Table of Contents

Departments and work locations

Organizing employees by department and work location helps manage payroll, allocate costs, and maintain organizational structure.

Tip

Departments and work locations are specific to your organization and should be created manually. If you generated master data from the Contoso Coffee Payroll Demo Dataset for demonstration purposes, 11 sample departments and (with the US localization) 3 sample work locations are included. In a production environment, create your own departments and work locations instead.

Departments

Departments group employees by their functional area or organizational unit.

Setting up departments

To create a department:

  1. Search for Departments
  2. Select New
  3. Enter:
    • Code — Short identifier (e.g., "SALES", "ACCT", "MFG")
    • Description — Full department name (e.g., "Sales", "Accounting", "Manufacturing")
  4. Optional: Set Parent Department to create a hierarchy

Department hierarchies

Departments can have parent-child relationships:

Example hierarchy:

Operations (Parent)
├── Manufacturing (Child)
│   ├── Assembly (Child of Manufacturing)
│   └── Quality (Child of Manufacturing)
├── Warehouse (Child)
└── Logistics (Child)

To create a hierarchy:

  1. Create parent department first.
  2. When creating child departments, set Parent Department to the parent.

OnePayroll tracks relationships automatically.

Hierarchies enable:

  • Reporting by department structure
  • Cost center allocation
  • Organizational analysis at different levels

Assigning employees to departments

To assign an employee to a department:

  1. Open the Employee record.
  2. In the General tab, set the Department field.

Employees automatically inherit department settings:

  • Department hierarchy level
  • Reporting groupings

Work locations

Work locations track physical or remote work sites.

Setting up work locations

To create a work location:

  1. Search for Work Locations
  2. Select New
  3. Enter:
    • Code — Location identifier (e.g., "MAIN", "BRANCH1", "REMOTE")
    • Description — Location name (e.g., "Main Office", "Branch 1", "Remote")
    • Type — On-Site or Remote
    • Address, City, Post Code, County, Country/Region Code — Physical location details

Work location types

OnePayroll supports two work location types:

Type Used For
On-Site Corporate offices, plants, warehouses, stores, job sites
Remote Work-from-home, distributed workforce

Assigning employees to work locations

To assign an employee to a work location:

  1. Open the Employee record.
  2. In the OnePayroll tab, set the Work Location field.

Employees can be assigned to a primary work location on the Employee Card.

Work location information is used for:

  • Organizational reporting
  • Local tax jurisdiction (for state/city taxes in the US localization)
  • Workforce distribution analysis

Using departments and locations in payroll

Reporting by department

Generate payroll reports grouped by department:

  • Total payroll by department
  • Departmental benefit costs
  • Department headcount

Reporting by location

Generate payroll reports grouped by work location:

  • Payroll by office or site
  • Location-specific costs
  • Location headcount

Department hierarchies and reporting

Using department hierarchies enables multi-level analysis:

Example: Payroll by department level

Total Company Payroll: $500,000
├── Operations: $350,000
│   ├── Manufacturing: $200,000
│   │   ├── Assembly: $120,000
│   │   └── Quality: $80,000
│   └── Warehouse: $150,000
└── Corporate: $150,000
    ├── Sales: $80,000
    └── Admin: $70,000

Hierarchies enable:

  • Analysis at each level (What's total for Operations?)
  • Comparison across departments
  • Trend analysis over time

Special considerations

Remote employees

Mark remote employees with the Remote work location type:

  • Enables remote workforce reporting
  • Can link to regional tax jurisdiction for US localization
  • Simplifies analysis of distributed teams

Moving employees between departments/locations

To move an employee:

  1. Open the employee card.
  2. Update the Department or Work Location field.

OnePayroll's snapshot system tracks changes to employee records over time for audit purposes.

Verification and testing

Before processing payroll:

  1. Verify all active employees have departments assigned
  2. Test payroll with employees from different departments
  3. Check departmental payroll reports

Troubleshooting

"Department not found" error

  • Verify department exists on the Departments page
  • Check department code spelling
  • Create department if it doesn't exist

Best practices

  • Use consistent naming — Standardize department codes and descriptions
  • Create hierarchies — Use parent-child relationships for meaningful analysis
  • Assign all employees — Ensure every employee has a department
  • Document changes — Track department reorganizations
  • Geographic alignment — Use work locations for geographic organization

What's next

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