It turns out that when I upgraded from earlier version the conversion did NOT take into account my existing workflows. It therefore did not allow for the creation of the custom field that workflows create on their own when you make them and it didn’t exist in my converted data (even though the workflow itself was carried over.
I had to change something in the workflow and save it in order for it to recreate the custom field it makes on it’s own in the stock entry for tracking the workflow status of the document.
Confusing, and it took some outside help to track this down.