Units and slots
Inside a model, structure is made of two things: units, which form a tree, and slots, which are the positions inside that tree.
Keeping them separate is what lets Resorcerer talk about headcount you haven’t hired yet. A slot exists whether or not anyone is in it, so a plan for twelve engineers is twelve slots regardless of how many are filled today.
A unit is an organizational group — a division, a department, a team, a squad. Units nest: a unit may have a parent and any number of children, and the models’s Units view renders the whole thing as a tree you can expand, search, and rearrange by dragging.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | Required. |
| Unit type | Optional classification — Department, Team, Squad. Types are defined per organization and carry a colour used in the visualizations. |
| Description | Optional notes. |
| Parent | The unit above it, or none for a root unit. |
Moving a unit takes its children and slots with it. A unit can’t be moved beneath its own descendant — that would make a loop, and Resorcerer blocks it. Deleting a unit deletes everything below it, which is why it asks first.
A slot is one position — one line of headcount. It’s described by the same attributes a person has, and it may or may not have a person assigned.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Units | Which unit(s) it belongs to. At least one is required. |
| Role, Level, Location, Company | What kind of position it is. All optional, all used for filtering, grouping, and costing. |
| Person | Who fills it. Empty means vacant. |
| Reports to | Another slot in the same model. |
| Start / end date | When the position is active. See Planning over time. |
| Notes | Free text. |
Filled and vacant
Section titled “Filled and vacant”A slot with a person is filled; without one it’s vacant. Both are counted, and both are costed — a vacancy has a price, and seeing it is usually the reason you’re building the model. The Summary view splits headcount and cost along exactly this line.
Assigning and unassigning is not destructive: taking a person out of a slot leaves the slot in place, and frees that person for another one.
Slots in more than one unit
Section titled “Slots in more than one unit”A slot can belong to several units at once — the shared designer who works across two teams, or a matrix reporting arrangement. The slot then appears in each unit’s list, but counts only once toward headcount, and its cost is split across the units it belongs to so that unit rollups still add up.
A slot must always belong to at least one unit; removing the last one is blocked.
Reporting lines
Section titled “Reporting lines”Setting reports to on a slot points it at another slot in the same model. Chain those together and you have the reporting structure that the Org Chart view draws.
Reporting is a property of slots, not of people, which means a plan can express “the new Head of Platform, whoever that turns out to be, has these six reports” before anyone is hired.
Resorcerer refuses to create a reporting cycle, and the Problems view flags any that pre-date the check.
Where slots come from
Section titled “Where slots come from”You can add slots one at a time from a unit in the Units view, or work in the Slots view, which lists every position in the model as a table you can filter by unit, attribute, or fill status, sort by any column, and export to CSV.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Models — the container units and slots live in.
- People and attributes — roles, levels, locations, and companies.
- Cost profiles — how a slot gets its cost.
- Build your first model — a walkthrough.