Guide: Departments and Sub-Departments

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.

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.

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