Use Staff Department values to organize your staffers into departments, like sales or editorial. Then, grant specific staffers management authority over these departments. Staffers with management authority can view, edit, and/or approve time and expenses logged by staffers in the department(s) they oversee.
For example, our staffer Zach has management authority over our editorial and writing departments. So he can view, edit, and/or approve time and expenses logged by staffers in both departments.
In this article, we’ll explain how to create Staff Department values and how to apply them to your staffers. Then, we’ll show you how to give a staffer management authority for a specific department.
Takeaways
- Create Staff Departments values that are relevant to your firm. Add as many values as you’d like and edit them at any time.
- Add staffers to a department, like IT or engineering. You can only apply a staffer to one department.
- Give certain staffers in your company managerial rights to oversee specific departments. These staffers can manage several departments, but they can only view the staffers in the departments they manage.
Create Staff Department Values
By default, BigTime offers several Staff Department values based on your industry, but these values can be edited. Alternatively, system admins can create their own departments.
Follow the steps below to learn how to create your own values or edit existing ones.
1. Click MY COMPANY...FIELD VALUES. This will open your settings window.
2. Click FIELD VALUES...STAFF DEPT to add and/or edit staff departments.
3. Click ADD NEW VALUE to add a new value. Edit an existing value by clicking on a value and make your changes on the right-side of the window.
4. Add information about your newly added value on the right-side of the window. Give the value a name and add a brief description, if you wish.
5. Click SAVE to save your work, or SAVE+NEW to continue adding new values. Repeat the steps above to add more values.
Assign Departments to Staffers
Now that you’ve created a few values, let’s assign staffers to a department. Follow these steps:
1. Click MY COMPANY…STAFF LIST from the navigation bar.
2. Click on a staffer’s name from your STAFF LIST. Doing so will take you to the BASIC INFO TAB on the Staffer Dashboard.
3. Scroll down within the BASIC INFO TAB until you see the DEPARTMENT label. (It’s a small label under the larger "Budget/Management Settings" label).
4. Click on the GRAY ARROW, found under the Department label, and a picklist with your Staff Department values will populate. Make your department selection for this staffer.
Note: You can easily add and/or edit staff departments by clicking the hyperlink EDIT VALUES at the bottom of the picklist.
5. Click the SAVE CHANGES button in the lower right corner to save your work. Repeat these steps for each BigTime staffer.
Give a Staffer Management Authority for a Department
Now you can grant certain staffers managerial rights over a department.
1. Navigate to MY COMPANY...STAFF LIST and click on a staffer’s name, as we did in the previous section. This time, click on the USER RIGHTS tab located on the gray navigation bar.
2. Find the MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY label. This is where you can give the staffer managerial rights to the departments you created. Check as many departments as you’d like this staffer to oversee.
In the example below, we gave our example user management authority for two departments: engineering and tech design.
3. Click EDIT to add and/or edit department values.
When you've finished making your changes, don't forget to click the SAVE CHANGES button in the lower right corner.