Departments

Departments represent the high-level organizational divisions within your company. They sit above teams in the organizational hierarchy and provide a way to group, report on, and allocate budgets across broad functional areas.

Why Departments Matter

While teams are the day-to-day working groups in Flowstate, departments provide the executive-level view. A "Platform Engineering" team and a "Product Engineering" team might both belong to the "Engineering" department. Departments enable:

• Departmental headcount reporting -- see total headcount, FTE, and vacancy counts rolled up to the department level
• Budget allocation -- assign and track budgets at the department level before distributing to individual teams
• Organizational structure -- model your company's reporting hierarchy for clearer visibility into how teams relate to each other
• Cross-team analysis -- compare costs, growth rates, and staffing levels across departments

Configuring Departments

1. Navigate to Settings > Departments
2. Click Add Department
3. Enter the department name and an optional description
4. Click Save

Repeat for each organizational division in your company.

TIP

Map departments directly to your organization's actual reporting structure. If your CFO reviews budgets by "Engineering", "Product", "Design", and "Data Science", those should be your Flowstate departments.

Data Model

Field	Type	Description
name	string	Department name (e.g., "Engineering", "Product", "Design")
description	string	Optional description of the department's scope and responsibilities
isActive	boolean	Whether the department is available for assignment (default: true)
sortOrder	integer	Controls display ordering in lists and dropdowns (default: 0)

Unique constraint: [organizationId, name] -- no duplicate department names within an organization.

How Departments Are Used

Departments provide the grouping layer above teams. Teams are assigned to departments, and all rollup reporting flows through this relationship.

Organizational Hierarchy

The hierarchy in Flowstate follows this structure:

Department (e.g., "Engineering")
  └── Team (e.g., "Platform")
       ├── Employee
       ├── Employee
       └── Vacancy
  └── Team (e.g., "Product Engineering")
       ├── Employee
       ├── Contractor
       └── Vacancy

Reporting and Grouping

With departments configured, you can:

• Group the team list by department to see which teams belong to each division
• View headcount summaries at the department level in the forecast
• Compare department growth across scenarios to evaluate different organizational strategies

WARNING

Do not confuse departments with teams. Departments are organizational divisions (e.g., "Engineering"). Teams are the working groups within them (e.g., "Platform", "Product Engineering", "Data Platform"). Employees and contractors are assigned to teams, not directly to departments.

Scenario Planning

In scenario mode, you can model departmental restructuring by moving teams between departments and comparing the impact on headcount distribution and costs. This is useful for evaluating reorganization proposals before committing to changes.

Best Practices

• Mirror your org chart -- departments should reflect how your organization actually reports, not an idealized structure
• Keep it flat -- Flowstate supports a single level of departments above teams. If you need deeper nesting, use naming conventions (e.g., "Engineering - Infrastructure", "Engineering - Product")
• Add descriptions -- a brief scope statement helps new users understand what each department covers
• Deactivate unused departments -- set isActive to false rather than deleting departments that are no longer in use, to preserve historical reporting data

Required Permissions

Managing departments requires the settings_entity_config_* permission set.

Related

• Getting Started: Teams -- how teams are structured and assigned to departments
• Configuration: Job Roles -- role classifications assigned to employees and vacancies
• Configuration: Cost Centres -- financial groupings for budget tracking (distinct from departments)
• Configuration: Value Streams -- product-oriented groupings that cut across departments