This article helps you with the steps and tasks during the first phase of your implementation. If you at any point have any questions, remember we are available in the chat down to the right!
NOTE: Some of the articles linked below may require you to log in to Alexis before seeing them.
How to use Cost centers in AlexisHR
Cost centers are not used by everyone. So if you don't need it, you can skip to the next section here.
Cost centers in Alexis are used to keep track of who belongs to what cost center. An employee can only be part of one cost center so the reason for using these may differ. Some people have this to remind employees of what cost center they should submit their receipts to, others use it to be able to match exported reports from Alexis to external BI/Payroll systems.
How to use Departments in AlexisHR
Departments in AlexisHR is one of the main ways to keep your employees organized. For some companies this is obvious, for others it may be a challenge to adapt your structure in this manner. In any case it is good to know the features connected to departments and to see some examples of how this can be used.
What departments are used for
In Alexis departments are used for mainly 2 things: having people organized in an easy to understand system and for automation. Departments in Alexis doesn't have to follow the exact system used by the organization to structure work, but rather to logically explain belonging. When you create reports, filter out lists of employees or want to see graphs departments can be used to quickly get the information you want.
When it comes to automation you can set up so called Scopes to automatically assign time off policies, profile templates or cost centers etcetera.
Our general recommendation is to not overthink departments and instead iterate on the setup to quickly see and test features connected to it.
An employee can only belong to one department.
The structure of departments
Departments are linked via a top-down structure. When creating a new department you can put it in a tree via the "Parent department"-dropdown. By doing so a department is set as a subdepartment. There is no limits to this, so you can build as long or as short trees as you see fit.
Example:
Management - Is the parent department to IT and Finance.
IT - Is one of two subdepartments to Management and is one the same level as Finance (visually on the same level, in reality Alexis doesn't have levels).
Devops - Is one of two subdepartments to IT and is on the same level as Frontend.
Finance - Is one of two subdepartments to Management and is one the same level as IT.
If your company consists of multiple companies You could visualize it as a Parent Department. As an example, here is a setup with two companies:
How to use Offices in AlexisHRMuch like Departments Offices are used for having people organized in an easy to understand system and for automation. But Offices are more often a direct representation of where a person is located physically.
Even if a person doesn't belong to an actual office space, offices can be set up so Alexis knows where in the world the people attached to it belongs. Via the office you can automatically assign both the correct holidays and timezone.
More than that it gives the possibility to do more precise filtering.
As an example 2 employees can share the same department but have different offices to enable granularity in a report. Filtering on both department and office would make it possible to, as an example, look at everyone in IT that works in Sweden.
How to use Cross-functional teams in AlexisHRSometimes departments and offices aren't enough to represent your organizational structure. Enter Teams (short for Cross-functional teams)!
Teams can be used to further assign people into more granular belongings. Teams are used differently by all our users but the most common scenarios is to let it represent project groups, client belonging (for consultants), missions or other things.
The main difference between Teams and Departments is that you can belong to many teams, but only one department.
