Management Groups

In BigTime, we control system rights with security groups, and we control manager rights with management groups. Manager rights determine simply what staff members a manager can review/edit on screen. Of course, you can hide certain parts of the system (e.g. - the HR/Accounting pane in your staff information screens) from your users by restricting their security, but you will still need to decide which employees each manager in your firm is allowed to see. We allow you to do that with management groups.

In order to take advantage of the management group feature, you'll need to create a set of management groups that work for your firm. Then, you'll need to assign staff/managers to those groups as required. Once you do, you'll be able to take advantage of the features that rely on a proper set of staff groups to operate:

• Managers see only their staff in screens and reports. You have to grant a special system permission to over-ride this behavior in BigTime. By default, managers will only see information on the staff members they manage.
• Automatic "filtered" reports/screens. Since your managers have access to only the staff they manage, you don't have to create special "filtered" reports for them.
• Time/Expense Review. If you are going to have your staff managers review/approve timesheets or expense reports, the system uses the staff management settings to figure out which managers are supposed to approve that data. When a manager goes to the Management...Review Timesheet screen, they see only the staff members they manage and nobody else (note that you can also review timesheets/expenses by project, in which case managers see the projects they manage instead of a staff list).

Simplified Staff Management for Flat Organizations

Creating management groups may be a best-practice, but it's not a requirement. Smaller firms can, for example, create a single "general" staff group and put all employees into that group. Then, you can just grant managers authority over that single group. This simple "one group" approach for security may be appropriate for smaller firms, but as your management team grows, your need to segment the staff list will grow as well.

We'll assume that you've already taken a look at your firm's organizational chart and created a set of staff groups that work for you. Now, you just need to assign your staff to those various groups and then give your managers "authority" over the ones they're supposed to be managing.

Assigning Staff to Management Groups

Once you've created management groups for your firm, you can start to assign staff to them.

Each staff member can be assigned to a specific management group, and they can belong to one (and only one) group at a time. You assign staff members to groups from the Management...Staff List section of the program. Just click on the staff member you'd like to edit, and edit the "management group" field at the bottom of the HR/Accounting section.

Note that this field is not one of your cost centers. You may have a cost center value that mimics the staff group settings, but we don't use cost center values to manage security. Make sure that you fill in the value in the HR/Accounting pane properly in order for your security settings to flow properly from these values.

Granting Management Authority to Users

Once you've created staff groups and assigned your entire employee list to them, you can start to grant managers authority over these various groups. Each manager in your firm can have authority over any combination of staff groups. You can grant them authority over one group or one hundred, the system will accommodate both settings.

To grant a manager authority over one or more staff groups follow these instructions:

1. Locate the manager's name in the Management...Staff List page and click on it to goto that manager's staff detail
2. Choose the "management information" link (in the information box). There, you'll see an edit pane dedicated to "staff group access" in the middle of the page.
3. Click on the check box next to any of the staff groups in this edit pane. A green check indicates that the manager is granted authority over the group in question. A rex "x" indicates that they don't have authority over the staff group.
4. When you're finished with your edits, click the SAVE button in that edit pane to save your changes.