About Model My Pay

The Model My Pay feature lets you estimate your pay by applying hypothetical changes to earnings, taxes, or deductions—helping you see how these adjustments could affect your take-home pay. Once you’ve reviewed the impact and decide to move forward with changes, it’s critical to update your tax elections to reflect any federal or state adjustments you modeled. Without updating these elections, your actual payroll will not align with the changes you intended.

This tool may be helpful for anyone who is considering or expecting changes to:

• Compensation  
• Location/COLA change
• Federal tax elections (marital status/dependents/extra withholding)
• State tax elections (home/work state- moving to another state)
• Pre-tax deductions (403(b), health/dental/vision insurance)

Access Model My Pay 

Check out Model My Pay tutorial video and/or step-by-step instructions below, and reach out to the Payroll Team with any questions.

1. Log-in to Workday.
2. Once you are on your Workday landing page click Menu, then Benefits and Pay icon.

3. Under Pay, select Payments then click on Model My Pay.

4. Select the position if isn’t already prepopulated and the pay period you would like you use for comparison. Click Ok.

5. Modeling Options: From here, you would expand the sections below as needed and enter new values in the “Adjusted Value” column. Click the “Earnings,” “Pre-Tax Deductions, “or “Post-Tax Deductions” to add the values you want to compare.  

To model earnings, if the pay slip selected for modeling has multiple earning codes, then you must enter $0.00 in the “enter value” field in all earnings except in the “Salary Base True Up,” this is where you will enter the value to be used for modeling as shown in a screenshot below. Remember, you will always enter the total amount to model in the “Salary Base True Up” field. 

For 403(b) comparison, you must enter the percentage to model as a decimal. For example, if you want to model a change from 10% to 15%, you will write 0.15 in the “Adjusted Value” field.

To compare changes to your tax withholding, click the “Adjust Federal Taxes” or “Adjust State Taxes” below. 

Once you are finished entering the section you would like to change, click “Model.” When the comparison is complete it will return a summary and a chart at the top of the screen of the comparison results. Scroll down and click on each field changed to see the before and after results. Additionally, you can download a pdf copy of the results by clicking on the pdf icon on the upper right-hand corner of the screen; the results of the changes are easier to read on the PDF document. After completing this step, if you want to make changes, you’ll need to update your tax elections to reflect any federal or state adjustments you’ve made.