What is the difference between branches, offices, and departments?
In a nutshell, the ‘Branches’ functionality is designed to reflect the structure of your company (the company that owns and uses an XTRF instance). The ‘Offices’ functionality permits you to reflect the structure of your client’s organization. ‘Departments’, in their turn, can be used to add extra information to client and vendor contact person profiles.
Branches
If your company has several branches that operate independently, you can use branches in an XTRF instance to do the following:
Enter different contact and billing details for each branch (for details, see https://xtm-cloud.atlassian.net/wiki/x/q4Dbxg).
Configure separate payment methods for branches (for details, see https://xtm-cloud.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/XKB/pages/3336274091/Manage+branches#Edit-a-branch). This can be especially useful for branches operating in different countries.
Group vendor jobs by the client’s or PM’s branch so that no branch is billed for work requested by another branch (for details, see https://help.xtm.cloud/xtrf/home-portal/configuration-menu/en/invoicing-tab--vendor-settings-.html).
Assign branches to clients so that the correct company data appears on client invoices.
Assign branches to PMs so that the correct company data appears on purchase orders.
Offices
If your client’s company has several offices that operate independently, you can use offices in the Clients module. This enables you to address different localization needs and reflect your client’s organizational structure.
To do so, you must create a client profile for each client office and then connect them via the Main Data tab → Offices subtab in their client profiles. After that, you can assign one or more contact persons to all or some of the connected offices. For details, see https://xtm-cloud.atlassian.net/wiki/x/vMrbwQ.
The ‘Offices’ functionality enables you to keep offices connected while providing separate details for each office. You can, for example:
enter different contact and billing details.
configure separate payment methods.
assign specific preferred vendors.
keep separate translation memories for CAT tools.
XTRF ‘Offices’ can also be used by enterprises to reflect their company’s internal structure and different localization needs. For details, see https://xtm-cloud.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/XKB/pages/3252406972.
Departments
If you want to specify the department in which (vendor or client) contact persons work, you can use the Departments functionality. To do so, add the required department to the system values (for details, see https://xtm-cloud.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/XKB/pages/3364454401) and then select it in the Main Data tab, in the contact person profile (for details, see https://help.xtm.cloud/xtrf/home-portal/modules/en/main-data-tab--vendor-contact-persons-.html and https://help.xtm.cloud/xtrf/home-portal/modules/en/main-data-tab--client-contact-persons-.html).
A client contact person’s department can also be used to manage their access to projects and quotes in the ‘Offices’ structure. For details, see https://xtm-cloud.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/XKB/pages/4805918754/Configure+the+access+rights+of+client+contact+persons+in+the+Offices+structure#Configure-the-contact-person%E2%80%99s-access-rights.