Lines of Business Overview
Organize your site into Lines of Business, each with its own team, portfolios, funding and currency, and view one at a time or all together.
A Line of Business (LOB) is a part of your organization that runs its own work, such as a division, a region or a subsidiary. In Completix, each LOB has its own people, portfolios, projects, funding and currency, so leaders can focus on one part of the business or look across the whole site. Lines of Business is an optional component, and everything in this article applies once it is enabled in Site Settings.
LOBs sit directly below the site. Every user, portfolio and project on the site belongs to an LOB. Each LOB has:
- Users, the people who belong to it.
- Portfolios and projects, the work it runs.
- Funding envelopes, the money set aside for its projects.
- A currency, used for its totals and summaries.
- A calendar and approval policies, set for the LOB or taken from the site.
Only when Lines of Business is enabled. While the component is off, the LOB switcher, the All LOBs page, LOB administration and LOB currencies are not shown, and the site works as a single business. See Turn on Lines of Business below.
This article covers how LOBs are turned on, how people and work are assigned to them, and how currency works across LOBs. For how money is set aside and drawn down, see Funding Envelopes.
Turn on Lines of Business
Lines of Business is a component, turned on or off in Site Settings like other components. While it is off, everything on the site sits in a single hidden LOB and nothing changes for your users.
When you turn it on, Completix creates the first LOB, named General. General is the default LOB. It works like any other LOB, with its own team and budget, and it appears in the LOB list alongside the ones you add.
Any user, portfolio or project that is not assigned to a specific LOB belongs to General, so nothing on the site is ever unassigned.
Turning the component on does not move anything. Everything starts in General, and you reassign users, portfolios and projects as you add new LOBs.
The All LOBs page
The All LOBs page, in the main navigation, is where you browse and manage LOBs. It lists each LOB you have access to, with its budget figures and the items that need attention.
Click an LOB to open its detail page, which has two tabs:
- Overview, a summary of the LOB.
- Budgets, the LOB's funding envelopes and totals.
Users with permission see a + New LOB button to create an LOB, and edit controls on the Budgets tab. Everyone else sees the same page without those controls.
LOB administration
Each LOB has its own administration section. Users with the right LOB permission see it for their LOB, and it holds three areas:
- Users, every user who belongs to the LOB. This is the Site Admin users page filtered to the LOB, so it works the same way.
- Calendar, the LOB's working calendar, such as typical hours per week.
- Approval policies, the LOB's own approval rules.
If an LOB has no approval policy set up, it uses the site's policy. You only need to set up policies for an LOB that works differently from the rest of the site.
Switch between LOBs
The LOB switcher sits at the top of the left navigation, just below the site switcher. Pick a specific LOB to filter dashboards and lists to that LOB, or pick All to see everything across the LOBs you have access to.
If you only have access to one LOB, the switcher shows that LOB and your views are always scoped to it.
Assign people, portfolios and projects
Each item on the site is assigned to an LOB, and anything you do not assign stays in General.
- Users belong to one LOB, their home LOB. They can still be assigned to projects in any LOB, so teams that work across the business are not blocked.
- Portfolios are assigned to an LOB.
- Projects are assigned to an LOB, and link their budget to that LOB's funding envelopes.
What a user can see is controlled by LOB-scoped roles, not by assignment alone. A user without permission to see all LOBs sees only their own LOB.
Assigning a user to an LOB sets their home. Their role decides whether they can see other LOBs.
Currency across LOBs
The site has a currency, and each LOB has its own currency. Every amount keeps the currency it was entered in, and Completix converts it when it is shown:
- Project expenses show the original currency of the invoice.
- Summaries and totals within an LOB show the LOB currency.
- Views across all LOBs show the site currency.
Conversions use the site's exchange rate table, which holds one rate per currency for each month. If a month has no rate, the previous month's rate is used. If no rate has been entered at all, amounts convert at 1:1.
Conversions are calculated each time an amount is shown and are never stored. If you set or change a month's rate, everything in that month recalculates, including past invoices. Reports include a footnote listing the rate used for each currency, and every rate change is recorded in the history.
Completix is not your system of financial record. Your ERP may use different conversion rates, so converted totals will not always match it exactly. Keeping the rate table up to date is the responsibility of your organization.
