Approving Time Entries via the Workday API: Key Solutions

Approving time entries through the Workday API is harder than it sounds because approval isn't a single call. It's a step in a business process that your tenant configures, with its own routing, conditions and security. Integrations that work treat the API as a way to drive that process, then check the result, rather than as a simple "approve" switch.

This guide is for integration developers, HRIS analysts and payroll leads building or fixing automation around Workday Time Tracking.

Key takeaways

• Time approval in Workday runs through the business process framework, so every tenant's approval path can differ.
• Workday offers both SOAP (Workday Web Services) and REST APIs. Check which one exposes the operation you need before you design anything.
• Integration system users need tightly scoped security. Apply least privilege and review permissions regularly.
• Reported and calculated time blocks are different things. Misreading the data model is a common source of payroll errors.
• Most approval delays trace back to messy upstream time data, not the API.

How is Workday's time approval API structured?

Workday exposes two main API styles. Workday's own training material describes the Workday Web Services (WWS) SOAP API as the way to access data using XML, with operations listed in the Web Services Directory on Workday Community. The REST API is aimed at quickly returning a small set of frequently used data and accepts XML or JSON. All communication runs over HTTPS.

For time tracking, that means you shouldn't assume a REST endpoint exists for every action. Look up the operation in the Web Services Directory for your tenant's release first. If your integration stack is REST-first, budget for SOAP handling where needed.

The bigger point: approving time isn't a data update. It's a business process action. Workday's business process framework defines each process through steps (approvals, to-dos, notifications), conditions and routing rules. Approval steps let someone act on a task without editing its data, and one step is set as the completion step that commits the data. Your API call moves time through that configured process. Because organizations can have their own process definitions, with Workday falling back to parent organizations and then the default, two departments in the same tenant may route approvals differently. Our walkthrough of Workday business process routing, approvals and delegation explains how those chains are built.

How should you set up authentication and security?

Authentication is usually the first hurdle. Workday integrations normally run as integration system users (ISUs), service accounts placed in security groups with access to specific domains. Workday's security training notes that integration items use Get and Put permissions rather than View and Modify, and that maintaining integration system users sits under the Integration Security domain.

A practical security checklist:

1. One ISU per integration. Don't share a service account across unrelated integrations. It makes auditing and rotation harder.
2. Grant the minimum. NIST defines least privilege as restricting access to the minimum necessary to accomplish assigned tasks. For time approval, that means time tracking and the organizations in scope, nothing more.
3. Plan credential rotation. Record when passwords, certificates or tokens expire and who renews them. Expired credentials often surface as quiet failures rather than clear errors.
4. Review permissions every year. Access tends to accumulate as integrations expand. A yearly review catches it.
5. Log every action. Keep your own log of what the integration approved, when and for whom, so you can reconcile with Workday if something goes wrong.

What's the difference between time blocks and time entries?

This trips up developers who come from simpler timekeeping systems. In Workday, workers report time as time blocks, either clock events or manually entered hours, each tagged with a time entry code. Workday's time calculations then take reported time and apply business logic to create calculated time blocks. Some calculations create entirely new blocks; for example, a minimum daily hours rule can add a calculated block to make up the difference.

Workday's training material also notes that time calculations aren't meant to validate reported time. A separate validation framework does that. So an integration that reads only calculated blocks, or only reported blocks, can come away with the wrong picture.

Concept	What it is	Integration risk
Reported time block	What the worker entered or clocked	Approving without checking validation messages
Calculated time block	Time produced by calculation rules (overtime, premiums, minimums)	Treating it as editable source data
Time entry code	The code on reported time that drives default calculation tags	Mapping codes incorrectly from an external system
Approval	A business process step on submitted time	Assuming success because no error came back

A common mistake is approving pieces of a period one at a time when the process expects the submitted period to move as a unit. That can leave partial approvals and confusing statuses that only show up at payroll. Confirm with your Workday admin how submission works in your tenant before you write code. For setup context, see our guide to Workday time tracking setup for hourly workers.

How do custom approval chains affect automation?

Routing isn't always linear. Workday condition rules let a process behave differently in different situations: entry conditions decide whether a step runs, while-running conditions can skip approvers, and exit conditions can end a chain early. Steps can run in sequence or in parallel. Advanced routing can also stop people from approving their own transactions.

For automation, that means submitting one approval and assuming it's finished is risky. Instead:

• Map the full process definition for each organization in scope, including conditions.
• After each API action, read back the status and confirm the process moved where you expected.
• Handle steps the integration can't complete, such as a manager approval, by alerting a person rather than retrying blindly.
• Test in a sandbox, but compare its process definitions with production first. Changes made directly in production often don't reach the sandbox.

Any time you change approvals after the fact, you also need a clean audit trail. Our guide to timecard edits and punch corrections covers the controls auditors look for.

How do you handle bulk approvals before payroll?

With thousands of workers per pay period, call volume adds up. Plan for throttling and timeouts even if you haven't hit them yet:

• Batch requests and space them out instead of firing everything at once.
• Use retries with exponential backoff, and make every call safe to repeat.
• Run bulk work well before the payroll cutoff, outside peak hours where possible.
• Check whether a bulk-load option, such as an EIB, fits the job better than many individual calls. Our comparison of Workday EIB vs connectors vs Studio helps you choose.

Teams often find the real bottleneck is upstream. Clean time entries with no exceptions approve quickly. If half your workforce has missing punches or unmatched codes, automation just moves the problem around. Reducing exception rates usually pays off faster than tuning the API.

Should you build in-house or use a partner?

Workday has an ecosystem of implementation and integration partners. If you don't have deep Workday integration skills in-house, a partner can be cheaper than building and maintaining custom code. Either way, decide who owns the integration after go-live. Workday releases updates regularly, and someone has to test and update your integration when operations or process definitions change.

When counting cost, include maintenance, not just the build. Ongoing testing, credential rotation and release regression add up and are easy to undercount at the start.

Frequently asked questions

Can you approve Workday time entries with a single API call?

Not reliably. Approval is a business process step, and your tenant may route it through several approvers, conditions or parallel steps. An API action can move time through the process, but you should read back the status afterward to confirm where it landed. Assuming success because no error was returned is a common cause of payroll surprises.

Should I use SOAP or REST for Workday time tracking?

Use whichever actually exposes the operation you need. Workday describes its SOAP Web Services as the XML-based way to access data, with operations listed in the Web Services Directory, while REST is aimed at quickly returning small sets of frequently used data. Check the directory for your release before designing the integration.

What permissions does an integration system user need for time approval?

Only what the task requires: access to the time tracking domains and the organizations in scope, granted through an integration security group. Apply least privilege, use one ISU per integration and review the permissions at least yearly. Work with your Workday security admin, since domain and business process security policies differ by tenant.

What to do next

• Export the time approval business process definitions for every organization your integration touches.
• Look up each operation you need in the Workday Web Services Directory and note whether it's SOAP or REST.
• Audit your integration system user's permissions against least privilege.
• Add a status read-back after every approval action and an alert for steps that need a person.

Sources

• Workday: Business process framework (HCM Core for Administrators)
• Workday: Workday integrations overview
• Workday: Time tracking calculations
• NIST CSRC glossary: Least privilege

Last reviewed: October 2026.