Organizational structure: location, department, team

How Shiftdesk maps your company

Shiftdesk uses a three-level hierarchy: Location → Department → Team. This structure is the foundation for scheduling, permissions, and analyses.

The three levels

1. Location: A physical business site with address, country, and time zone. Examples: Berlin Mitte branch, Hamburg warehouse. Locations are the top organizational unit beneath your organization.
2. Department: A functional area within a location. Examples: Service, Kitchen, Warehouse, Reception. Departments help keep schedules and analyses cleanly separated.
3. Team: A finer-grained group within a department, optional. Examples: Early-shift team, Weekend crew. Teams are useful when team leads should manage only a subset.

Create the structure

Go to Settings → Organization. There you see your hierarchy as a tree and can add nodes at any level via New:

1. Add location → name, address, country
2. Add department below the location
3. Optional: Add team below the department

Assign employees

When creating a person under Employees → Add employee, you select the home location and the home department. A person can additionally help out in other departments — for that, there is the Work areas section in the employee profile.

Why this structure makes sense

• Clean permissions: A location manager sees only their location, a team lead only their team. See Roles and permissions.
• Meaningful reports: You can analyze hours, costs, and absences per level.
• Clear schedules: Schedules are created per department — this keeps the view clear, even with large teams.
• Scalable: When a new location is added, you reuse templates and contract types without rebuilding from scratch.

Tip

It's better to start flat: one location, two to three departments. You can add teams later at any time as your needs grow.