HR to ERP
Workday to SAP S/4HANA integration: workers as workforce person and business partner, with cost centre and effective date
With an integration between Workday and SAP S/4HANA, every worker from Workday becomes a workforce person in S/4HANA with work agreement, company code and cost centre, and with that a business partner in the employee role. Purchasing, expenses, hours and approvals in S/4HANA thus work with the current workers from Workday, and after the end date the work agreement ends in S/4HANA.
What the integration does
Anyone managing workers in Workday and running finance, purchasing and projects in SAP S/4HANA has finance maintain employees in S/4HANA with a CSV upload. New colleagues then cannot submit their first expense claim, and anyone moving to another company code sometimes appears twice in S/4HANA.
- HR completes a hire in Workday, with company, cost centre and effective date.
- KoppelHet fetches the new and changed workers and translates the Workday company to the company code and the Workday cost centre to the cost centre in S/4HANA.
- S/4HANA creates the workforce person and the work agreement, and then the business partner in the employee role.
- KoppelHet checks that both steps succeeded and reports an error per worker in the platform.
- After a termination in Workday the work agreement in S/4HANA ends on the same date.
What to watch for with Workday and SAP S/4HANA
- In S/4HANA an employee consists of a workforce person and a business partner, created in two steps. If the second fails, someone is half in S/4HANA and cannot submit expenses. KoppelHet checks both steps and puts a failed worker on the error list.
- When someone moves to another company within the group in Workday, S/4HANA creates a new personnel number and the old one stays until someone removes it by hand. KoppelHet passes the move as one change with two periods and reports the old number to finance.
- External staff are contingent workers with a supplier in Workday. In S/4HANA that is a service performer, which requires a work order with supplier and validity period. KoppelHet takes the supplier from Workday and holds back an external worker without a work order with an alert.
- The first record of an employee in S/4HANA may not be inactive. A hire that was already rescinded or terminated in Workday before the integration saw it is therefore not passed on.
- S/4HANA does not allow the working time percentage to be empty. For workers without fixed hours in Workday, such as on-call staff, KoppelHet fills in 0, so the delivery does not get stuck on that field.
- While the integration is active, finance can no longer maintain employees by hand in the Manage Workforce app in S/4HANA. Workday is then the only source. Cost centres stay with finance; a Workday cost centre that does not exist in S/4HANA comes back as an error.
- Workday allows retroactive changes. S/4HANA rejects periods that overlap. KoppelHet rebuilds the periods from the effective dates in Workday, so a later correction closes the existing period instead of clashing with it.
How we build and run it
- The integration runs on the KoppelHet platform, hosted in a data centre in the EU.
- Every sync and every error is visible in the functional log; on an error your administrator is notified.
- A change that cannot go through is not half-applied but queued for another attempt.
- KoppelHet is ISO 27001 certified. Data travels encrypted and stays on the platform no longer than needed.
- After go-live we manage the integration and adjust it when your process changes.
- The integration fits next to your existing integration layer. Only the fields in the design are transferred; the platform keeps no register of its own.
Implementation and price
This is not an app you switch on. We build the integration for your organisation on our platform, with building blocks we reuse on every project. So it is custom work that does not start from scratch.
A consultant prepares the intake and analyses both systems. We then record the mapping and exceptions field by field, test in the test or acceptance environment and go live at a moment you choose. Costs are a one-off amount for the setup and a monthly amount for platform, monitoring and support.
Frequently asked questions
Is pay data sent to S/4HANA?
No. For purchasing, expenses and approvals S/4HANA only needs name, work agreement, company code and cost centre. Pay stays in Workday and payroll.
What happens to employees already loaded into S/4HANA by CSV?
We match them to the Workday worker at the start. For that the external ID in S/4HANA must equal the Workday employee ID; where it does not, we first produce an overview for finance.
Technical details for IT
For those who want to know how it works under the hood: APIs, fields and sources used.
- Workday is read through Workday Web Services (Get_Workers, with Page and Count) or a RaaS report on change date, with an Integration System User.
- In SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition we write through the SOAP API Replicate Basic Master Data for Workforce from External HR Systems (scope item 1FD, communication scenario SAP_COM_0301). The response contains the PersonWorkAgreement number with the external IDs; business partner synchronisation follows as a follow-up step and can be tracked in the Monitor Data Synchronization (Employee – Business Partner) app. PersonExternalID at most 20 characters; decimal fields such as WorkingTimePercentage not empty. On a company code change two WorkAgreementJobInformation blocks under the same WorkAgreementInformation.
- A service performer (PersonWorkAgreementType 3) requires a WorkOrder node with ValidityPeriod and Supplier. For S/4HANA on premises we choose another route per environment, for example the v4 User Provisioning API.
Which fields are transferred
The key fields. The full mapping is agreed per customer.
| Field in Workday | Field in SAP S/4HANA | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Employee_ID | PersonExternalID | At most 20 characters in S/4HANA |
Employee_ID en positie | PersonWorkAgreementExternalID | |
Legal_Name / Preferred_Name | Naam van de workforce person | |
Werk-e-mail | E-mailadres | |
Company | CompanyCode | Through a table per Workday company |
Cost_Center | CostCenter | Must already exist in S/4HANA |
FTE of Scheduled_Weekly_Hours | WorkingTimePercentage | Never empty; 0 when Workday has nothing |
Hire_Date en Termination_Date | Geldigheid van het dienstverband (ValidityPeriod) | |
Contingent worker met supplier | PersonWorkAgreementType 3 met WorkOrder en Supplier |
- SAP KBA 2905918 – FAQs Replicate Basic Master Data for Workforce from External HR Systems
- SAP KBA 2646803 – Options to create workforce persons in S/4HANA Cloud
- SAP KBA 2863231 – Work Order is mandatory for service performers
- SAP Help – Employee Replication with the v4 User Provisioning API
- Workday Web Services Directory
Related
Ashby → Workday
Ashby to Workday integration: hires to Workday, with a check on outcome and phone number
Bullhorn → Workday
Bullhorn to Workday integration: a consultant's first placement as a hire in Workday
Carerix → Workday
Carerix to Workday integration: a placed candidate becomes a pre-hire and starts the hire
Greenhouse → Workday
Greenhouse to Workday integration: hires as pre-hires, interim staff and contractors included