Organization Setup & Onboarding

SAVHN is a multi-tenant platform: every customer operates inside an organization (org), a fully isolated workspace that owns its own users, records, permissions, and module configuration. This guide walks through provisioning a new org and completing the initial setup an administrator needs to perform before the rest of the team logs in.

Before you start

You need:

• A verified email address that will become the organization's primary admin account.
• Your organization's legal name, industry classification (used to recommend an Industry Cloud template), and primary time zone.
• A list of departments or business units you want reflected in the system (e.g. Sales, Operations, Finance, Support).
• Decisions on which core modules you plan to use first — you can enable additional modules later from the Module Marketplace.

Step 1: Create the organization

1. From the sign-up flow, choose Create a new organization rather than joining an existing one via invite.
2. Enter the organization's display name, industry, and country/region. The industry selection is used only to pre-select a relevant Industry Cloud starter configuration — it does not lock you out of any module.
3. Set the organization's primary time zone and default currency. These become defaults for new records in Finance, Payroll, and Projects, and can be overridden per-record where applicable.
4. The account that completes this flow is automatically assigned the Org Admin role, which has unrestricted access to every enabled module and to the Admin Console.

Step 2: Configure departments

Departments group employees and drive reporting hierarchies used across HRMS, Projects, and Timeline.

• Navigate to Admin Console → Organization → Departments.
• Create a department record for each business unit. Each department has a name, an optional parent department (for nested org charts), and an assigned department head.
• Departments are referenced by HRMS (employee records), Projects (project ownership), and Reports (department-level rollups), so it is worth setting these up accurately before inviting employees, since bulk re-parenting later requires re-running any dependent reports.

Step 3: Configure locations and working calendar

• Add one or more physical or virtual locations under Admin Console → Organization → Locations. Locations drive HRMS attendance policies and can be attached to Projects for site-specific work.
• Set the organization's default working calendar (working days, holidays) under Admin Console → Organization → Calendar. Individual departments or locations can override the default calendar where local holidays differ.

Step 4: Initial admin setup checklist

Step	Where	Why it matters
Confirm primary admin email	Admin Console → Organization → Profile	This is the account of record for billing and security notices
Set organization time zone & currency	Admin Console → Organization → Profile	Drives default values across Finance, Payroll, Projects
Create departments	Admin Console → Organization → Departments	Required before assigning employees in HRMS
Create locations & calendar	Admin Console → Organization → Locations	Drives attendance and holiday calculations
Enable initial modules	Admin Console → Modules (Marketplace)	Only enabled modules appear in navigation for any user
Define roles beyond Org Admin	Admin Console → Roles & Permissions	See the companion guide on Role Management & Permissions
Invite additional admins	Admin Console → Users → Invite	Add at least one backup admin before onboarding the rest of the team

Step 5: Invite your team

Once departments, locations, and initial modules are configured, invite users from Admin Console → Users → Invite Users. You can invite individually by email or in bulk via CSV upload. Each invitation lets you pre-assign:

• A department
• A role (see Role Management & Permissions)
• Initial module access, subject to what the org has enabled

Invited users receive an email with a signup link. On first login they are dropped into the identity and profile setup flow described in Getting Started for End Users.

Multi-location and multi-department organizations

Larger organizations frequently have overlapping structures — multiple physical locations, each hosting several departments, with some departments (like a central Finance or IT function) operating across every location. SAVHN handles this by treating departments and locations as independent, cross-referenced entities rather than a forced hierarchy:

• A department is not tied to a single location; employees within one department can be spread across multiple locations, and HRMS reporting can be sliced by either dimension independently.
• A location's working calendar overrides the organization default for attendance purposes, so a regional office observing different public holidays doesn't require a separate department just to get correct holiday handling.
• Reports and dashboards that roll up by department or by location both read from the same underlying employee and record data, so keeping department and location assignments accurate on every employee record is what keeps both views trustworthy — there's no separate "location reporting" data set to maintain.

If your organization is rolling out to multiple locations in phases, it's reasonable to create all locations up front (even ones you won't onboard staff into for a few months) so that the structure is stable and later phases don't require retrofitting.

Setting organization-wide defaults

Beyond departments and locations, a handful of organization-wide defaults are worth setting deliberately during initial setup rather than leaving at their platform defaults:

• Default currency and number formatting — used across Finance and Payroll unless a specific record overrides it (for example, a multi-currency organization invoicing clients in more than one currency).
• Fiscal year start — affects how Finance and Reports bucket year-over-year comparisons; getting this wrong early means historical reports will need to be regenerated after correction.
• Default approval chains — many modules (leave requests, expense claims, invoice approvals) ship with a sensible default approval flow (typically "direct manager approves") that you can leave as-is initially and refine once you've configured roles.

None of these are permanently locked in, but changing them after months of records have accumulated is more disruptive than setting them correctly during initial setup.

Common setup mistakes to avoid

• Enabling too many modules on day one. Every enabled module appears in every user's navigation unless permissions restrict it, which can overwhelm new users. Start with the modules your team will use in week one and expand from the Module Marketplace as needed.
• Skipping department structure. Departments are a foundational reference used by HRMS, Projects, and Reports. Retrofitting departments after hundreds of employee or project records exist is possible but requires a bulk re-assignment pass.
• Not setting a backup Org Admin. If the original admin account is locked out, having a second Org Admin account avoids a support escalation to regain access.
• Ignoring the working calendar. Attendance, leave accrual, and payroll cutoffs in HRMS and Payroll depend on an accurate calendar; an incorrect calendar surfaces as attendance discrepancies weeks later.

Next steps

After organization setup is complete, proceed to Role Management & Permissions to define who can see and act on what, then to Module Marketplace: Enabling & Configuring Modules to bring in the rest of your operational stack (Payroll, Tickets, Projects, and so on) as your rollout progresses.