Departments
Departments represent the different sites, areas or teams in your business. Every employee belongs to a department, and departments define the default working rules for everyone in them.
Creating departments
Go to MBS Attendance → Departments. The Add Department form is on the right. Fill in the name and click Add Department. Create one department per physical location or logical team — for example: Farm Site A, Coffee Shop, Admin Office.
Department settings
Each department has the following configurable fields:
| Field | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Name | The department name shown throughout the system and on payslips. | — |
| Sort order | Controls the display order in lists and the iOS app department filter. | 99 |
| Work week length | How many days per week employees in this department work. Used to calculate leave deductions and determine overtime. | 5 |
| Shift start | Default start of shift. Used for auto-generating missed clock-outs and as the default time in bulk clock-in. | 08:00 |
| Shift end | Default end of shift. Same uses as shift start. | 17:00 |
| Pay period start day | The day of month when the pay period begins. Day 1 = 1st to 31st. Day 16 = 16th to 15th of the following month. Maximum 28. | 1 |
All department settings can be overridden per employee. Set the value on the employee record and it takes precedence over the department default. Leaving an employee field blank means "use the department default."
Department payroll components
When you edit a department, a payroll components table appears below the main form. This lets you assign components (like a transport deduction) to every employee in the department at once, rather than going to each employee individually.
For example: to deduct R600/month for transport from all Farm Site A employees, activate the Transport component on the Farm Site A department and set the value to 600. Every payslip generated for that department will automatically include the deduction.
An employee can override a department component by having their own assignment for the same component. Setting it to inactive on the employee record disables the department default for that person.
Editing departments
Click the Edit button next to any department in the list. The edit form appears at the top of the page. Make your changes and click Update Department. Changes take effect on the next payslip generation — existing payslips are not retroactively changed.
Removing a department does not delete its employees, but those employees will no longer have a department assigned. Reassign them before removing the department.