How to Track Time in Workday HCM: Employees, Managers, Admins

To track time in Workday HCM, employees enter hours or check in and out (on desktop, mobile or a kiosk), submit the period for approval, and managers approve or send it back. Behind the scenes, administrators configure entry templates, time codes, calculation rules for overtime and premiums, and eligibility rules that decide who sees what.

This guide is for employees who need to get their timesheet right, managers who approve it, and HR, payroll or Workday admins who configure it. Your tenant's exact screens and labels depend on how your organization set things up, so treat the steps below as the common pattern rather than a click-by-click script.

Key takeaways

• Workday time tracking has four layers: entry, calculation, approval and payroll. Most problems belong to one of them.
• The time code (time type) an employee picks drives how hours are calculated and paid, so it matters as much as the hours.
• Submitted time usually cannot be edited until a manager sends it back.
• Overtime thresholds in Workday can be daily, weekly, biweekly or a custom period. Under federal law, overtime is figured per workweek, so set rules accordingly.
• Test new templates and calculation rules with real scenarios before rolling them out.

How is Workday time tracking structured?

It helps to think of four layers:

1. Time entry: recording hours worked, either as totals, start and end times, or check-in and check-out events.
2. Time calculation: Workday applies rules to the reported time to produce payable categories such as regular, overtime, double time or shift premiums. Workday's administrator training describes these as calculations that apply "calculation tags" to a worker's hours.
3. Approval: a manager, or a configured business process, reviews and approves the time.
4. Payroll: approved, calculated time flows into pay.

Each layer is configured separately, which is why a manufacturer with hourly shift workers and a consulting firm with salaried staff can have very different Workday time setups. When something looks wrong, the first useful question is "which layer is this?" A missing day is an entry problem. Wrong overtime is usually a calculation problem. A paycheck that does not match approved time is a payroll integration problem. A simple report that shows entered, calculated and paid hours side by side makes it much easier to trace time from entry to pay.

How do employees enter time in Workday?

Most employees start from the Time area on their Workday home page and open the current week or period. Depending on your configuration, you will see one of these entry styles:

• Hours only: a grid where you type total hours per day.
• Start and end times: you record when you started and stopped, including meal breaks.
• Check-in and check-out: events captured as they happen, from mobile, desktop, a kiosk or a connected time clock.

Next, you choose a time code (sometimes called a time type) for each block of hours, such as regular work, a project, on-call or a specific task. The list you see depends on your role and eligibility. Pick carefully: the code determines which calculation rules apply and where the cost lands. A shift premium, for example, only applies if the hours carry the right code, as explained in our guide to changing shift premium amounts in Workday.

Employee checklist before you submit

• Every scheduled workday has an entry or an approved absence.
• Meal breaks are recorded the way your policy requires.
• Each block uses the correct time code or project.
• Any validation warnings have been read and resolved.
• The period total matches what you actually worked.

What happens when you submit time?

In most setups, time is collected for a week or pay period and submitted as a batch. Submitting sends it to your manager or into an approval business process. After that, you typically cannot change it unless it is sent back to you, so review before you click Submit.

Workday may block or warn you at submission. Common triggers are a missing day you were scheduled to work, a time code you are not eligible for, or hours above a configured limit. The message usually points to the date or entry causing it. A common mistake we see is employees overriding warnings they do not understand; if a message is unclear, ask your manager or HR before submitting rather than after payroll runs.

How do mobile, kiosk and time clock check-ins work?

For hourly and frontline workers, Workday lists mobile, desktop and kiosk check-in options on its time tracking product page. At a kiosk, a worker can clock in with a PIN at the job site. On mobile, Workday says workers can receive automatic prompts to check in and out as they enter and leave a job site, which relies on location settings your organization controls. If you want to understand what location data is captured, see whether Workday tracks employee location during check-in.

Some organizations also connect third-party time clocks or tablets. From the employee's view, those punches simply appear in their time entries. From the admin's view, the integration needs monitoring: if a device goes offline or a sync fails, employees will see missing punches and managers will need to correct them.

How do managers review and approve time?

Managers usually see pending time from their inbox or a team time view. From there you can review each worker's entries by day, approve, or send back with a comment. Workday also highlights mass approvals on mobile, so managers can batch-approve time and handle exceptions from a phone.

A practical approval routine:

1. Start with exceptions: validation alerts, missing days, unusually high hours.
2. Check codes on anything that will be paid at a premium.
3. Send back anything wrong with a specific comment ("Tuesday is missing the 30 minute meal break").
4. Approve the rest, in bulk if your setup allows.
5. Approve before the deadline. Late approvals are a common cause of off-cycle payroll corrections.

Some organizations automate parts of approval through business process conditions so managers only see exceptions. If you approve time from another system, our article on approving time entries through the Workday API covers the pitfalls.

What do administrators configure?

Admins work with several connected pieces:

Component	What it controls
Time entry templates	What the entry screen looks like, available codes, whether start and end times are required
Time codes and eligibility	Which workers can use which codes, based on job profile, location or worker type
Period and schedule setup	When periods open and close, approval deadlines, workweek start date
Time calculations	Overtime, double time, premiums and other payable categories, run in priority order
Validations	Rules that warn or block at entry or submission

Workday's administrator training notes that calculations run in alphanumeric priority order, so sequence matters. It recommends running double time before overtime and daily rules before weekly ones, and leaving gaps in priority numbers so you can insert rules later. It also points out that calculations do not validate time; validation is a separate setup.

For a deeper walkthrough of hourly configuration, see our Workday time tracking setup for hourly workers.

Why is overtime calculating wrong?

Workday supports overtime thresholds that are daily, weekly, biweekly, a configurable period or shift-based. The weekly calculation uses the workweek start date defined on the worker's work schedule calendar.

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the US Department of Labor says overtime applies on a workweek basis: a fixed, recurring 168-hour period. Averaging hours over two or more weeks is not permitted. So if your pay period is biweekly, your FLSA overtime rule should still evaluate each workweek separately. Daily overtime rules may also be required in some states.

When overtime looks wrong, check these in order:

1. The workweek start date on the worker's schedule calendar.
2. Whether the hours carry a code that counts toward the overtime threshold.
3. Calculation priority, especially if daily and weekly rules both exist.
4. Whether the worker is in the right calculation group through eligibility.
5. What changed recently. Comparing configuration before and after the problem started often finds the cause fastest.

How do time tracking and absence work together?

Time tracking records hours worked. Absence handles time away, such as vacation, sick time and leaves. When an employee takes approved time off, the absence may appear on their timesheet automatically or they may need to enter it, depending on configuration. A week with three worked days and two vacation days needs both reflected correctly for pay and for overtime eligibility. Our guide to Workday absence setup explains the difference between time off plans and leave types.

FAQ

Can I edit my time after submitting it in Workday?

Usually not directly. Once submitted, the entries are locked while they wait for approval. Ask your manager to send the time back, correct it, and resubmit. If the period is already closed and paid, your manager or payroll team will need to make a correction, which may show up as an adjustment on a later paycheck.

Why can't I see a certain time code?

Time codes are controlled by eligibility rules tied to things like your job profile, location and worker type. If a code you need is missing, it is either not meant for your role or your eligibility is set up incorrectly. Ask HR or your Workday admin to check rather than using a similar code, since the wrong code can change your pay.

Does Workday calculate overtime by pay period or by week?

It depends on configuration. Workday can apply daily, weekly, biweekly or custom-period thresholds. For FLSA overtime, the Department of Labor requires a workweek basis and does not allow averaging across weeks, so a biweekly pay period should still have weekly overtime rules. State rules can add daily overtime.

What to do next

• Employees: run through the pre-submission checklist before every deadline.
• Managers: set a recurring reminder to clear exceptions a day before approval closes.
• Admins: confirm the workweek start date and overtime calculation priority for each worker group, then test with a biweekly period that crosses a workweek boundary.
• HR and payroll: review a sample of last period's approved time against paychecks to catch code or calculation issues early.

Sources

• Workday Education: Time Tracking Calculations
• Workday: Time Tracking product overview
• US Department of Labor: Fact Sheet #23, Overtime Pay Requirements of the FLSA

Last reviewed: October 2026.