Clients and colleagues are usually surprised to hear that in my free time I enjoy playing music – specifically the pipe, organ, and piano. After this years’ Workday Rising it dawned on me that my work as a Workday Financials consultant and studying music have more in common than not.
Both music and Workday Financials require a deep understanding of structure, rhythm, and harmony — where every note, or in this case, every worktag and ledger entry, plays a part in the bigger composition.
Whether I’m practicing a Bach fugue or guiding clients through their balancing worktag configuration, the goal is the same: bring complex moving parts into a cohesive whole that sounds “balanced,” and works beautifully.
When studying music, musicians are always preparing for the next layer — a more intricate piece, a new performance, a different technique to improve musicality — but the basics always come first. The same is true in Workday. As organizations look ahead to AI adoption and automation, it’s the fundamentals of financial configuration and data quality that create the foundation for what comes next.
Mastering the basics ensures your financial data plays in rhythm — setting the stage for AI insights that are accurate, clear, and harmonized across your organization.
If your organization has been live on Workday Financials for a while, your team might notice over time, things can start to sound a little… out of tune.
Do your Workday Financials...
Just like music, strong financial management relies on rhythm, discipline, and harmony — and sometimes, a good rehearsal of the fundamentals.
Focusing on fundamentals outlined below — will help your organization find its rhythm before adopting Workday AI agents. By establishing clear, consistent, and reliable financial data, your systems will be in perfect tempo for AI adoption, ensuring insights that are accurate, trustworthy, and in tune with your business.
Think of your Financial Data Model (FDM) like the sheet music of your organization. It tells everyone which notes to play and when. But over time, as businesses need change, unused organizations, cost centers, and worktags can clutter the score.
Take time to discard outdated FDM elements. This not only improves performance but also eliminates confusion for end users. A clean and scalable FDM allows your financial data to flow with clarity — no wrong notes, no dissonance.
Every musician knows that leaving a rehearsal unfinished affects the final performance. The same goes for Workday Financials. Business documents, billing schedules, contracts, and accounting journals left in draft status can quietly throw off your closing process.
Consider building a checkpoint into your close cycle to review:
This isn’t just about cleanup — it’s about control. By resolving open drafts, you prevent mismatched balances and ensure your close reflects true operational activity, not leftovers from prior acts.
When something’s off-key in accounting, muscle memory can be used to post a manual journal to fix it. But if there is anything I learned as a musician – muscle memory is the first to leave the party… Take the time and learn to play the measure and work the transaction accurately.
Manual journals have their place, but sustainable accuracy comes from fixing the underlying operational transactions — correcting a supplier's invoice, adjusting a customer's payment, or reclassifying an asset. Working in this way keeps your ledgers honest and your audit trail clear. It also builds a culture of ownership across your finance and operational teams, where every note counts.
Workday AI and machine learning capabilities are only as good as the data they analyze. If your configuration is messy or your operational data is incomplete, AI insights won’t strike the right chord.
By refining your configuration now — streamlining your FDM, reconciling open items, and keeping your books clean — you’re preparing your organization for the next movement in financial transformation. When it’s time to adopt AI-driven agents, your data will be accurate, structured, and ready to perform beautifully.
In both music and finance, mastery isn’t about complexity — it’s about precision, rhythm, and returning to the basics with intention and focus. It takes time, can be tedious, but improves your musicianship in the long run.
At The Groove, we help Workday maximize their Workday investment and sometimes that means the focusing on the basics to prepare for what is next — cleaning up configurations, aligning their Financial Data Model, and strengthening operational processes to ensure every transaction hits the right note.
As a trusted Workday partner, our team brings both hands-on expertise and a balanced approach to optimizing your tenant without unnecessary complexity. By tuning up the basics today, we help set the stage for a smooth, reliable transition into AI-driven insights in the future.
At The Groove, we believe every system— performs best when the fundamentals are strong.
So, take a breath, reach out to us at The Groove and learn how our experienced team can help your organization “retune” your configuration as Workday’s AI capabilities crescendo.
