Group Users for approvals and reporting. Nest Sub-Departments under a parent to mirror how the team actually works.
3-minute read
A Department in Vacation Tracker is how you group Users for approvals and reporting. A Sub-Department is a Department nested under a parent Department. Together they let your Vacation Tracker structure mirror how the company actually works, so approvers route correctly and reports stay tidy.
Plan availability: Departments are on every paid plan. The Core plan supports up to 10 Departments; the Complete plan is unlimited. Sub-Departments count against the same total.
What Departments do
Route approvals: every leave request from a User in a Department goes to that Department's Approvers
Slice the data: Calendar, Wallchart, notifications, and reports can all filter by Department
Group the team on the dashboard: the Users page can be grouped by Department for cleaner scanning
Inherit context from Location: each Department lives in a Location, so it picks up that Location's Workweek and holiday list
Why Sub-Departments exist
Some teams are nested. Engineering has Backend, Frontend, and Mobile. Marketing has Brand, Demand Gen, and Content. A flat list of Departments would either lose that structure (everything under "Engineering") or duplicate it in the menus. Sub-Departments let you mirror the real structure without duplication, and they let each sub-team have its own Approvers, notifications, or policies when the parent doesn't fit.
Location
Berlin Office
Carries the Workweek and holiday list. Every Department under this Location inherits both.
Department
Engineering
Groups Users for approvals and reporting. Its Approvers act on all leave requests from Engineering Users.
Sub-Department
Backend
Nested under Engineering. Inherits Engineering's Approvers and settings unless you override them for Backend specifically.
How the hierarchy behaves
Sub-Departments inherit by default: a Sub-Department picks up its parent's Approvers and settings unless you override them
Override at the Sub-Department level when needed: assign different Approvers, separate notifications, or distinct policies for a Sub-Department whose needs diverge from the parent
Reports roll up: a report on a parent Department includes its Sub-Departments. You can also report at a Sub-Department level for a sharper view
Users belong to one Department: each User sits in a single Department, which may itself be a Sub-Department. Their approval flow follows that Department's Approvers
When to reach for a Sub-Department
The parent Department is large enough that having one combined Approver list would be unfair to whoever is covering it
A sub-team is in a different Location or has noticeably different leave patterns
A sub-team needs its own notification (a dedicated Slack channel, for example) without the whole parent Department seeing it
A sub-team has its own compliance or leave-policy rules that don't apply to the rest of the parent
What each role does
Administrator: creates and edits Departments and Sub-Departments, assigns Approvers, and decides how deep the hierarchy should go
Approver: only acts on requests in Departments (and Sub-Departments) they own. Spotting which Sub-Department a request comes from helps answer "is this within my scope?"
User: belongs to exactly one Department. That Department decides who their Approvers are and which policies apply
Common Questions
Yes. The hierarchy can nest multiple levels deep. In practice two or three levels is usually enough; deeper trees become hard to maintain and explain to the team.
Existing approved leaves stay exactly as they were. Future requests will route to the Sub-Department's Approvers from that moment on. No data is rewritten.
No. Each User belongs to exactly one Department at a time. If they need attention from a different team for a specific project, Labels (Complete plan) are the better tool for cross-cutting tagging.
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