With the Locations & Departments module, you can map your company structure in ZEP, meaning you can define Departments, Branches, or Locations (menu item Departments), assign employees and projects to individual departments, store Letterhead, define Department Managers, and create Reports on time and costs per department.

An Administrator can restrict all Reports by department.

In the Reports menu item, you will additionally receive the Departments tab.

A Department Manager receives their department(s) for selection. An Administrator or Controller can select all departments. Inactive departments are not offered in the list.

The department of the logged-in user is preset. Under Administration, you can also specify that "- any -" should be preset instead for the Administrator and Controller.

When a department is selected, only customers belonging to this department are displayed. By using the checkbox, you specify whether the customers of the sub-departments of the selected department should also be included in the customer list.

If you select "- any -," then all customers are offered, regardless of their departmental affiliation, even if their department is inactive.

If you use the Locations & Departments module, you must first make a few basic settings under Administration > Departments > Settings.

A Department Manager with the User Role May Use Employees/Projects/Prices from Foreign Departments as Copy Templates in Project Planning

With this setting, you can specify how much a Department Manager is allowed to view, or whether they are allowed to copy the corresponding elements from foreign departments for their own department.

Preliminary remark: If you, as an Administrator or Department Manager, run various Reports, you have the option to preselect a department. You can use a checkbox to specify whether only this department or all of its sub-departments should also be considered. Depending on the company structure, you may always need to select "incl. sub-departments." In that case, it is tedious to have to check the box for every report. Therefore, you can specify here what the default setting of the checkbox "incl. sub-departments" should be in the Reports.

Preliminary remark: If you, as an Administrator or Department Manager, run various Reports, the department to which you are assigned is preset in the department list fields. Depending on your needs, it may be useful for you to always use all departments as the default setting. Therefore, you can specify here whether the default setting should be "arbitrary."

A Department Manager is an Administrator at the department level.

They can record and manage employees, customers, and projects for their department, as well as execute Reports concerning their employees, customers, and projects. Under Administration in an employee's sub-menu, a Department Manager (just like an Administrator) can record, change, and delete project times and receipts (if applicable) for that employee; however, they can only rebook data belonging to their employees onto projects belonging to their departments. A Department Manager who themselves has the "User" permission can only grant the "User" permission to employees in their department. A Department Manager with the "User with additional rights" permission can grant the "User" and "User with additional rights" permissions to employees in their department.

The menu item Departments is available for selection to every Department Manager, Administrator, and Controller.

As an Administrator, you can select and edit or run reports on a specific department here. As a Department Manager, you can select and edit or run reports on your department(s) and any subordinate departments.

When you create a new department, a pop-up opens where you can enter the general department data:

After you have made all entries for the department data, confirm your specifications with "Save." You can then make all further specifications for the department via the selection of the corresponding sub-menu item.

In the sub-menu item Data of a department, you see the data that you specified when creating the department.

When you call up a department to modify it, you can specify that this department should be inactive.

As long as customers, employees, or projects still belong to the department, a department cannot be deleted. With the "inactive" option, the department remains in the system, but the department is no longer listed in the department lists. This is useful, for example, when a department is dissolved. To display the inactive departments again, activate the option "also show inactive departments" in the search criteria of the Department Administration.

Current employees, projects, and customers should be assigned to other departments; former employees and projects can remain in the inactive department.

(Starting with ZEP Compact Revenues & Costs.)

You record currencies and conversion rates under Administration > Prices & Receipts > Exchange Rates. There you also define the Base Currency for your company.

In general, the Base Currency also applies to all departments.

If you have Departments in different countries, you can specify a separate currency for each department here. This is then the currency for the internal costs of the department, meaning:

Caution: If you change the currency of the department, or if you change the departmental assignment of an employee, the employee's internal hourly rates are not automatically converted into the other currency!

Differentiation from External Costs:

Customers and projects that are assigned to the department each have their own currency for the respective price lists, which is independent of the Department Currency. Project-related Reports are generally created in the respective project currency.

Using the button Assign Employee as Department Manager, you can select and assign Department Managers for this department in the following pop-up.

In the sub-menu item Employees, you can see which employees are assigned to this department. With the appropriate permission, Department Managers can create new employees for their department themselves using the New Employeebutton. A Department Manager who themselves has the "User" permission can only grant the "User" permission to employees in their department. A Department Manager with the "User with additional rights" permission can grant the "User" and "User with additional rights" permissions to employees in their department.

The list of all current employees, based on their entry and exit dates, is displayed.

If you have already created as many current employees as your ZEP license maximally allows, you will no longer have the "New Employee" button.

Caution when creating employees with an entry date in the future. If, at a later time, this results in more than the licensed number of employees being "current," ZEP will recognize this and deny access due to violation of the license terms.

You can sort the employee list by username. Clicking the column header sorts the list in the reverse order.

Numbers and most special characters are sorted before A.

German umlauts are sorted after Z.

In the sub-menu item Projects, all projects belonging to this department are listed in a table. Using the Create New Project link, you can create new projects for the department from this location at any time. By clicking the project's Short Form, you can jump to the corresponding project.

In the sub-menu item Customers, all customers belonging to this department are listed in a table. Using the Create New Customer link, you can create new customers for the department from this location at any time. By clicking the customer number, you can jump to the corresponding customer.

For the selected month, all employees of the department, including the sub-department(s), are displayed in a table with their hours worked per day. You can filter by employee category. Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays are shaded in gray; Sundays and public holidays (as well as potentially other days where the employee has 0 Standard Working Hours) are additionally marked with red font. In this overview, you can see if all employees have "ZEP'd" (recorded time in ZEP) or if someone has forgotten to book their hours. If you click on a day, all project times for that day are additionally displayed in a small window.

As a Department Manager, you can lock the employees of your department, including the sub-department(s), for the selected month. You can optionally lock all employees (click the "Lock All" button) or lock individual employees for the selected month. To do this, click the (first) "Lock Symbol" next to the corresponding employee's name and confirm the following dialog with "Yes." The effects of an Employee Lock are analogous to Month-end Closing: no changes can be made for the corresponding employee, even by the Administrator (recording, changing, or deleting project times, receipts, or absences in that month). You recognize a locked employee by the "Closed Lock" symbol($\text{\textcircled{$\smallfrown$}}$). If you wish to lift an Employee Lock, click the symbol again and confirm the subsequent dialog with "Yes." If you want to unlock all employees in the department, click the displayed button.

You can also enter custom settings for the email header and footer for departments using a simple HTML editor.

E-mail Settings for Invoice Dispatch

If you send the invoices to your customers via email, you can enter a department-specific custom email address here (deviating from the address specified under Administration > Settings > E-mail for automatically sent emails, or the address specified under Administration > Settings > Invoicing). If necessary, specify a sender name, a reply address (Reply-To), and a reply name (Reply-To).

Reply Name (Reply-To) for Invoice Dispatch via E-mail

Any potential reply from the customer to the invoice sent as an email will be sent to this name.

Reply Address (Reply-To) for Invoice Dispatch via E-mail

Any potential reply from the customer to the invoice sent as an email will be sent to this email address.

If you use the Ticketing System module, you can set a custom Standard Mailbox for each department. The Mailboxes created under Administration > Ticketing System > Mailboxes are available for selection.

All emails sent to this address are converted into tickets by ZEP. These tickets are initially assigned to the project/task to which the Standard Mailbox is assigned. However, you can change the project assignment or task assignment of the ticket as desired. If you forward the remark of a ticket that has been moved in this way as an email (click the mail-forward_1 symbol on the far right of the page), the reference to the ticket is included in the email's Subject line.

For all mails that arrive in the ticket Mailboxes, ZEP now checks whether they can be assigned to an existing ticket somewhere based on their Subject.

In the sub-menu item Cover Page, you receive an overview of all important data regarding the department.

Department Cost Overview

Under the menu item Reports > Departments > Costs, a Department Manager is shown a detailed list of all accrued internal and external costs for their department per month. An Administrator can report on all departments.

Mixed projects that contain both lump sum and effort-based tasks are marked with an asterisk (*). Projects for which no time or receipts were recorded during the reporting period are not displayed.

Further information on department-specific reports can be found in our Reports collection in the article Department Reports.

If you call up Departments > [Department Name] > Actions > Delete, you will be shown whether you can delete the department or which elements are preventing the department from being deleted.

Path: Departments > [Department Name] > Other

If you map multiple companies within your ZEP instance as Departments, you can enter additional data:

With the Invoicing module additionally:

Enter your Bank Details here. This data is needed for creating PDF/A-ZUGFeRD invoices. This data is also used as a Placeholder variable for the Letterhead. This means if your Bank Details change, you can make the change here (link New Bank Details) and the updated information will automatically be adopted into all your Letterhead templates where you have inserted a Placeholder for this data. The fields Bank Name, IBAN, and BIC are also available as document variables for the Letterhead.

Each set of Bank Details has the following fields:

For ZUGFeRD and as a Placeholder for the Letterhead:

Only for the Letterhead: