Section 3 - Departments & Department Groups

Before we begin, it is important to understand the difference between ‘Departments’ and ‘Departments Groups’ in Ameego.

Departments: Departments are the jobs that you create for shifts and assign them to your employees in scheduling. Some examples of departments are Servers, Host, Bartenders, Cooks, Dishwashers etc.

Department Groups: Each department group will be scheduled separately and will have its own labour cost summary totals in Ameego’s reporting. Many restaurants like to create separate department groups for Management, Service and Culinary. Others prefer to use just one department group for simple “all in” scheduling and reporting. You will need at least one department group in order to schedule in Ameego.

In this section of the setup guide we will show you how to create your departments, make some important settings and arrange them within department groups. Complete the steps in the order listed below:

Step 1 - Department setup & settings

Follow the steps below to create your departments in Ameego and apply the department settings. Once all of your departments have been created, you can move onto 'Department group setup' to arrange them into department groups.

Click the 'Manage' button at the top of the page.
Click the 'Create New Department' button.
Add a name.
Add a department default wage (The default wage will be used if you don't set a specific wage for an employee for this department).
Add the payroll ID for this department if applicable (only applicable if using Ameego’s payroll export function).
Assign a colour to the department. A unique colour for each department will be useful on the schedule page to help identify departments at a glance.
Set the # of 'Auto Approved Book offs' for each day if desired. Set to zero if you do not want Ameego to ‘Auto Approve’ any book offs for this department.
Set the 'Book off requests limit' for each day. This will set a limit of how many employees can 'request' a book off for each day of the week. You will still have the ability to approve or deny these requests.
Click the 'Create Department' button to save your department.
Continue to do the above steps until all your departments have been created.

Note: You will see 'Badges' below the department settings. We will cover badges in the next section of this guide.

Step 2 - Department group setup

Now that you have created your departments, lets create your department group(s) and arrange your departments within the group(s).

Click the ‘Manage’ button located near the top of the page (People, Employee Manager). You may already have a default department group (usually named All Departments) that we have added to get you started.

EN Manage department groups.png

Use the instructions below to add or edit your department groups

Edit a department group name:

If you see a department group that we created for you (All departments) and would like to rename it, click the 'Edit' button, rename it and then click 'Save Changes'. (We will cover the other department group settings below in step 3)

Create a department group:

If you do not have any department groups or need to create another one then click the 'Create New Group' button, add a department group name and then click 'Save Changes'. (We will cover the other department group settings below in step 3)

If you are satisfied with your department group(s) then follow the instructions below to arrange your departments within the department group(s).

Add a department to a department group:

Click the ‘+ department’ button (if present) within the desired department group and choose a department to add.

Note: If all of your departments already belong to a department group, then no ‘+ department’ button will be present.

Remove a department from a department group:

Click on the department name and this will move the department to a section called ‘No Department Group’. This department will have to be added to another department group in order to be scheduled in Ameego.

Moving a department from one department group to another:

To remove a department from a department group click on the department name within it's current department group. Then click the '+ department' button within the department group that you want to move it to and select the department.

Here is a quick demonstration of how to remove a department from one group and add it to another.

Step 3 - Department group settings

Below is a description of the available department group settings. These can be applied now or later, depending on your current stage of your Ameego setup. For example, you may not have your base floor plans setup yet. No problem, you can come back to these settings later.

Navigation: ‘People’ tab, then ‘Employee Manager’

Click on the 'Manage' button and then click the ‘Edit’ button on the first department group. Review and set the following settings that can be customized for this department group.

Rename: Rename the department group

Sales Metric: Default setting is ‘None’. If set to ‘None’, the department group will use the primary sales metric of Net or Gross sales to calculate the labour cost for this department group. You can choose another metric to make this calculation, but be sure to select a sales metric ($) and not a count metric (customer count).

Auto Publish Schedules: Default setting is ‘Off’. If set to ‘On’ and you have default floor plans attached to this department group, then One Touch will create AND publish your schedules automatically.

Tip: We recommend that you leave this setting at the default of 'OFF' in the beginning so you have the opportunity to review your schedules before publishing.

Default Wage Multiplier: Default setting is ‘1.00’. When creating and costing your schedules in Ameego, we will multiply all hourly wages by this amount.

Tip: You can use this setting to account for some employee overhead costs. ie - setting the multiplier at 1.04 will add 4% to all wages and will be applied to the projected labour.

Default Fixed Labour: Default setting is 0.00. Add a dollar amount here that will represent weekly fixed labour for this department group (like managers salaries). This figure will be used in all of Ameego’s reporting for projected and actual labour.

Default Labour Percent Goal: Default setting is 0. Enter your labour cost percentage goal for this department group here and Ameego will show you comparisons to this goal throughout the scheduling pages. This is an optional setting.

Default Floorplans: These are important settings that will enable Advanced One Touch to complete all 3 steps of scheduling with single button click. A default base floor plan must be applied to each day of the week to enable this feature. If you have not created your base floor plans yet, you can come back to this later. Be sure to come back and do this though, and this is a great time saver in Ameego!

Delete Group: Click this to delete this department group. Please use caution with this action. If you accidentally delete a department group, you will have to open up a support ticket to request that our support team adds it back for you.

Cancel: Cancels any editing done since the edit button was clicked.

Save Change: Saves all changes made.

Great Job. You have successfully set up the department groups for your restaurant!

Now let's move on to People Setup.

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