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Departments — Workflow

Overview

Departments and budget items follow SARA's standard catalog lifecycle: records are created active and can be deactivated or reactivated at any time. Budget change requests introduce an email-based notification step that hands off to an external review process. There is no multi-status approval pipeline within this feature.

Note

For the standard catalog lifecycle pattern, see: Workflows & Pipelines

Status lifecycle

Departments, positions, and budget items

  • ACTV — Active. The record is available for selection and use throughout the system.
  • INAC — Inactive. The record has been deactivated and is excluded from active operations.

Profiles

  • ACT — Active profile. Members can charge purchase requisitions to the granted budget items.
  • INA — Inactive profile.

Note

Profiles use abbreviated status codes (ACT / INA) rather than the standard four-character codes (ACTV / INAC). This is a known inconsistency in the current implementation.

Info

For system-wide status guidance, see: Status

Lifecycle notes

Position deactivation

A position cannot be deactivated while collaborators are assigned to it. SARA will reject the deactivation attempt and display an error. All collaborators must be reassigned to a different position before the position can be deactivated.

Department administration visibility

A department appears in Department Administration only when a budget record exists for it in the selected year. Deactivating a department in the Departments catalog does not remove it from existing budget records or the Department Administration view.

Budget change request flow

Budget change request steps

  1. A user opens the Request change modal for a department in Department Administration.
  2. The user specifies the direction (add or subtract), the amount, and a justification note.
  3. SARA sends an email to company administrators immediately on submission.
  4. The review and budget modification are handled externally — typically in Budget Administration (Finance).

No approval state is tracked within this transaction. The budget total in Department Administration reflects only changes applied through Budget Administration, not the pending request itself.

Info

For notification channel behavior, see: Notifications & Alerts

Permissions

Permissions

Access and actions are permission-driven. See: Permissions