Organization Hierarchy

Dayforce Implementation Guide

Version
R2025.2.1
ft:lastEdition
2025-12-01
Organization Hierarchy

Organization (or org) hierarchy reflects your organization’s structure. Org hierarchy in Dayforce is used to allocate taxes, to control access, to filter for scheduling and reporting, for general ledger allocation, and in the mapping of jobs.

Designing and configuring the organization hierarchy in Dayforce is important for several reasons. Dayforce uses the structure that you set when it determines security access, filtering the various feature areas in Dayforce that you and people in your organization use. These feature areas can include People, Schedules, Timesheets, and so forth. Correctly configuring your organization is important so that the information that’s available, or unavailable, to each user in Dayforce is appropriate.

At the bottom of the hierarchy are departments. Departments roll up to, or belong to, zones. Zones roll up to sites, also known as locations. Sites (locations) can be organized into one or more groups or subgroups, such as districts or regions, in the organizational hierarchy. And, finally, districts and regions roll up to the top (or corporate) level of the org hierarchy.

The following list describes the various org levels available in Dayforce:

  • Corporate: This is the top level of an organization. This org level contains all of the other hierarchy levels in the organization, and it’s the first level that you create.
  • Region: (Optional) A region represents a group of districts. For example, a region is often used in organizations that operate in more than one country or more than one continent. This org level contains districts, sites, departments, zones, and on-site departments.
  • District: (Optional) A district represents a group of sites. For example, if an organization operates on more than one continent, it might divide the organization into districts by country grouped under a region, such as France, Germany, or Belgium in Europe, and the United States and Canada in North America.
  • Site: A site represents a location where people are employed. A site can be a physical building, a collection of buildings, a town, a city, or province, or it can be virtual.
  • Department: A department represents the area that needs a job to be done. A department can represent a function (Finance, Sales), an area of responsibility (Production Line), or even a virtual area (Union Duties).
  • Zone: A zone represents a grouping of on-site departments for the purposes of scheduling.
  • On-Site Department: An on-site department is made up of a site and a department that are configured in Dayforce. For example, New York (site) + Packaging (department) = New York Packaging (on-site department).

When you're finished configuring your organization, Dayforce contains a hierarchy that mirrors that of your organization.

The way that you configure your org structure in Dayforce affects how employee work assignments are set up, affecting jobs and job assignments. In Dayforce, a job assignment is made up of a job and a department. A job is a set of activities that need to be done, and a department can be an area that needs a job to be done. The department can be an area of responsibility (Front Desk or Production Line), a functional area (Finance or Sales), or a virtual area (Union Duties). See Jobs and Job Assignments Configuration.

The following screenshot shows an example of how an organization's hierarchy has been defined in Dayforce:

Example of a company's organizational hierarchy.

The top level of the hierarchy in the screenshot is labeled Corporate and includes two regions: Manufacturing Co. Canada and Manufacturing Co. Mexico. Each region contains sites, and each site contains departments. You can click the arrow next to an org unit to expand the view and display the next level of the hierarchy. To display all levels beneath a specific org unit, select the unit and click Expand in the toolstrip.

Note: This is just an example. The organization hierarchy can represent any organization, including those in other verticals or industries such as retail or the service industry. Locations and organizational units are defined in the same way for any vertical or industry.

The way that you configure your organization's hierarchy levels determines the behavior of multiple features and elements in Dayforce. For example:

  • Management can be driven by location (org level) in the org hierarchy. Employees can be filtered and scheduled by location.
  • Legal entities are tied to the site and are required for processing in the Payroll feature. Timesheets are approved by site.
  • General Ledger information and details can be determined by the configuration of the employee, department, org unit, job, and job assignment, as well as earning and deduction codes in the system.
  • Schedules are loaded by site. Zones can be used to filter within a schedule.
  • Security and access are determined by org hierarchy. Users have visibility to different locations in the org structure, and user roles control access to data.

Configuring the structure, or hierarchy, of your organization can involve several tasks, each of which is described in the following topics: