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Divisions, branches & regions

One company with three provinces, or three companies with one division.

Most software assumes one organisation, one country, one tax rate, one list of departments. Real ones have two structures, so Atlas keeps both: the legal one decides tax, thresholds and templates; the management one decides who may spend what.

The legal layer

Each branch buys under its own province's rules.

A unit can sit under its own country or province — its own tax stack, procurement floors and contract templates. Spend still rolls up to one set of figures.

  • Set onceA requisition takes its unit from whoever raises it, and carries that unit's tax rate, thresholds and templates all the way to the invoice
  • Never re-derivedMoving somebody changes their future requisitions only. Anything already raised keeps the regime it was raised under — re-pointing it would change the tax rate on live paperwork
  • YoursYou place a unit inside your own country: pick the province and it takes the right thresholds and the right tax stack automatically
  • OursA unit's country and its public or private classification are set with your provider. Those decide the currency, the templates a bidder receives, and whether trade-agreement rules apply at all
.../org
Group structure — Three provinces in one workspace: Ontario on 13% HST, British Columbia on GST + PST, Quebec on 14.975% GST + QST, each with its own floors.
Group structureThree provinces in one workspace: Ontario on 13% HST, British Columbia on GST + PST, Quebec on 14.975% GST + QST, each with its own floors.
The management layer

Any department can sit under any division.

A division is a management grouping and deliberately cuts across legal entities: one Operations division can hold Facilities in two companies. Nothing is fixed by name, and a department left as none reports straight to the company.

  • ShapeAdd divisions and departments, place each department under a division, and name its head — all on one screen
  • ReversibleRetiring a department disables it, never deletes it. Its head, its division and every requisition raised against it stay intact. Add the name back and the same record returns
  • Not an add-onEvery organisation has departments, so this is not behind the Group Structure module — a single company uses it exactly as a group does
  • BudgetsEach cost centre has an owner, and that owner is asked to sign first on anything charged to it
.../settings#set-structure
Divisions and departments — Eight departments across three divisions, each with the head who signs for it.
Divisions and departmentsEight departments across three divisions, each with the head who signs for it.
For the requester

A requester raises for their own department; an assistant for a whole division.

Raising against another department's budget is spending money you were not given. The picker offers exactly what that person may raise for, and because form and guard are the same rule, the two cannot drift apart.

  • OwnThe default, and the practice everywhere: a requester raises against their own department
  • DivisionThe divisional administrator — one person covering every department under a division, including departments added after they were set up
  • Named listAn assistant covering two departments in different divisions
  • AnyProcurement is centre-led and buys for everybody, so it raises for anyone
.../requests/new
Raising a request — A divisional assistant's picker: every department under Operations, and nothing from another division.
Raising a requestA divisional assistant's picker: every department under Operations, and nothing from another division.
For the administrator

Set the whole organisation up in one upload.

One CSV, one row per person. Divisions, departments and approval titles are implied by the columns. Nothing has to be created in order, and the hierarchy is never typed twice.

  • PreviewUploading shows what it WOULD do and writes nothing — created, changed, deactivated, which divisions and departments are new, and every problem with the file
  • ProvableThe file travels back with the confirmation, so what is applied is what was shown
  • SafePeople absent from the file are disabled, never deleted, so requisitions and signatures keep resolving to a person. A file leaving no administrator, or omitting its uploader, is caught before anything is written
  • RepeatableIdempotent on email: upload a corrected file as many times as it takes
.../settings#set-structure
Structure import — The dry run: what the file would create, change and disable, before any of it happens.
Structure importThe dry run: what the file would create, change and disable, before any of it happens.