Let’s see why setting up departments in Odoo Employees is beneficial. Organizing your HR data in Odoo Employees isn’t just a good practice— it’s important. With departments, you can organize your team better, approve more easily, and report more realistically about business activities.
No matter how many workers are in your 10-staffed office or scaling a multi-branch business, setting up departments in Odoo Employees provides you with the framework you require to remain efficient and organized.
Key Advantages:
- Improved organizational visibility
- Easier reporting by the department
- Automated managerial approvals
What Are Departments in Odoo Employees?
In Odoo Employees, a department is your company’s group or team—such as Sales, HR, or Customer Support. You can assign workers to departments and even nest them under parent departments for larger structures.
Departments Can Be Used To:
- Assign managers of departments for approvals
- Filter the reports and dashboards by team
- Divide employees across companies or sites
- Define access permissions using integration with other Odoo modules
Departments are convenient when paired with Odoo’s Time Off, Payroll, Planning, or Projects modules.
Step 1: Install the Right Modules
Before setting up departments in Odoo Employees, ensure the Employees module is installed first.
To check or install:
- Navigate to Odoo’s Apps menu.
- Search for Employees.
- Click Install if not already enabled.
Optional modules such as Payroll, Recruitment, or Planning can also assist you further with what you can do with departments.
Step 2: Assign Proper User Access Rights
It’s normally done by users with HR Manager or Administrator rights.
To check the user rights:
- Go to Settings → Users & Companies → Users.
- Open a user and verify their Access Rights.
- Ensure they’re being assigned a position such as HR Officer or HR Manager.
It means department organization can be done only by the person possessing the right rights.
Step 3: Creating Departments in Odoo Employees
You’re prepared, and now it’s time to set up your in-house company by creating departments in the Odoo Employees module.
How to create a department?
- Go to Employees → Configuration → Departments.
- Click the Create button.
- Fill out the ‘Department Name’ (e.g., “Marketing,” “Finance,” “Sales – Europe”), ‘Parent Department’ (for creating a hierarchy), ‘Manager’ (an individual who oversees the team), and ‘Company’ (for multiple companies).
- Click Save.
Best Practices:
- Employ consistent naming conventions (e.g., “Sales – East” rather than “East”).
- Provide a manager for each department if possible—it simplifies approval routing.
- Utilize parent-child hierarchies for multi-level teams.
Step 4: Creating Departments in Odoo Employees
After creating departments, you’ll have to assign each employee to the right team.
How to assign employees?
- Go to Employees → Employees.
- Open an employee’s record.
- In the HR Settings tab, choose the appropriate Department from the dropdown.
- Save the record.
This assignment is crucial for clean reports, manager approvals, and overall HR structure.
Step 5: Use Departments to Simplify Processes
Your departments are grouped in Odoo Employees, and you have lots of ways to make the best out of them.
Department-Based Reporting
Generate reports on:
- Attendance and Leave of Employees
- Payroll and contracts
- Performance of Departments
Workflow Approvals
If you are hiring a department manager, Odoo can automatically route:
- Time off requests
- Expense approvals
- Job applications through the correct chain of command.
Access Control
With the right settings, access to data can be controlled by department assignments, offering internal data protection.
Step 6: Keep the Department Data Up-To-Date
Companies evolve and expand. So should your Odoo Employees configuration.
Maintenance Checklist:
- Save inactive older archived departments out of use.
- Inform managers of a change in management.
- Review employee assignments for updates regularly.
A tidy and up-to-date department hierarchy equals improved decision-making and simpler workflows within your company.
Conclusion
Organizing Odoo Employees’ departments is not an organization—something of establishing the stage for smarter HR, improved reporting, and processable procedures that can keep up with your business. If you’re an HR manager, operations, or executive manager, taking this little effort makes a big difference.
Take a few minutes to get your departments organized in a logical manner, and you’ll know your people—and your business.
