About departments
What is a department?
A department is a part of your company in Celery. It does not have to match a cost center. (A cost center is a different way of grouping costs — you can read more about that in our cost center article.)
An employee can only belong to one department or position at a time. But an employee can be added to several cost centers.
How do I make a department?
You can make as many departments as you want.
There are 2 ways to do it:
Option 1: While adding an employee
- When you add an employee, or move them to a new department, just type in the department name in the Employment details - Job Information.
- If it doesn't exist yet, Celery creates it for you automatically.
- Celery gives the department its own code.
Option 2: Set it up yourself (most people use this)
This way follows your company's org chart. Steps:
- Go to Employer - Departments.
- Click the green add button.
- Fill in a code: up to 10 characters (letters, numbers, or symbols). This is required — you can't skip it.
- Fill in a name. This is also required.
- If this department sits under a bigger department, choose that bigger department under "Main Department."
- Already know which employees belong here? Add them right away with the "Add Employees" button.
Tip: You can always add new departments later. But try not to change or delete old ones — this can mess up your history records.
Using different general ledger numbers for a department
(A general ledger number is the account number used for bookkeeping.)
Normally, your company uses one standard set of these numbers. But you can set up different numbers for a specific department if you want.
How:
- Create the new general ledger numbers you want to use.
- In the department, add that number and choose which wage code should use it.
- From then on, payroll for that department will follow your new setup.
Reports
You can pull many reports based on departments. When running a report, you can choose:
- 1 department
- A few departments
- All departments
