Luna HR Docs

Company Structure

Luna HR uses a flexible org tree to represent your company's structure. This isn't a rigid hierarchy — you can create as many or as few levels as you need, and reorganise at any time.

Your company structure is the foundation for how policies, permissions, and workflows operate across Luna HR.

How it works

The org tree

Your company is represented as a tree of org nodes. Each node has a type that describes what it represents:

  • Company — the top-level node (created automatically)
  • Region — geographic regions (e.g. UK, Europe, Asia)
  • Office — physical locations (e.g. London HQ, Manchester Office)
  • Department — functional areas (e.g. Engineering, Sales, HR)
  • Team — smaller groups within departments (e.g. Frontend, Backend)
  • Cost Centre — financial groupings for budgeting and reporting

You can nest these in any combination. A simple company might just have:

Company > Department > Team

A larger organisation might use:

Company > Region > Office > Department > Team

Employee membership

Employees are linked to the org tree through memberships. Each employee has:

  • Primary membership — their main department or team. This determines which policies apply to them (e.g. leave entitlement, expense limits)
  • Secondary memberships — additional teams or projects they belong to
  • Dotted-line memberships — matrix reporting relationships

Each membership also has a role that describes the employee's position within that node:

  • Member — standard team member
  • Manager — manages the node and its members
  • Lead — team lead
  • Head — department or function head
  • Admin — administrative access to the node

These roles are used by the approval system to route requests to the right person.

Setting up your structure

From the admin hub

  1. Go to Admin > Org Structure
  2. You'll see your company node at the top
  3. Click Add on any node to create a child node
  4. Choose the node type (department, team, office, etc.) and give it a name

From the Company Structure page

  1. Go to Company Structure in the sidebar
  2. Browse the tree — click any node to see its details
  3. On the node detail page, you can:
    • See all members and their roles
    • View sub-units (child nodes)
    • See which policies apply at this level (with provenance showing where each setting comes from)
    • Review activity for the node

Adding members

To place an employee in the org tree:

  1. Navigate to the node (department, team, etc.)
  2. Click Add Member
  3. Search for and select the employee
  4. Choose their membership type (primary, secondary, or dotted-line)
  5. Choose their role (member, manager, lead, etc.)

An employee's primary membership determines which policies apply to them. For example, if an employee's primary membership is in the "London Office > Engineering" department, they'll inherit leave policies set at the London Office level and any Engineering-specific overrides.

Why structure matters

Your org structure affects three key areas:

1. Policy inheritance

Policies (leave entitlements, expense limits, etc.) are attached to org nodes. When Luna HR needs to determine what policy applies to an employee, it walks up the tree from the employee's primary node to the company root, merging settings along the way. More specific nodes override more general ones.

See Policies for details.

2. Approval routing

Approval workflows use the org tree to find the right approver. For example, "route to the manager of the employee's department" looks at the employee's primary membership, finds their department node, and resolves who has the "manager" role there.

See Approvals for details.

3. Reporting

Reports can be scoped to any level of the org tree. Want to see leave usage for the London office? Or expense totals for the Sales department? The org tree makes this possible.

Tips

  • Start simple — you don't need to model every team on day one. Start with departments and add teams later
  • Use the right node types — the type is used for display purposes (icons, labels) but doesn't affect how the system works
  • One primary membership — every employee should have exactly one primary membership. This is what drives policy resolution
  • Managers matter — make sure each department/team has someone with the "manager" role if you want approval routing to work automatically
  • Policies — how policies inherit through your org structure
  • Roles & Permissions — controlling access across your organisation
  • Approvals — how approval chains use the org tree