Departments let you organize your team in Mercury the way it's structured in real life. You can create departments directly in Mercury, or sync them automatically from your HR or payroll system. Once set up, departments help you track spend by team, tag payments, and route approvals through department leads.
Where to find departments
Navigate to your company name in the top left-hand corner of your dashboard and select Settings > Departments to create and manage your organization.
Creating and managing departments
You can create departments directly in Mercury:
- Add departments and sub-departments
- Assign leads to departments
- Add users to departments manually or through invites
Departments can be rearranged at any time, and sub-departments can be nested to reflect the way your org is structured.
When viewing a department, click Manage to edit members and details, update the department name, or add sub-departments.
Syncing departments from your HR/payroll system
Departments can also be synced automatically via our HRIS integrations. When you connect your provider, we’ll ingest:
- Department structures
- Reporting chains (who manages whom)
- Each user’s department assignment
Updates to your HR system will sync to Mercury automatically. If a user changes departments, their record and reporting chain in Mercury will update within 24 hours.
Note: You can still manually create departments and assign employees to them from the Departments page even if you’ve set up automatic syncing.
Using departments
Once your departments are set up, you can track spend and manage approvals by department.
You can tag a payment to a department in two places:
- During payment creation — Add a department when initiating a payment
- On the transaction page — Tag a department directly on an existing transaction or use Filters to view transactions by department
Department leads
Department leads can be added as an approver step in your approval rules. Admins select Department lead as the approver type in the rule builder, and approval routes automatically to the lead of whatever department is tagged on the payment.
To assign a department lead, click Manage when viewing a department. For more, see Navigating approvals.
FAQs
Who can create or manage Departments?
Admins and Custom Users with “Manage Team” permissions.
Can I create sub-departments?
Yes. Departments can be nested under parent departments to mirror your org structure.
What happens if I change a department in my HR system?
Departments and reporting chains will update automatically in Mercury within 24 hours. Department leads need to be assigned in Mercury.
Can I assign more than one lead to a department?
At launch, each department has a single lead, but one user can lead multiple departments.
What does this mean for my team today?
Departments currently help you structure your team in Mercury. The biggest impact will come as upcoming features (like manager-first approvals and department-based budgets) launch later this year.