Legal Agencies
When your company is organized around several internal entities (Agencies, departments, subsidiaries, etc.), it is essential to choose the right way to represent them in BoondManager. This choice directly impacts your reporting, HR management, billing, access rights, etc.
Let’s start by reviewing together how Legal Agencies work in Boond.
Definition
Legal Agencies correspond to distinct entities from an administrative and legal perspective. Your Agencies will determine the default configuration of the cards attached to them. Each Agency can have its own parameters and can be managed independently.
Each card (Candidates, CRM, Opportunities, Projects, Invoices, etc.) can only be attached to one Legal Agency.
A manager is attached to their main Agency but can also have secondary Agencies to condition their access on a broader perimeter.
Use Cases
So, when should you create a distinct Legal Agency? Here is a non-exhaustive list of use cases that may lead you to create a new Legal Agency in Boond:
When you have several legal entities with different general and legal data
When it is important for you to produce distinct legal documents (contracts, invoices, ...)
When you need to distinguish several billing masks depending on the entity issuing the invoice
When you want to distinguish types of activity & expenses declared by your employees
When you want to distinguish your HR processes (e.g. task lists) and your employee benefit rules
Another example: you manage payroll separately for each entity with HR dedicated to each perimeter.When you want to restrict or increase access rights for managers based on Agency perimeters
When you want to group or distinguish activities across different perimeters in your Reportings
When you need to do internal rebilling between Agencies
Impacts
Defining a Legal Agency is not trivial and can have several impacts on cards, whether in terms of access rights on all cards or on the behavior of certain cards, especially the following:
On Resources:
The Legal Agency indicated on the Information tab will define the types of activity & expenses present in timesheets, expense reports, and absence requests
When you create an HR contract, it will by default take the Agency indicated in the Information tab
The data (real cost, staff, ...) will be attached to it in Reporting
Attention
If your employee changes Legal Agency during their career, be sure to follow these steps:
Validate their last timesheet and expense report in the current Agency
End their HR contract
Edit the Agency in their Information tab
Create a new contract (not a new amendment) so it takes the new Agency and complete it as usual
On Projects:
The indicated Legal Agency will be considered as the entity issuing the invoice (orders will inherit the Agency’s default configuration: bank details, billing mask, ...)
Financial data will be attached to it in Reporting
If a Resource from another Agency is delivering on the project, this will allow you to create a transfer project.
Overall, defining an Agency on a card allows it to belong to a search perimeter. Useful for defining rights and for effective reporting.
Attention
We do not recommend changing the Legal Agency during a project. If the project needs to change billing Agency, we recommend ending the existing project and creating a new one under the new entity.
Poles
It is important to structure your activity and organize it, even cross-Agencies.
Definition
Poles help you categorize your cards by, for example, activity type (Data, Cloud, Consulting, ...) or geographic sector (Grand Est, PACA, EMEA, ...). This really belongs to your internal logic and is not mandatory.
It is important to note that a pole can be applied to all cards, but only one can be assigned per card.
A Manager can be assigned to a pole (main pole) but can also be attached to secondary poles to open a perimeter or access to related cards.
Use Cases
So, when should you create poles in addition to your Agencies? Here is a non-exhaustive list of use cases that may lead you to create a new pole in Boond:
When you want to classify each card in a given perimeter to filter on it in the different module search views
When you need to distinguish your numerical data in reporting by activity or sector, regardless of the Agency attached to the card
When you have several distinct activities but want to keep the same invoice mask (in this case, your projects will all belong to the same Agency but will be distinguished via poles)
When you want to easily switch a card (Resources, Contacts, Projects, ...) from one pole to another without too much impact (note: all attached data will automatically be associated with the new pole for most reporting indicators)
When you want to restrict or increase access rights for managers based on Poles.
When you want to create documents via DocTemplate by distinguishing them by pole
Attention
Think carefully in advance about the different poles you want to implement, as this will be very structuring in your interface. It will then be complicated to completely change the logic once the data is assigned to the different poles.
Impact
Assigning a pole mainly allows a card to belong to a given perimeter for search filters and Reportings, but also to open or close rights.
There is no other impact on the actual behavior of the cards.
Only project cards can be assigned in bulk to a pole.
For other cards, if you need to assign or remove a pole in bulk, you can do so via API or by contacting our Professional Services team.
Business Units
Business units allow a third level of segmentation of your interface, not by assigning a card to a BU, but by attaching a manager to one or more BUs.
Definition
BUs are groupings of managers without any link to Agencies or Poles. Thus, it is the manager who determines whether the card belongs to a BU or not. This can help structure activity by sector, activity, etc., carried by a group of managers.
If Manager A is part of BU A, then all cards assigned to the manager are part of BU A.
Use Cases
Business Units should be preferred if:
You have many managers and want to filter by "group" rather than each manager individually
You want to open rights to a manager for their cards but also to managers in their BU(s)
You want to organize your activity by business line or verticals
You do not need legal differentiation, but rather operational tracking
You need reporting by BU
But note: if a manager is in several BUs, then the cards attached to them will be in all the manager’s BUs.Changing BU simply means changing the manager on the card
If a manager is, for example, in the Cloud BU and the Data BU, then all cards (projects, resources, opportunities, etc.) will appear in both BUs if you filter by either one.
Following this logic, we do not recommend using BUs for reporting if a manager is in several BUs, as a card will then be counted twice.
Attention
BUs have no impact on generated documents (invoices, contracts, ...), and do not allow for distinct masks or templates.
F.A.Q.
Is it possible to have a concept of parent Agency / main Agency and then classic Legal Agencies?
Not at this time. We recommend creating your main entity as a classic Legal Agency.
I want to add a manager to a BU so they can access related data, but without their own cards appearing in the BU. Is this possible?
Yes! When you configure Business Units from Administration, you can add these managers in the "Managers excluded from searches" category. The manager will have access to BU data, but their own data will not appear when filtering on their BU perimeter.
What is the impact when assigning "secondary Agencies" or "secondary Poles" to a manager card?
This allows, in their role, to grant them access in search, read, and/or edit to the data of "their Agencies" or "their Poles". The manager will thus be able to access data from their main Agency and pole, as well as data from the Agencies and poles indicated as secondary in their manager card.