SOURCE: Vacation Tracker TITLE: Guide: Departments and Sub-Departments URL: https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/guide-departments-and-sub-departments/ LANG: en PUBLISHED: 2024-06-21 UPDATED: 2026-02-09 READING: 3 min SUMMARY: Departments group Users for approvals and reporting; Sub-Departments nest under a parent to mirror how your team actually works. Learn how the hierarchy behaves. # Guide: Departments and Sub-Departments # 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. 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 Can a Sub-Department have its own Sub-Departments? 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. If I move a User from a parent Department to a Sub-Department, what happens to their leave? 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. Can a User be in multiple Departments? 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. ### What's Next? Guide: Administrator vs Approver vs User (https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/guide-administrator-vs-location-admin-vs-approver-vs-user/) Guide: What Can an Approver Do in Vacation Tracker? (https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/guide-what-can-an-approver-do-in-vacation-tracker/) Guide: Notifications Within Vacation Tracker (https://vacationtracker.io/knowledge-base/guide-notifications-within-vacation-tracker/) Need help? Contact our Support team via email or chat, Monday to Friday, 9 AM – 5 PM EST.