Customers that have multiple business entities may consider managing those divisions in a single Aimsio account. While we can support more than one division, there are important tradeoffs to consider.
This article outlines our approach to managing multiple divisions and highlights limitations customers should consider when evaluating whether they’ll require a second Aimsio instance.
Division Onboarding
Your Aimsio account should represent your primary division, or the division that generates the most revenue/activity. We focus onboarding your primary division first, before implementing a second or third division. We do this to ensure your most complex business requirements are evaluated and prioritized.
This reduces the complexity of the onboarding process, ensuring that we cover all requirements for your primary division during the onboarding so that you get to use Aimsio as soon as possible.
Aimsio’s training materials focus on how the Aimsio platform functions for all customers, not how it will function for a particular division. Division champions should be prepared to distill that information to their respective teams.
If your Aimsio account has completed onboarding and will be introducing a new division, implementation will require our Professional Services team.
Our Professional Services team will work with you when rolling out Aimsio with the rest of the divisions 4 weeks after the first division goes live. This is to ensure we leave ample time for adoption and final configurations before rolling out to other divisions.
Division Account Configurations
Each division can have it’s own logo and form header, including address, phone number and email. Aimsio can also support a unique tax number per division.
We cannot make configurations to your account that only affect one of your divisions. For example, Aimsio does not support two completely separate versions of a form (Ticket, Timesheet, Estimate, Purchase Order, etc.), but we can introduce controls that allow divisions to hide information on a PDF.
Get comfortable with the idea that your account will only have one version of each form we offer. The presentation of these forms will be controlled and forms submitted on behalf of a division will reflect the division’s branding/logo. We will work with you to ensure clients only see information pertaining one division at a time.
Division Visibility & User Permissions
Aimsio will segregate information pertaining to each division by first creating an Area (Location) in your Master Data settings and attributing that Area to your Users, Employees and Jobs.
A user’s ‘Area’ can then influence what information they have the ability to access in their account, with some caveats. For example, a user may only see Job’s that relate to their Area, or only have access to forms that have been created for a Job in their Area. Users of our Dispatch tools may only have access to Jobs and resources for their Area.
There are pages in Aimsio that can’t be filtered by Area, such as Master Data, Individual Timesheets, Job Performance and our Report Center. Users that have access to these pages will see information pertaining to all divisions.
We provide accounts additional control with our Access Management tools (Roles and Permissions). In most cases, a Role assigned to a user is not division-specific, but accounts can dedicate a Role in its entirety to a specific division, if required. Most fields on a form can also be hidden by Role.
Mobile app users cannot have division-based layouts, but Job access can be segregated based on their Dispatch status or Role.
Integrations
An Aimsio account using an API integration can only connect to a single ERP/Accounting/Payroll system at a time. A division is just a dimension for data export.
CSV exports are available for configuration to be imported into another software such as payroll/accounting.
Division Reporting
We strongly encourage accounts to consider an external reporting solution to help monitor their division-related data. Our Embedded PowerBI add-on would be a great fit for customer’s managing multiple divisions.
Aimsio is still very effective at Job-level reporting. Many of our Report Center reports can also filter out metrics by Area, but we are limited at controlling access to these reports. PowerBI dashboards can be embedded directly in your Aimsio account and access can be independently controlled by Role.
We cannot configure your account to have different import or export properties by division. Specific division-related data can be exported, if the Aimsio report being used has the capability to filter the information in advance.
Additional considerations should be evaluated for accounts using Payroll. If accounts have multiple divisions, but they are handling all staff payroll in a single payroll system, there is a strong probability we can segregate hours by division when exporting employee hours.
One Aimsio account or more? Consider a separate Instance
An instance is a separate Aimsio account, used when a customer’s unique business unit requires a different configuration from the parent organization.
Benefits of a second Instance:
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Each account has a distinct domain and login credentials.
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Each instance will be given its own onboarding.
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Support for alternative workflows related to services provided by different industries.
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Different client-specific billing/form requirements that cannot be applied to another division.
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When your divisions have separate accounting software instances with different setups and requirements for exporting data out of Aimsio.
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Divisional data can be separated for privacy reasons (e.g. division admins should not be able to see other division’s Master Data).
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Multiple instances can centralize reporting through PowerBI, requiring the Azure database add-on for data hosting.
Why choose to stay in a single instance with multiple divisions
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When your division’s’ workflow is the same OR can be standardized to use the same process
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You don’t need to have deep segregation of data between divisions, e.g. an Admin can see and manage all division’s master data
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You don’t have a division with unique client billing requirements that cannot be applied to the rest of the divisions
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Your employees are frequently shared between divisions within 1 payroll period
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Your divisions share the same accounting/payroll system when exporting the data
If you’re still having trouble deciding how many Aimsio accounts will be necessary for your operation, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Customer Success or Professional Services team. We’ll provide a scoping call and direct you as best we can.