General Ledger (GL) reporting is available in the Ad Hoc Reporting feature, and offers a flexible and intuitive way to generate GL reports. You can create, format, and customize reports with ease, and take advantage of over 115 GL fields across four query entities for in-depth financial insights. GL report data is collected by running the Populate Payroll General Ledger Reporting Data Tables background job.
Due to the high volume of report data, the GL reporting feature stores and processes the data in a data lake. To maintain a high system performance, the data lake is only populated once every 24 hours.
Configuration Basics
The GL reporting feature needs the following configurations before you use it:
| Configuration Task | Configuration Steps |
|---|---|
| Enable the GL reporting feature and data lake storage |
If you are a system admin user, go to System Admin > Client Properties. In the Properties section, select the client property Populate Payroll General Ledger Reporting Data Tables to enable the GL reporting feature. The Populate Payroll General Ledger Reporting Data Tables client property is only visible to system admin users. If you are a Dayforce customer, you must contact customer support to enable the GL reporting feature. |
| Configure the chart-of-account and other settings used by the background job |
In Payroll Setup > General Ledger in the Default Run Settings tab, configure the settings in the Paygroup default chart of accounts grid. The settings used by the job are persisted for audit purposes in the Background Engine log data. |
| Define how GL reporting is triggered |
GL report data is collected by running the Populate Payroll General Ledger Reporting Data Tables background job. You can run the background job in two ways:
|
| Enable the data lake in a preproduction environment |
Enabling the data lake in a preproduction environment involves additional steps beyond what’s required for production. Contact Dayforce customer support for assistance. |
Important: When you run the background job, Dayforce overrides all previously saved data by default.
For a full description of all available settings in the Default Run Settings tab, see GL Default Run Settings in the Dayforce Implementation Guide.
The history and status of jobs are shown in the General Ledger tab in the Payroll feature. See The General Ledger Tab.
Accessing the GL Report Data
The data in the database tables are exposed in Reporting and Analytics > Reporting > Classic Reports as primary entities in the Payroll category. The GL columns are shown in the report fields, and are available for use with the existing Reporting and Analytics feature functionality.
The primary entities are:
- ODS - Payroll General Ledger Pay Run Results
- ODS - Payroll General Ledger Pay Run Results Home Org Unit Hierarchy
- ODS - Payroll General Ledger Pay Run Results Charged Org Unit Hierarchy
- ODS - Payroll General Ledger Pay Run Labor Metrics
Best Practice: Don’t combine Home and Charged Org Unit Hierarchy query entities in the same report. Using both query entities together might exceed and fail the limits of data volume.
Data Expectations
Data is produced by applying current GL configurations when the Populate Payroll General Ledger Reporting Data Tables background job runs. You can use the GL Preview tab in the Employee Preview slide-out to preview the data because the GL Preview tab shows the same results that the background job generates in the GL query entity fields for reporting.
Data Management
To meet privacy requirements, set up to keep data for 1 to 36 months in System Admin > Data Management Center in the System/ Company Management tab.
The Purge GL Reporting Data policy is permanently configured to clean out old data from the GL reporting data tables. You can select a retention period from 1 to 36 months based on the pay date of the data.