Departments

Although departments are optional, they are useful for filtering and categorizing data in many areas of the system. For example, you might want to generate financial reports and graphs based on departments. Additionally, many companies set up approvals (such as purchasing approvals) to be routed to the department manager.

You can create a hierarchy of departments to reflect how departments are organized within your company. The hierarchy is established by defining parent and child relationships between departments. For example, your West Coast Division contains several groups including Engineering. Within Engineering, you have departments for both Software Engineering and Hardware Engineering.

To find your departments:

1. Go to Reports > Setup > Dimensions > Departments.

2. Select Add (circle) next to Departments to add a new department, or select Edit or View next to an existing department.

About the Departments list

Use the Departments list to view a list of the departments in your company. You can sort and filter the department list to see just the group of departments you want.

If you have long department lists in external data files, you can upload them in CSV format by selecting Company > Setup > Import data. You can find more information on uploading CSV files in Prepare CSV files upload data and Importing departments.

Add or edit a department

All you need to create a department is to assign an ID and name for it.

1. Enter a department ID and Name.

   After you create a department, the ID can't be changed.

2. If the department belongs to a hierarchy of departments, select its Parent location.

3. Optionally, select the department Manager (useful for routing purchasing approvals).

Make a department inactive

If you no longer use a dimension value that's associated with past transactions and records, you can make that dimension value inactive so that you don't see it on any future lists or transactions.

1. Go to Reports > Setup > Dimensions and select the specific dimension.

2. Find the dimension value in the list.

3. Select More actions > Edit at the end of the row.

4. In the Status field, change the status to Inactive.

1. Go to Reports > Setup > Dimensions and select the specific dimension.

2. In the list page, find the dimension value, and select Edit.

   The dimension information page appears.

3. In the Status field, change the status to Inactive.

To view inactive dimensions on reports and lists:

• Records designated as Inactive do not appear in the list by default. To view these records, select Filters at the top of the list and select Remove next to the Status filter to remove it.

• Select the Include inactive checkbox at the top of the report or list page.

  Don't see Include inactive on your page?

  The most common reason that you do not see this feature is that you're using a custom view.

  When you select a custom view, some options are hidden. Depending on the page you're on, the Include inactive, Include one-time use, Include private, and Display hierarchy options are not visible. For example, if you're viewing from a custom view, the Financial Reports list will not provide the Include inactive option.

  To see the options again, switch back to View All. See Custom views for more information.

To include data from inactive dimensions on financial reports, you can use dimension groups for filtering.

Delete a department

You delete department records from the Departments list.

You can delete a dimension value if it hasn't been associated with a transaction or record. For example, if you create New York as a value for Location and use it in a transaction line item, you can no longer delete New York from the Location list of values.

1. Go to Reports > Setup > Dimensions and select the specific dimension.

2. Find the dimension values you want to delete.

   Need help finding a dimension value?

   • Records designated as Inactive do not appear in the list by default. To view these records, select Filters at the top of the list and select Remove next to the Status filter to remove it.

3. Select the check box at the start of the row for each dimension value you want to delete, then select Delete.

Depending on your user preferences, the system might prompt you to confirm the deletion.

1. Go to Reports > Setup > Dimensions and select the specific dimension.

2. Find the dimension values you want to delete.

   Don't see Include inactive on your page?

   The most common reason that you do not see this feature is that you're using a custom view.

   When you select a custom view, some options are hidden. Depending on the page you're on, the Include inactive, Include one-time use, Include private, and Display hierarchy options are not visible. For example, if you're viewing from a custom view, the Financial Reports list will not provide the Include inactive option.

   To see the options again, switch back to View All. See Custom views for more information.

3. Select the Delete checkbox at the end of the row for each dimension value you want to delete, and select Delete.

Field descriptions

The following table describes each item on the Department Information page:

Field	Note
ID	A unique ID code for the department. Best practices for creating identifiers An ID enables your company to keep track of a specific type of information, such as GL account, department, location, item, project, class, transaction, vendor, and customer. You can create IDs by adding them on the fly or by having the system automatically add them from a preset numbering scheme. Whichever method you choose, we recommend against using leading zeros as part of an ID. IDs with leading zeros can cause errors when you import information into your company from Excel because Excel removes the leading zeros. Best practice: Use a character as a prefix to your ID; for example C0001 for a customer ID. Workaround: If you must use leading zeros in IDs, convert the column of ID numbers to text format in Excel before importing the file content. Excel won't remove the leading zeros when you save the file. Remember to do this every time you use a template to import information that requires IDs. After you enter and save an ID, you can't change it.
Name	Name of the department.
Parent	ID of the parent department. Select a parent department by selecting the dropdown list to create a department hierarchy. Example: Sales Division is the parent department. Outside Sales Group and Sales Support are each a child department of the Sales division.
Manager	Name of the manager for the department. Select the dropdown list to select a manager from the Employees list. If no names appear in this list, you need to add them: Go to Reports > Setup > Dimensions > Employees. If you want department managers to approve all their employees' purchase requests, you must select a manager. Otherwise, you can leave this box blank.
Department title	Appears only if Enable department and location titles is selected on the Configure General Ledger page. To save time, you can run a financial report or other general ledger report for a group of entities/locations or departments and have Intacct automatically split the report into multiple individual reports. In this case, the report header for the "individual report" displays the name of the department, entity, or location, plus any title text you enter here, instead of the company name. For example, a location title might provide additional information that you want to display on reports, such as the address and manager name. San Jose office 111 Post Street Managed by: Karla Grace You can enter up to 5 lines, with a maximum of 50 characters per line.
Status	Options: Active and Inactive. The default status is Active. If you're no longer using the department and don't want it to appear on lists, select Inactive. The department information remains in your system, but it will not display in any department lists. Records designated as Inactive do not appear in the list by default. To view these records, select Filters at the top of the list and select Remove next to the Status filter to remove it. To display these inactive departments later, select the Include inactive checkbox on the list. Don't see Include inactive on your page? The most common reason that you do not see this feature is that you're using a custom view. When you select a custom view, some options are hidden. Depending on the page you're on, the Include inactive, Include one-time use, Include private, and Display hierarchy options are not visible. For example, if you're viewing from a custom view, the Financial Reports list will not provide the Include inactive option. To see the options again, switch back to View All. See Custom views for more information.