Shutting down Workday? Breaking up doesn't have to be hard.

Four pitfalls when shutting down Workday

Most of the trouble we see comes from the same four misconceptions. Everything here is our own material, built from customer project experience.

There is no vendor assistance with historical data

Vendor contracts very often carry no obligation to help you extract historical data or convert it to a new system, and Workday’s contracts are clear that customers own their data and are fully responsible for retention. Assume you are on your own, and that planning time will be limited.

Standard reports will not get the full history out

Standard reports are only one route out of Workday, and the historical data a labor audit or subpoena asks for needs different methods. Expect to combine Reports-as-a-Service (RaaS), the APIs and Core Connectors, and custom Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB) extracts to get complete employment, payroll, time and other datasets, plus documents and supporting configuration, into a reportable structure. Once the data leaves Workday, the relationships between records have to be retained and enhanced with metadata.

Restrictions can start the day you give notice

Restrictions on adding new users, roles and account features may apply immediately upon termination notification, which obstructs both pulling data and adding people to help. Many customers wait until the new vendor is live before they archive, and by then it is often too late. Start archiving while you implement the replacement system and make it part of the conversion: an all-in-one rollover strategy.

The window after termination is short

Contract extensions to hold data may be severely limited. In our experience vendors may elect to terminate after 60–90 days with no extension, and we often see a 60–90 day window after termination before tenant access is removed. The limitation is not extraction alone but extraction followed by business-user validation, with enough time left to re-pull data. Pulling all historical data through the APIs takes time, so start earlier than you think you need to.

Together these constraints often leave customers unable to terminate with their history intact. HR and Payroll then rely on paper records and manual effort to answer audit inquiries and subpoenas about employment, time and payroll history, cannot reprint pay stubs or tax forms for employees, and may be out of compliance with federal and state labor audit agencies.

What Fuse archives from Workday

Fuse Analytics is a SaaS platform designed to manage your legacy data and reduce license costs and legacy infrastructure. For a Workday exit that means taking the complete employment, payroll and time datasets with you, along with worker documents and the supporting configuration those records depend on, into a reportable archive where the relationships survive and metadata is added. See how archiving works on the platform.

How the migration works

1. Extract. Pull data, documents and configuration through RaaS, the APIs and Core Connectors, and custom EIB extracts while the tenant is still fully open to you.
2. Load. Land the extracts in a reportable structure, with the relationships between employment, payroll and time records retained and enhanced with metadata.
3. Validate. Have business users check the archive against Workday, with time left to re-pull anything that is missing.
4. Retire. Give notice and let the tenant go, keeping the history in Fuse.

If the exit is part of a merger or a wider HCM and payroll transformation, make the archive part of the conversion plan from day one, not a task for after go-live.

Compliance and retention

The archive has to answer the same requests the tenant did: federal and state labor audits, subpoenas about employment, time and payroll history, and employees who need a pay stub or tax form reprinted. See how Fuse handles compliance.

Already migrated?

As long as you still retain access to the legacy tenant, Fuse Analytics can help you sunset Workday and reduce costs.

Fuse Analytics is an independent provider and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or a partner of any HR or payroll software vendor named on this page. All product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners.