Org chart software for an online store: how to build your company structure in Elbuz

Why this is not another drawing tool

Most org chart software is a drawing surface. You place boxes, type names into them, export a picture — and a month later the picture is wrong, because someone joined, someone moved to another department and nobody reopened the file. The chart never knew anything about your business in the first place; it only knew the shapes you drew.

The Company structure window in Elbuz starts from the other end. It is organizational chart software that already knows your company: the people are already in the system — they have departments, positions and, more to the point, they have orders attached to their names. So the chart is not drawn, it is assembled from data you already keep, and it stays connected to that data afterwards.

That connection is what makes the difference practical rather than cosmetic:

What the Company structure window does

The full list, so you know what is in the box. Each item is covered step by step below.

Step 1. Open the window

1. Sign in to the Elbuz admin panel.
2. In the main menu open Contacts → Organizational structure. The window's own title bar says Company structure.
3. The window opens full screen. If nothing has been built yet, you get an invitation to build it — that is the next step.

If you keep more than one legal entity, pick the one you are building the structure for from the company selector at the top left before you start.

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Organizational structure item

1. Organizational structure item — opens the org-structure window for the company.

Step 2. How to create an org chart in one click

This is the part that saves the afternoon. You do not enter departments and people by hand. If your employees are already in the system, they already carry a department and a position, and the program can lay the whole tree out for you.

1. In the empty window press Build from existing data.
2. A second later the tree appears: your company at the top, departments beneath it, the employees of each one inside.

Fifty employees in thirteen departments become thirteen department nodes with fifty people in the right places. When it is done the program reports exactly what it created — how many departments and how many employees. From there you are only tidying up: marking the heads, moving the odd person who sits in the wrong place.

Step 3. How the window is laid out

Along the top runs the statistics bar: employees, departments, hierarchy levels, max direct reports, vacancies, and how many people are still not in structure. Clicking that last figure lists exactly who needs placing. Next to it is the search box — type a name or a department and the path to it expands and highlights on its own.

The window is split in two, so you always have both the overview and the detail:

• Left — the department tree. Clicking a department shows its people on the right; the arrow expands nested departments. Each department carries a counter: employees of its own / total including sub-departments.
• Right — employee cards for the selected department, with photo, name and position.

The colour of the left border on a card tells you the node type:

Two more markers: a crown means head of the department, a chain link means functional reporting — a second manager. The “?” icon in the top right corner opens the built-in help with every hint in one place.

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Stats bar

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Search field

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Department tree

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Employee cards

1. Stats bar — total employees, departments, hierarchy levels, max direct reports, unplaced people, and vacancies.
2. Search field — type a name or department, the path expands automatically.
3. Department tree — click a department to show its employees on the right; the arrow expands sub-departments.
4. Employee cards — everyone assigned to the selected department, with name and position.

Step 4. Editing the structure by hand

Even after the one-click build there is usually something to add or correct. All of it is done with the mouse.

Adding a department

1. Press the Department button at the top.
2. Pick a name from your existing department list — the node appears in the tree.

To nest a department inside another, use the “⋮” icon on the parent node (or right-click) → Department. That is how deep structures are built: Sales → Wholesale group → the reps.

Putting an employee into the structure

Anyone not yet placed sits in the bottom panel, Not placed in the structure. Drag their card from there onto a department in the tree or into the right-hand panel. That is the whole operation.

Marking the head

1. Select the department, click the employee — the side panel opens.
2. Press Set as head (right-clicking the card works too).

A department has exactly one head. If there is already one, the program asks whether to replace them rather than quietly creating a second boss.

Moving people around

• To another department: drag the card onto that department in the tree.
• Out of the structure: drag the card down into the “Not placed” panel. The employee stays in the system — they just leave the chart.

Adding a vacancy

Planning to hire? Add a vacancy — an empty seat with a position but no person yet. On the department press “⋮” → Vacancy and choose the position. It shows with a dashed border, so where you are expanding is visible at a glance.

Reordering nodes

To arrange departments or people in a sensible order use “⋮” → Move up / Move down on the node. Put the departments that matter most at the top.

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Unplaced employee card

1. Unplaced employee card — drag it onto a department node in the tree to add them to the structure.

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Set as head action

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Functional manager action

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Accountability action

1. Set as head — makes this employee the head of the selected node.
2. Functional manager — assigns a functional (dotted-line) manager for this employee.
3. Accountability — defines the employee's zones of responsibility.

Step 5. Groups of companies and matrix reporting

More than one legal entity

For a group of companies the structure simply nests: holding → companies → departments → sub-departments → employees, with no depth limit. To add a subsidiary as a node, press “⋮” on the company → Subsidiary company. The whole group then lives in one tree.

Matrix and dotted-line reporting

Sometimes a person belongs to one department on paper but takes their day-to-day work from another manager. The classic online-store case: a content manager sits in marketing but fills in product cards under the catalogue lead.

1. Click the employee → in the side panel press Functional manager.
2. Pick the second manager from the list.

A chain-link marker appears on the card, and the card shows Functionally reports to: name. The main tree is untouched — the dotted line is drawn separately precisely so it is not confused with the real reporting structure.

Step 6. Accountability: who owns what

Ask a twenty-person company who reports to whom and you will get an answer. Ask who is accountable for returns and the room goes quiet. That gap is what an accountability chart closes, and in Elbuz it is not a separate document — it lives on the same nodes as the reporting structure.

For any department or person you set three to five things they are accountable for, plus one measurable indicator that shows whether the role is coping.

1. Click the node → in the side panel press Accountability.
2. Type the items, one per line. For a sales department: meeting the sales plan; handling complaints; onboarding new managers.
3. In the indicator field put the single number that matters, for example Department revenue per month.

The program tidies the list itself: bullets, blank lines and duplicates are stripped, and the list is capped at seven items. That cap is deliberate. A long list stops being an accountability statement and turns into a job description nobody reads.

Step 7. Structure health: finding the weak spots

Press ☰ (more actions) at the top → Structure health. The program checks the chart and returns a short list of concrete problems. Clicking any line jumps straight to the node in question.

These are prompts, not an abstract report. “Nine direct reports” is a direct hint that the business has outgrown its first flat layer and the next hire should be a manager, not another rep.

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Problem row

1. Problem row — click it to jump straight to the affected node in the chart.

Step 8. Workload: who actually brings in the revenue

Here is the thing a standalone HR tool cannot do: people and orders live in the same database, so the chart can show what each person actually sold. Workload mode puts the numbers on the employee cards themselves — how many sales documents and for what amount, over the last thirty days. The department header shows the team total.

1. Press ☰ at the top → Show workload.
2. Figures appear on the cards; the department header sums them up.

At a glance you can see who is carrying sales and who is idling, which department is the most productive, and where the next hire should go. That is the bridge from an org chart to the profit and loss.

One note on privacy: sales numbers printed next to people's faces are sensitive. The mode is therefore off by default and an administrator has to grant it as a separate right. Nobody's figures appear on screen just because the system was updated.

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Employee sales figures

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Department total in the header

1. Employee sales figures — number of sales documents and their total amount for the last 30 days.
2. Department total in the header — combined sales result for the whole department.

Step 9. Data visibility: everyone sees only their own branch

As a team grows the question arrives: should a junior sales rep see every customer in the company? Usually not. Elbuz answers it with a subtree rule of the kind Salesforce popularised — your own records and everything below you in the tree.

Turn it on for a group and its members will see, in the contractor and document lists, only their own records and those of people below them in the structure. A department head sees the whole team; a rep sees their own.

1. Press ☰ at the top → Data visibility.
2. Switch on the groups that should be restricted, for example “Sales managers”.

Three safeguards keep you from locking yourself or your team out:

• Rights add up, they do not subtract. If the person is also in an unrestricted group, the restriction does not apply to them.
• Anyone not in the structure sees everything. A manager you have not placed yet will not silently lose their team's data.
• Ownerless records are visible to everyone, so shared customers do not disappear from the lists.

Step 10. Change history and the slice on the employee card

Change history

Press ☰ (more actions) at the top → Change history for the feed of who added, edited, moved or deleted what, and when. Clicking an entry takes you to the node. This is the answer to “who changed this?”.

The employee's place, right on their card

You do not have to open the whole chart to see someone's surroundings. Every employee card carries a block showing their manager, their peers and their direct reports, with a Show on the chart button next to it. If the person is not in the structure yet, the card says so and tells you how to place them.

Step 11. Export and access rights

Export. From the “⋮” menu you can save the current view as a PNG image, or export the list to CSV for a spreadsheet or your accountant. The CSV carries the path, name, position, node type, head flag, e-mail and extension — enough to work with outside the program.

Access rights. Viewing and editing the structure are separate permissions, and workload mode has a permission of its own, while the data visibility settings sit under the general editing permission. All of it is granted by an administrator in the user group settings.

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from an org chart maker like Visio, Lucidchart or Canva?

Those are drawing tools: you type the names in yourself and the picture is out of date the moment somebody changes job. The chart in Elbuz is assembled from the employees already in your system, updates their cards when you move them, shows real sales figures per person and controls who can see which customers. One is a picture of the company, the other is a working part of it.

I run a small business with five people. Do I need an org chart at all?

At five, probably not yet. The moment you have separate departments and the question “who is handling this customer?” starts costing you time, a small business organizational chart pays for itself. It is also easier to start early: by the time you are twenty people, everything is already in place.

Can it handle a matrix reporting structure?

Yes. The tree holds the main reporting line, and a functional manager can be assigned on top of it for day-to-day work — the dotted line. The card then shows both, and the two are drawn differently so nobody confuses one for the other.

Can I produce a staffing table from it?

The departments, positions and vacancies you set up are the backbone of one. A full staffing table with a payroll budget is on the roadmap; today you can export the structure to CSV and hand it to your accountant.

What happens to the chart when someone leaves or changes department?

You drag their card to the new department or out of the structure altogether. The change history records who did it and when, and reports by department do not break because of the reshuffle.

Do I need a developer to set this up?

No. It is all mouse work and takes a few minutes: build the chart in one click, drag people into place, mark the heads. No code and no configuration files.

What to do today

Three steps, and you will know more about your own company than you did this morning:

1. Open Contacts → Organizational structure and press Build from existing data. Your company appears as a chart in about a second.
2. Mark the heads of the departments and drag anyone who is in the wrong place.
3. Switch on Workload and look at who is actually bringing in the sales. That is usually the first thing that points at where to grow.

After that, at your own pace: write the accountability lists, run Structure health, set up data visibility. Each one makes the company a little more legible and running it a little calmer.

Related topics

• CRM and warehouse accounting in Elbuz — the section this guide belongs to.
• Automatic rules: triggers, events, conditions and actions — once you know who is accountable for what, rules can do the routing for you.