Colleges Hire Finance Staff for Workday and Excel: What 622 Higher Ed Postings Show
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Of the 622 live higher-education finance and accounting postings in our index as of October 2026, 153 name Workday, which is about 25 percent, against roughly 5 percent across the wider set of postings we track. Excel or spreadsheets show up in 448 of them, 72 percent, which is more than every ERP in the data combined. If you are picking accounting software for a college or university, or you are an accountant wondering what a campus finance office will ask you to know, those two numbers are the place to start, and the rest of this is me trying to explain why they look the way they do.
The counts come from the postings behind the Audit Friendly job board, filtered to employers tagged as higher education and to titles in accounting, finance, budget, payroll, grants, audit and bursar work. Software mentions are matched on the posting text, so treat the smaller counts as floors, since plenty of postings just say "ERP experience" and leave you guessing.
What accounting software do colleges and universities actually use?
Workday leads the named systems by a wide margin at 153 postings, then Oracle at 32 and PeopleSoft at 31 (some of those overlap, since PeopleSoft is Oracle), then Ellucian Banner at 27 at minimum, then QuickBooks at 12, Sage Intacct at 9, Jenzabar and similar student-system names at 8, NetSuite at 4 and Blackbaud at 3. That is a market that is mid-migration, with the old campus stack of Banner and PeopleSoft still holding on in a lot of finance offices while Workday takes over the places that decided the legacy install was finally too damn expensive to keep patching.
QuickBooks is the quiet tell here. It appears in about 2 percent of higher-ed postings versus roughly 5 percent across the broader set we covered in which accounting software employers ask for, because a school with a real finance department has usually outgrown it, and the ones still on it tend to be small colleges or standalone foundations with a single entity.
Why does Workday over-index so hard in higher ed?
My read is that campuses buy Workday for HR and payroll first, because a university employs faculty, staff, adjuncts, student workers and grant-funded researchers on a dozen different pay arrangements, and then they extend into financials since the data is already there. That is the same pattern we saw in our healthcare software breakdown, where big workforces pulled Workday in through the side door.
The catch is that Workday is a platform you implement with a consulting team and live with for ten years, so if you are a smaller institution it will not feel like a buying decision so much as a marriage. Smaller schools do better looking at tools built around fund-level reporting, and our software directory is a decent place to compare what is out there by size and fit.
Why is Excel in 72 percent of higher ed finance postings?
Because the ERP posts the transactions and the real work happens in the layer above it. Budgeting by department, allocating overhead to grants, rolling up auxiliary units like housing and dining, building the board package - almost all of that lives in a workbook somewhere, and it is where finance teams burn most of their month. I would not read the Excel number as a sign these offices are behind, since it is the same story in nearly every industry we look at, but I would read it as the best argument for buying software based on what it does to that spreadsheet layer instead of how pretty the ledger screen is.
How much of higher ed finance is grants and fund accounting?
182 of the 622 postings mention grants, about 29 percent, and 40 mention fund accounting explicitly, about 6 percent. Grants are the part that makes campus finance different from corporate finance, because every sponsored award comes with its own budget, allowable-cost rules and reporting calendar, and the software has to carry all of that without a human re-keying it. Public institutions also report under GASB standards while private nonprofit schools follow FASB, so the same vendor can have to produce two different sets of statements depending on who is buying. For benchmarks on how campus business offices think about all this, the NACUBO resources are worth bookmarking.
What I'd do
If you are buying, write down the three spreadsheets your finance team rebuilds every month and make every vendor show you how their product handles each one, because that is where the demo bullshit gets exposed fast. Ask specifically how sponsored awards, fund balances and GASB or FASB reporting work out of the box, and ask a reference customer about the implementation, not the product. If you are a job seeker, learn Workday financials and get comfortable with grant accounting, since that combination is what the postings keep asking for, and you can browse remote accounting jobs to see how many of the campus roles have gone hybrid or remote.
Multi-entity setups are common in higher ed too, with foundations, auxiliaries and research arms living alongside the main institution, so it is worth reading how to choose multi-entity accounting software before you commit to a structure.
Frequently asked questions
What ERP do most universities use?
In our data Workday is the most-named system in higher-ed finance postings at about 25 percent, followed by Oracle, PeopleSoft and Ellucian Banner, which reflects a market partway through migrating off legacy campus systems.
Do colleges use QuickBooks?
Some do, mostly small colleges and affiliated foundations. It shows up in about 2 percent of higher-ed finance postings, well below its share across the broader market.
Is Excel still used in university finance offices?
Yes, heavily. 72 percent of higher-ed finance postings in our data name Excel or spreadsheets, because budgeting, grant allocation and reporting packages usually live outside the ERP.
What accounting standards do universities follow?
Public institutions follow GASB and private nonprofit institutions follow FASB, which means software needs to support whichever framework applies to the school.
What skills should a higher-ed accountant have?
Workday or a comparable ERP, strong Excel, and grant or fund accounting experience, based on how often those appear in current postings.
The mix changes every month as more schools finish their migrations, so pull up three postings from a campus near you and see which system they name. That tells you more about where your next hire or your next job is headed than any analyst report will.
