Intro: Set out the basic foundation for your account structure

Find out why locations are so essential for efficient workflows in Smartplan and learn about the different ways in which your Smartplan account can be structured.

A location is the biggest unit within your Smartplan account. You can imagine it fitting into an account hierarchy as follows:

When hearing the word “location”, you are probably associating it with being positioned in a physical place. But in a Smartplan context, try to think of it as a much broader concept. Smartplan locations constitute a basic division of your employees and rotas. A rota can only be created within a location, it can not exist on it’s own. That’s the reason that when you sign up, your Smartplan account is already equipped with a location by default, and this default location can not be deleted.

Your active locations are being listed on the “Rotas” page. Within each location, you can see all the rotas connected to it. Your rotas can either be in planning, published or editing mode. You can learn more about rotas in this article.

Build an account structure that fits your businesses’ needs

A certain account structure is not always better or more efficient per se. Whether or not an account structure is considered “good”, depends on how well it is adapted to the way you work and the way that your business is structured internally.

To find the right setup for you and your Team, ask yourself these four questions:

1 - Do I really need several locations?

If you manage a small business with only a handful of employees, you might benefit the most from simply sticking to working within your account’s default location. In a small team, people usually collaborate more closely and a shared schedule that everyone has access to will then actually improve your workflows.

There is no need to divide your scheduling onto several locations just for the sake of it. It has to make an actual difference for you. If you need all your workers and different job positions gathered in one place in order to keep track of unoccupied shifts and detect relevant patterns, then there is no need to overcomplicate things and create additional locations. In that case, make sure that you make good use of our job positions and filter functions.

Basically the question here is: Is there any part or aspect in your business that could potentially be managed isolated and individually? And would a division into two or more different rotas improve or worsen your personal overview, if compared to managing all processes in a single rota? If the answer is “improve”, move on to the next question.

2 - What is a “location” within my business?

A location can be whatever you make it. If you want to divide your rota into several units or isolated parts, then based on what criteria is that division based? What structures or “categories” come naturally to mind, when you think about managing your employees and schedules?

Teams that already work and organize themselves independently and with little touch points to the rest of the company would be a self-evident choice for a new location. But as your employees can be deployed in several Smartplan locations at once, this is just one of many ways to use locations.

Here is some inspiration for you:

Branches or subsidiaries of a business (Example: Headquarters, Birmingham office, Paris office)
Different business units on the same address (Example: Hotel, Spa, Restaurant)
Different Teams or work departments (Example: Customer Service, HR, Marketing)
Clients, suppliers or contractors (Example: Konopelski Ltd, Lou Eaves, Jacobi Wholesale deliveries)
Jobs or projects (Example from Event Management: Wedding July 5th, Friday Jazz Nights, Street Food Festival)

You can create as many locations as you like at no extra cost.

3 - Are your employees interacting and collaborating across locations?

After you created several locations and split up your scheduling accordingly, reflect on how much the employees are collaborating between these locations. Will the employees always be assigned shifts in the same location or are they able to fill in for colleagues from other locations?

Another consideration should be the amount of users on your account. When admins or superusers are trying to staff a shift or compose a message, does the sheer amount of users make it too cumbersome to choose the right person from the drop downs?

In the case that you don’t want your employees to collaborate across locations and/or your workflows have become too laborious when it comes to user selection, then you should probably consider to assign the users to a fixed location. By allocating your employees to locations, they will only be able to take over shifts within their locations and superusers or admins will only be presented with those employees, that are relevant for them in that moment. You can read more about the feature and its setup here.

Please note: Even if some of your employees can take over shifts in multiple locations, it could still make sense to allocate the users to fixed locations. That is because the same user can be assigned to several fixed locations, if needed. So your decision should be based on how you generally work.

4 - Is visibility across different locations causing an issue?

Finally, ask yourself whether it can cause problems when the employees from one location can view the employee names and shifts from other locations. Maybe you don’t want them to see each others shifts, because some might get upset and displeased with how you planned the rota? Or maybe the employees themselves feel uncomfortable about people from other locations viewing their names and working times?

If so, you have the option to isolate the locations completely from each other. This will mean that assigned users and superusers will not have a clue about what is going on in the other locations, as they have no chance of accessing them. They might not even know that these other locations exist.

This article will show you how to restrict the visibility between locations.

We hope this article equipped you with a basic understanding of how a Smartplan account can be structured and what an important role locations are playing in that regard. However, if you are still unsure what structure would be best for you and your business, do not hesitate to contact our friendly Support Team to discuss your individual situation.