Categories, sites, locations and departments
Four structures organize your assets. They answer different questions and they are not interchangeable.
| Structure | Question | Hierarchy | Also carries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | What kind of thing is it? | Yes, any depth | Depreciation configuration, PM rules |
| Site | Where does the organization operate? | No | Address, optional geo coordinates |
| Location | Where physically inside the site is it? | Yes, any depth | Optional geo coordinates |
| Department | Which unit's cost centre owns it? | No | — |
Categories
A category classifies an asset by what it is: IT Equipment, Vehicles, Machinery, Furniture.
Categories nest to any depth, and filtering on a parent includes everything beneath it. Filtering on "IT Equipment" returns the laptops filed under "IT Equipment → Portable → Laptops".
Categories do more than label:
- Depreciation configuration lives here — method, useful life, rate, residual value percentage, and MACRS property class. Financial treatment is declared once per class of asset rather than per asset.
- Preventive maintenance rules can attach to a category, applying to every asset within it — including assets added later. A new pump inherits the pump service schedule without anyone remembering to attach it.
Manage them at Dashboard → Categories. See How to manage categories.
Sites
A site is an operational place where the organization operates: Main Office, a manufacturing plant, a warehouse, a campus. Sites are not locations and are not a special kind of location.
Every organization starts with a default Main Office site. You can rename it, edit its address and coordinates, and create additional sites according to your plan's Site limit.
Manage them at Dashboard → Sites. See How to manage Sites and Main Office — the default Site.
Locations
A location is a physical place inside a site, arranged as a hierarchy: building → floor → room.
Every location belongs to exactly one site. Child locations inherit their parent's site. A root location (no parent) is still a location under a site — it is not a site itself.
Depth is up to you and can be extended later. A single-site organization might have three locations. A multi-campus estate might have hundreds arranged four levels deep.
Manage them at Dashboard → Locations. See How to create and manage locations.
A Location is an organizational place inside a Site. A geo-position is a physical coordinate pushed in by a tracking system for an asset. Sending asset coordinates does not change which building an asset belongs to. See Geo-position tracking.
Departments
A department is an organizational unit used for cost rollup and reporting: IT, Operations, Facilities, Maintenance.
Departments are flat — there is no hierarchy. Assets are associated with a department for cost reporting, people belong to a department, and users carry a primary department.
Manage them at Dashboard → Departments (Owner and Admin only). See How to manage departments.
Using them together
A single asset typically carries category, location (under a site), department, plus an assigned person:
Asset: Dell Latitude 5520 Category: IT Equipment → Portable → Laptops Site: London HQ Location: Floor 3 → Room 302 Department: Operations Assigned Person: Jane Okafor
Each answers something different, so each report reads a different one:
- "Which classes of asset consume the budget?" → Category Costs report
- "Which units are carrying the cost?" → Dept Costs report
- "What is in the Manchester site?" → filter assets by locations under that site
Common mistakes
Encoding location into category names. "London Laptops" and "Manchester Laptops" as separate categories is the classic error. Use one Laptops category and set the Location (under the right Site). Otherwise every report double-counts and your depreciation configuration is duplicated.
Encoding department into location names. Same problem in reverse. "IT Store Room" is fine as a location name; "IT" as a location is not.
Building the whole hierarchy before you need it. Start shallow — two or three levels. Both categories and locations extend later without disruption.
Treating departments as teams. A department is a cost centre. If two teams share a budget, they are one department for reporting purposes.
Skipping depreciation configuration on categories. Without it, assets in that category have no financial treatment even on a plan that includes depreciation.
What happens when you change these
Every change to an asset's category, location or department writes an event to its timeline naming both the old and new values. Nothing is silently overwritten.
Categories, locations and departments are archived, never deleted, so historical records stay attributable.
Related articles
Need Help?
If you have questions not covered in this article, our support team is here to help.
Contact Support