---
title: Departments
summary: 'An organizational unit inside a company. Departments drive approval routing for requests (holiday, home office, overtime) and scope reporting for managers.'
section: features
tags:
  - crud
  - tempus
  - foundation
  - org-structure
updated: '2026-06-17'
---

> A **department** in Tempus is an organizational unit inside a [company](tempus_companies.md), such as Engineering or Sales EMEA. Each contract is assigned to one department, and each department has managers who handle approvals for its employees.

## Overview

The form is small (name, optional description, parent company, managers list). What matters is the authority that comes from being a manager. Departments drive approval routing for holiday, home-office, and overtime requests, and they are the default reporting scope: managers see their department first, HR sees everyone.

## What it does

Listing an [employee](tempus_employees.md) as a manager of a department gives them this authority over that department's employees:

| Capability | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Approve or refuse [holiday requests](holiday_requests.md) | The standard leave-approval routing. |
| Approve or refuse [home-office requests](home_office_requests.md) | Same routing as holiday requests. |
| Approve or refuse [overtime declarations](tempus_overtime_declarations.md) | Declared overtime needs sign-off before it hits the balance. |
| See department reports and time-points | Manager-scoped view of [reports](employee_reports.md), [time-points](tempus_time_points.md), and [corrections](tempus_time_point_corrections.md). |

The role is per department, so an employee can manage department A but be a regular employee in B. Any manager can approve (first to act resolves, no escalation by default). Moving an employee to another department re-routes future requests immediately, but pending ones stay with the original manager. A contract with no department routes to a higher tier such as a global HR group, so most tenants always assign one.

> [!WARNING]
> Removing a manager revokes their approval authority for new requests immediately, but leaves any pending requests stuck in their queue. Reassign those before removing the last manager.

## See also

- [Companies](tempus_companies.md) - the parent of every department.
- [Employees](tempus_employees.md) - the people who get assigned as managers, or who belong via their contracts.
- [Contracts](tempus_contracts.md) - the binding that puts an employee in a department.
- [Holiday requests](holiday_requests.md), [Home office requests](home_office_requests.md), [Overtime declarations](tempus_overtime_declarations.md) - the requests that route through department managers.