Article Contents
- Introduction
- Why Departments Matter
- Other Ways to Categorise Projects
- Setting Up Departments
- Departments and Timesheets
Introduction
Departments are one of the two ways you can segment data at the highest level in Hiro, the other being Branches.
- Departments represent the business units across your organisation, such as Surveying, Town Planning, or Landscape Architecture.
- Branches represent the physical offices your business operates from.
Both are completely independent of each other. They are not hierarchical, and neither sits “above” the other. A department’s services may be offered at multiple branches, but you don’t configure this in Settings. Instead, the branch + department combination only comes together at the project layer.
Why Departments Matter
Departments are central to how Hiro tracks business performance. Every project task is linked to a department, ensuring that both timesheets and invoicing can be reported by business unit. This gives you clarity over which parts of the organisation are generating revenue, consuming budget, or driving costs.
Just like branches, you must configure at least one department before you can start creating projects or user accounts. Even if your business only has one service area, setting up a department ensures your account is structured consistently from the start and makes it easy to expand if you add more business units later.
Departments also apply at the user account level. Each staff member belongs to a single department (just like they belong to a single branch). This ensures their timesheets, payroll, and reporting all flow back to the correct business unit. For staff whose roles span multiple areas, assign the department that best represents their primary focus.
Other Ways to Categorise Projects
Departments are best kept broad, aligned to the true business units in your organisation. If your firm only provides surveying services, for example, a single Surveying department is usually enough. Creating extra departments such as “development projects,” “infrastructure projects,” or “drafting team” can make reporting unnecessarily complicated.
Hiro provides other tools that are better suited for finer-grained categorisation:
- Project Types – Use these to classify projects by their nature (e.g. development vs infrastructure). This gives you visibility into project categories without cluttering your department list.
- Positions Register – Use this to define staff levels and roles (e.g. Graduate, Senior Associate). Positions sit alongside branches and departments in user accounts, helping you understand capacity and costs at different seniority levels.
By using departments for business units and these other tools for categories or staff roles, your setup stays lean while still giving you detailed insight across projects and teams.
Setting Up Departments
Departments are configured in Settings > Departments. You must be a Hiro Global Administrator to add or edit them.
To create a new branch, click "New department".
Otherwise, to modify the details of an existing department, click the edit (pencil) icon adjacent to the one you wish to update. As with all of Hiro, bold fields are mandatory and unbolded fields are optional.
Department Details
- Name – the display name of the department (e.g. Surveying, Landscape Architecture).
- Status – toggle whether this department is active.
- Sort Order – determines how departments appear in lists.
- Label (up to 3 letters) – optional abbreviation shown in some reporting and visualisations.
- Colour – an optional colour tag to make the department stand out in dashboards and charts.
Departments and Timesheets
Every project in Hiro has its work structured through a Work Schedule. Tasks within that work schedule must be assigned to a department, ensuring both costs (from timesheets) and revenue (from invoicing) flow back to the correct business unit.
This structure provides project managers and directors with real-time visibility of performance by department, helping to identify which areas of the business are most profitable and which may need attention.
👉 For more detail on how departments are used within project structures, see What is a Work Schedule?