Colour-Coded Department Interface Optional — Departments #
See which branch you are working in
Toolbar style and colour are set per department so staff can see which department they are working in without reading anything.
More in Multi-Location & Departments is part of Multi-Location & Departments in Windward System Five. System Five includes 19 documented capabilities here — 2 in the standard set and 17 optional. Trades that lean on it include Plumbing Supply, General Retailer.
These 19 capabilities sit within System Five's 1287-capability documented set — a selection, not a ceiling.
See which branch you are working in
Toolbar style and colour are set per department so staff can see which department they are working in without reading anything.
Take a payment at any branch
Accounts receivable payments can be taken in any department regardless of which branch raised the invoice, and bills can be paid by any department. A distributed bill can spread expenses across departments through a clearing account while one department writes the cheque.
Rent out kit held at another branch
Rental stock belonging to other departments can be included in the item list shown when checking availability and building a booking.
Move a department's data to another
Moves a department's data to another department with a selectable list of what travels with it, including an inventory-only preset.
Split the business into departments later
The Move Departments toolbox routine converts a single-department dataset into a departmentalized one, merges one department's transactions into another, and collapses departments back to a single structure.
Keep each branch out of the others' books
Access to inventory, data entry and reports can be restricted per user and per department, and ledger reporting can be restricted separately again by department. Restricted users can still view other departments' stock levels, serial numbers and units.
Budget branch by branch
In departmentalised installations a budget can be set for one department or all departments, and where multi-currency is in use a currency can be selected for the budget.
Split a delivery fairly across branches
An incoming shipment can be split across departments on receipt, with a recommended redistribution that reads current stock per department and each department's sales over the previous twelve months.
See each branch's numbers on its own
Where departments are in use, reports consolidate or isolate by department, bills and purchase orders are restricted to the departments a user can access, cheque batches print by department, customers and suppliers can be tied to a single department, and journal lines split across departments.
Report one branch or all of them
Where departments are licensed, reports expose a department selector defaulting to the current department with an all-departments option, and department-aware columns that can report the current, all, or a nominated department. Where multi-currency is licensed, a currency selector restates report amounts in the chosen currency.
Run several companies from one desk
A workstation links to one or more company datasets and is configured for each; any directory containing the master data file is a valid company, and the installer can scan a drive to find them.
Grow from one till to many stores
The same system runs on a single workstation, a small peer-to-peer network, or a client/server network of three to two hundred computers across one or several locations.
Tell at a glance which store raised it
Invoice, payment and customer account numbers can each carry a department prefix — C for the Creston store, G for Greenwood — and each department keeps its own last-used cash and charge invoice numbers.
Set each branch's country and tax region
Country and state or province are set for the company and can be set separately for each department, and countries can be added to the list when a jurisdiction is missing.
See stock and prices branch by branch
A departmentalised system shows each department's costs, prices, quantities and locations for an item side by side with an all-department total, plus department sales history and inter-department transfers.
Charge different prices at different stores
Each department can be given its own list price schedule and cash price schedule, so a city store and a rural store can sell the same catalogue at different prices. Departmentalised rates apply to cash invoices; a customer's own schedule still takes precedence.
Promise stock held at another branch
When the local department is out, stock can be queued for transfer from one or several other departments, mixing in-stock and queued quantities on the same line, and queuing beyond a department's current holding except for serialised goods.
Share or hide customers between branches
Customers and suppliers are shared across all departments by default; optionally records created in one department can be made invisible to the others.
See what stock moved between branches
Reports past and present inventory transfers in four forms: transfer invoices, transferred item detail, only items queued from work orders, and a transfer matrix, by date range, department and specific part number. A transfer appears when reporting on any department involved in it.
Yes. A departmentalised system shows each department's costs, prices, quantities and locations for an item side by side with an all-department total, plus department sales history and inter-department transfers. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Accounts receivable payments can be taken in any department regardless of which branch raised the invoice, and bills can be paid by any department. A distributed bill can spread expenses across departments through a clearing account while one department writes the cheque. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Rental stock belonging to other departments can be included in the item list shown when checking availability and building a booking. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Access to inventory, data entry and reports can be restricted per user and per department, and ledger reporting can be restricted separately again by department. Restricted users can still view other departments' stock levels, serial numbers and units. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Where departments are in use, reports consolidate or isolate by department, bills and purchase orders are restricted to the departments a user can access, cheque batches print by department, customers and suppliers can be tied to a single department, and journal lines split across departments. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Where departments are licensed, reports expose a department selector defaulting to the current department with an all-departments option, and department-aware columns that can report the current, all, or a nominated department. Where multi-currency is licensed, a currency selector restates report amounts in the chosen currency. This is optional in System Five.
Every capability on this page is documented in the System Five capability index. Last updated 2026-11-05.