New Manage Absence desktop and mobile experiences in Workday now provide a more efficient and user-friendly approach to viewing and requesting time away from work, making essential absence-related tasks easier to find.
New custom validations have been implemented for accounting journals for The Ohio State University ONLY. The following journal sources are excluded: Central Correction No ACP, Conversion, Supplier Discount, and Capital Expense Reclass. See the full post for a list of validation rules.
Hosted Catalog for On Demand Software in Buckeye Buy:
Internal supplier, the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI), offers a new hosted catalog for On Demand Software in Buckeye Buy. Overleaf Professional software at the FY25 - FY26 rate is the first product offering, but more options will follow. Contact the Marketplace Team at BF-Marketplace@osu.edu with catalog questions. Contact the IT Service Desk with questions about the new Overleaf offering.
Lowe's Home Improvement:
The Lowe’s Home Improvement supplier website has been removed until further notice from Buckeye Buy. Requestors are advised to search catalogs from alternative contracted suppliers. Purchases from Lowe’s can still be made by PCard although contract discounts will not be extended in that case. Contact BF-prsm-osupur@osu.edu with questions.
As part of year end procedures and to help ensure a successful procurement roll forward, it is recommended that units review and close out old items with remaining balances if they will no longer be invoiced. Two helpful reports are available to assist with year-end business document clean up.
The " UNIV Remaining Encumbrances - Requisitions, POs, Spend Authorizations" report helps end users identify transactions and their encumbrances that will roll forward at the end of the fiscal year. The " Purchase Orders with Documents Awaiting Action " report helps end users identify in progress and draft documents which require action before a PO can be closed. It is suggested to run this report with the "Purchase Order Has Lines with Encumbrances" box checked. Since only POs with remaining balances roll forward, cleanup efforts should be focused on draft/in progress documents associated with POs that have balances but are no longer in use. This report will only return purchase orders if one or more of the criteria listed in the full article are met.
A new desktop and mobile experience for Absence is coming to Workday on May 6. Manage Absence will allow you to easily navigate and manage absence requests in a simple calendar view. People leaders will be able to navigate to their team’s calendar view and make requests on behalf of their employees without navigating to each profile. See the full post for features and benefits.
Beginning May 1, departments and units selling goods and services on credit to customers (accounts receivable) should use the “Create Request” task in Workday to request new customer records and edits to existing records. Note, this change DOES NOT apply to Internal Order Billing (IOB) or cash sales. Communications about customer record maintenance will now include both system-generated emails and Workday notifications, rather than relying exclusively on email. You may still receive occasional emails if additional information is needed to process a request. This new process replaces the existing Qualtrics form used for customer data collection. For additional details and a job aid link, read the full post.
Effective April 1, 2025 , the Deposit of Funds policy and Petty Cash Funds, Change Funds, and Cash Advance Payments policy (formerly named the Cash and Cash Alternatives Payment Methods policy) have been revised by the Office of Business and Finance. These polices provide updated guidance on how units should manage their cash activity.
FY26 Blanket order entry can begin on Monday, April 14 . A new workday enhancement will be turned on the week of April 7 to allow for future dated requisitions. Prior to this enhancement, users were instructed to "current date" blanket requests, and then the Controller's Office had to run a manual job during month end close in April and May to roll the encumbrances into the future fiscal year. With this new enhancement, all FY26 blanket order requisitions should be entered as future dated requests (request date of 7/1/25). The corresponding purchase order (PO) document dates and encumbrances will also be future dated, so they are correctly recorded for FY26. The PO will be issued after the requisition is fully approved.
Other important information to be aware of with this enhancement:
Future dated requisitions should not be entered for more than a year in advance, except for multiyear service contracts. Please contact purchasing to discuss entry for multiyear service contracts. FY26 blankets that are not future dated will be sent back for corrections. If users begin invoicing the future dated blanket early (e.g., start invoicing a FY26 blanket in FY25), it results in a mismatch because the liquidation will happen in the current year, but the encumbrance is in the future year. As a reminder, blanket orders are supposed to be used in the fiscal year they are intended for. If a FY26 blanket requisition is inadvertently entered with a current year FY25 request date, FY25 is where the encumbrance will remain until the June year end procurement roll forward. The Controller's Office will no longer be rolling forward purchase orders at the end of April and May. If a unit does not want to wait until June for the encumbrances to be correctly shown in FY26, they should do a change order. If needed, future dated requisitions can be tied to future dated supplier contracts (Example: a blanket requisition is entered in May for a 7/1/25 start date, and a new contract is signed in May but is not effective until 7/1/25). The Create Blanket Purchase Order job aid will be updated in coordination with the functionality being turned on, the week of April 7 .
See the full post for additional reminders about the use of blanket orders.
B&H Photo will be closed for Passover beginning Friday, April 11 through Sunday, April 20 . B&H will re-open Monday, April 21 . Orders placed by 11 p.m. on Thursday, April 10 will ship before the holiday.
On select days during the closure, customers will still be able to enter orders in the supplier website but product will not ship until April 21. See the full post for a visual calendar from B&H with more details.
Data Stewards, security contacts, and administrative system contacts will be receiving an email from Digital Security and Trust – Identity and Access Security Operations with information and instructions on how to verify their area’s users for the coming year for specific Ohio State administrative systems. The system list includes Workday Financials, Human Resources, Medical Center Financials, Workday All Custom Reports, and the Student Information System.
Your attention regarding this mandated annual activity is very important. The email will be sent during the week of Monday, May 5, 2025 , with a requested deadline to confirm area users by Tuesday, June 3, 2025 .
