Setting of departments in Lightyear

Departments

Activate Departments

Departments allow you to group Suppliers together, defining which documents (purchase orders and bills) a user can see. This allows certain documents to be presented to certain users, giving you better security and control across your purchasing and payables.

For example, a Hotel could have two Departments; the Kitchen and the Bar. You can group all the food/produce Suppliers and assign them into the Kitchen department and all your drinks/beverage Supplier into the Bar department. The next step would be to add the Kitchen Staff to the Kitchen department, the Bar Staff to the Bar department and so on. Bar staff now only see bills that are in the Bar department.
Departments is an optional feature. If you do not use Departments, please be aware that every User who has Approver permissions will be able to view every bill/purchase order in your account. If you wish to restrict which Users view (and approve) bills/purchase orders from certain Suppliers, you should use the Departments feature. Conversely, if you activate Departments, Users won't see any bills/purchase orders unless they are assigned to a Department.

To activate Departments go to Settings > Company Settings




Scroll to Internal Departments and Switch to Yes:
Once activated you will see the Departments option on the left hand nav:



Click into your Departments tab and the Departments Screen will appear:


Adding a Department

You can Add, Delete and Edit the names of Departments at the top of the screen.

When a Department is selected, the associated Suppliers are listed in the top box, left-hand side. Other Suppliers are on the right-hand side.

You can move Suppliers in and out of Departments by
  1. Selecting the individual Supplier and clicking the arrow key in the middle to move one at a time
  2. Selecting multiple Suppliers with the checkboxes and clicking the arrow key in the middle to move multiple at once

Users who are associated with a Department (and therefore have visibility of bills/purchase orders from suppliers within that Department) are listed in the bottom box, left-hand side. Other Users are on the right-hand side.


Similarly you can move Users in and out of a Department by
  1. Selecting the individual User and clicking the arrow key in the middle to move one at a time
  2. Selecting multiple Users and with the checkboxes and clicking the arrow key in the middle to move multiple at once

Admins and Users with Processing, Executive Approval or Review/Export Permissions are automatically defaulted to be associated with every Department.  You cannot disassociate them from a Department because they need to be able to see all Departments to do their job.

Any Suppliers that are not part of any Department will only have their bills/purchase orders viewed by Admins.
Don't forget to Save Changes as you assign suppliers and users to Departments or the changes won't actually be saved. A red alert will advise you if any changes had been made and if you haven't yet saved 

Can I add a supplier to more than one Department?

Yes, you can have more than one Department allocated to a supplier to cater for Suppliers who fall into multiple departments (e.g. both the bar and kitchen buy lemons, so users in each need to see these bills/purchase orders. The GL code defines where the cost lands, not the Department). If a supplier shows in Multiple departments, in Panel one of your Lightyear screen this will show as "multiple" under the departments heading.


If a supplier is in more than one Department it will show as Multiple in Panel one under the Departments column.



      

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