Groups.
- Organize accounts for easier navigation.
6. Create Cube Accounts.
7. Add general ledger and custom accounts to your sheet and ensure they are cube-entered in account settings.
- You can add general ledger and custom accounts to the cube sheet after you make the accounts cube-entered. In the account settings, for Data Entry Sheet Type, click Cube.
8. Add Dimensions and Attributes.
- Include necessary custom dimensions and attributes in your sheet.
9. Select Time Periods.
- By default, all available time periods are included.
10. Add Levels, Accounts, Dimensions, and Attributes.
- Optionally hide certain cube accounts to simplify the sheet view.
11. (Optional) Adjust Sheet Properties.
- Set the initial view, remove the cube root account, set the time strata, and manage calculation scope as well as other settings to enhance usability.
12. Assign the Sheet to Users.
- If the sheet requires user assignment, ensure permissions are correctly set.
13. Load Data into the Sheet.
- Data can be imported via spreadsheets, integration loaders, or entered directly from the Sheets menu.
14. Monitor Usage and Performance.
- Regularly review the sheet’s performance to ensure optimal functionality.

Merged cube sheets are a great feature for streamlining complex forecasting models. By combining data from simpler sheets, they improve calculation efficiency and enhance data visibility. Following these steps will help you create effective merged cube sheets tailored to your organization’s planning needs.

Account Modifiers in Formulas

August 27, 2025 by Julia Seelin

The Formula Assistant in Workday Adaptive Planning provides a provides a powerful way to customize how data is pulled and calculated in formulas

To enhance the flexibility of your formulas, you can use a variety of modifiers that adjust how the information is retrieved. These modifiers include time, level, dimension, and attributes, each serving a unique purpose to make your formulas more dynamic and accurate. By incorporating these modifiers, you can manipulate the data in various ways to meet specific reporting or analysis needs.

For instance, when referencing an account, you can apply these modifiers to retrieve data in a manner that fits your desired outcome. A common example would be when you want to reference trailing data, such as pulling the trailing 12 months of revenue. By modifying the formula to say

ACCT.Revenue[time=this-12:this-1],

you can ensure that it pulls revenue data for the previous 12 months, with the ending month being the one immediately preceding the current month you’re analyzing.

Beyond time-based adjustments, you can also use account attributes to fine-tune your calculations based on groupings or classifications associated with the data. For example, if you want to calculate revenue specifically for a particular region, you can apply an attribute filter like

ACCT.Revenue[Region = North]

to pull in all revenue data associated with accounts tagged with the “North” region. This allows you to create more granular and targeted reports, tailored to specific attributes or dimensions within your data.

These modifiers help ensure that your formulas are more flexible, powerful, and specific to your needs, providing deeper insights and more accurate reporting.

Workday Adaptive Planning Earns “Customers’ Choice” Recognition in Gartner’s Voice of the Customer Report

August 22, 2025 by Revelwood

For the third year in a row, Workday Adaptive Planning has been named a Customers’ Choice in Gartner’s latest Voice of the Customer for Financial Planning Software report — earning an impressive 96% recommendation rate from users.

Gartner Peer Insights aggregates and validates verified user reviews, then awards the Customers’ Choice badge to vendors who exceed market averages across metrics such as:

Product capabilities
Ease of deployment
Support experience
Sales experience

Workday Adaptive Planning consistently ranks among the top performers in every category — underscoring its strong product design, reliable support, and seamless implementation.

Workday Adaptive Planning’s Results

This Gartner report includes some impressive ratings for Workday Adaptive Planning:

96% of users say they would recommend Workday Adaptive Planning
It holds an overall rating of 4.8/5 on Gartner Peer Insights
It earns 4.8 in key areas like Product Capabilities, Sales, and Support Experience and a 4.7 in Deployment Experience

The benchmarking reveals that Workday outpaces other financial planning platforms — like Anaplan, OneStream, Pigment and Oracle — in user satisfaction and recommendation rates

Why Organizations Love Workday Adaptive Planning

Organizations throughout the world love Workday Adaptive Planning as a result of its:

1. Scalability & Flexibility
2. AI-Driven Insight
3. Transformational ROI

Revelwood + Adaptive Planning = Powering FP&A Excellence

As a trusted partner, Revelwood empowers finance teams to leverage Workday Adaptive Planning to:

Accelerate deployment with best-practice templates
Train and onboard teams for fast adoption
Continuously optimize investment and health of the platform

Our experts ensure every customer captures maximum value — driving both process efficiency and strategic insight.

Workday Adaptive Planning’s recognition as a Gartner Customers’ Choice — backed by exceptional real-world reviews and top-tier ratings — reinforces why thousands of organizations trust it to manage complex planning, modeling and forecasting workflows.

Read the report today!

Limiting the Scope of Calculated Accounts

August 20, 2025 by Revelwood

Both modeled and cubed sheets in Workday Adaptive Planning allow the user to set a scope to limit the calculation for calculated accounts for both actuals and planned data. A user may utilize this feature to allow calculations to start at a certain point, without having to alter the actuals or plan version start date.

In order to limit the scope of the calculated accounts, you will begin by navigating to the back end of the sheet and go to columns and levels. Once you are at columns and levels, you can press the sheet properties gear in the middle of the screen.

Once you have navigated to the sheet properties, press the last tab that is titled “Scope.” This is where you will have the option to limit the scope for calculated accounts.

You now have the ability to set the scope either forward or backwards for actual values or plan values as well. For the actuals, the drop down for the start/stop calculating gives you an option to select start/end of version, month, quarter, year. For the plan, the drop down for start/stop gives you the option of left scroll limit, end of plan, month, quarter, year.

In the example above, we set the scope so that the plan values do not start until 6 months after the start of the plan. As you can see from the start date, it should start 1/1/2025, but from the row details we can see that the calculations do not begin until July.

How to Use the Audit Trail feature in Web Reporting

Best Practices for Using Audit Trail Search in Reporting

Cumulative Translation Adjustment Accounts

Step 1: Navigate to Modeling and then Currencies

Step 2: Check the Enable Cumulative Translation Adjustment (CTA) box

Step 3: Edit CTA Account Details (Optional)

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks: Virtual Version – Report Toggling

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Add Additional Years to your Time Strata

Why You May Need to Extend Your Time Strata

Steps to extend your time strata

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Why Strategic Headcount Planning Is the Missing Link in FP&A

Transforming Headcount Planning into a Strategic Advantage

Mastering Merged Cube Sheets in Workday Adaptive Planning

Why Use Merged Cube Sheets?

Example of a Merged Cube Sheet

Characteristics of Merged Cube Sheets

Steps to Build Cube and Merged Cube Sheets

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Account Modifiers in Formulas

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning Earns “Customers’ Choice” Recognition in Gartner’s Voice of the Customer Report

Workday Adaptive Planning’s Results

Why Organizations Love Workday Adaptive Planning

Revelwood + Adaptive Planning = Powering FP&A Excellence

Read the report today!

Read more from this series:

Limiting the Scope of Calculated Accounts

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Revelwood Overview

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Workday Adaptive Planning

Best Practices for Using Audit Trail Search in Reporting

Step 1: Navigate to Modeling and then Currencies

Step 2: Check the Enable Cumulative Translation Adjustment (CTA) box

Step 3: Edit CTA Account Details (Optional)

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Why You May Need to Extend Your Time Strata

Steps to extend your time strata

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Transforming Headcount Planning into a Strategic Advantage

Why Use Merged Cube Sheets?

Example of a Merged Cube Sheet

Characteristics of Merged Cube Sheets

Steps to Build Cube and Merged Cube Sheets

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

Workday Adaptive Planning’s Results

Why Organizations Love Workday Adaptive Planning

Revelwood + Adaptive Planning = Powering FP&A Excellence

Read more from this series:

Read more Workday Adaptive Planning Tips & Tricks:

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