Set up Departments

Follow this article to set up multiple departments which can then be used for manager approval, cost allocation and reporting.

Create Department #

You can add a few departments one by one but if you have many departments it is quicker to use download/edit/upload.

Add departments in the UI #

• Company Setup > Departments
• Add…
• Enter the Name you wish to use for the Department (all department names must be unique)
• Select the Company
• Select the parent department – which department does this new department sit under? An import will create an Office of the CEO department, which is typically the top-level department in a company.
• If you know the manager, select that employee now or leave it blank. It can be added later if the employee has not been added.
• Add

Download/Upload #

• Company Setup > Departments
• Download….
• Select the company
• Download

This will create a CSV file for the existing departments in your downloads folder. There is one row per department.

You can edit this file using a spreadsheet program to add additional new department rows. Ensure you use the same company values and parent values as applicable. You can save the file in CSV or XLSX format. Here is an example:

When you have finished editing the file, upload as follows:

• Company Setup > Departments
• Upload….
• Choose the file
• Upload File to server
• Skip first row and clickPreo-process selected data…
• Publish…

Your new departments have been uploaded. You can check the current departments in Company set up > Departments.

Move employee to New departments #

You can move employees individually to different departments in the UI, or use bulk upload to make a large number of changes

Edit a small number of employees #

• Employee Setup
• Update the employee
• Select the new department
• Update to save the change

Employee Bulk Edit #

Download #

• Employee Setup
• Download…
• Select the company
• Download

Edit #

This will create a file of all employee data in your downloads folder. You can edit this file and change the department column cells to the new Department names required. Save the file as a CSV or XLSX.

The only columns required for bulk editing upload are the department and username/works_id. Any other columns will be ignored. If you wish to provide department names from an external source, for example from an HR system, then ensure username/ workds_id are included in the file to look up each employee together with another column for department names. You can use any column headings.

Upload with Bulk Employee edit #

• Toolshed
• Employee bulk edit > Run
• Select the company
• Choose the file
• Upload

Carefully choose each setting on the final screen:

1. Fields: Click department (you may need to scroll down or enlarge the field with the control in the lower right hand corner)
2. Select: VLOOKUP by username or works_Id
3. Vlookup: Select the column which includes the lookup (username or works_id)
4. Mapping: enter your column name in the curly brackets, for example, the following mapping will read new department names from a column heading in the file my_new_department into the employees department

{
"department": "{my_new_department}"
}

Leave Dry run to Yes to test the changes and click Save options. Go back and change this to No and click Save options to make the changes for real. The department change made will be listed.

You can verify the employees by updating an employee, or downloading all the employees again and checking them in a spreadsheet.

Manager Approval #

The department manager is the employee who will be approving holidays, timesheets, absences etc.. If there is no department manager, any requests will be routed to the master admin. You can change the department manager in Company set up > departments. If you need an approver who is not an employee then you can set up a test employee.

Note: the manager of a department cannot be a member of the same department – they must be a member of a different department.

Reporting with Analytics #

When you run analytics to create a data table, each employee will be included along with their department name. That means that any pivot table you create can also be use department names. This allows you to split and analyse any value in the payroll by department.