Both live under Settings, and both are simple flat lists. One of them is far more consequential than it looks.
Departments
A flat list of names. Departments are used for:
- Filtering the directory, reports and the roster.
- Grouping on the roster planner.
- The same team check in swap compatibility — two employees are “same team” when they share a department.
Create, rename and edit from Settings → Departments.
Locations
A location is a physical place people work. Each carries:
The geofence matters more than anything else here
When someone punches from the mobile app, the server compares their reported coordinates against their own location’s geofence and decides Inside or Outside. An Outside punch becomes pending and needs a manager’s approval.
A wrong geofence turns every ordinary arrival into an exception. A radius that is too tight floods managers with approvals for people who are standing at their desk. One that is too loose makes the check meaningless. Coordinates for the wrong building do both at once.Get someone to stand at the entrance and check what the app reports before you go live.
Radius is in metres and should account for GPS accuracy, not just the building footprint. A phone indoors is commonly accurate to 20–50 metres; a radius smaller than that produces false exceptions no matter how precise your coordinates are.
Locations and holidays
Holidays can be tied to specific locations, which is how a regional festival is a holiday at one site and a working day at another. See Holidays.
Locations and shift templates
A shift template applies to all locations by default, or to a named subset. Use the subset when a site genuinely runs different hours.
Where they are used
Deleting
Neither can be removed while employees are assigned to it. Reassign first. 
