Business Unit, Office, Practice, contract model: the axes an organisation reads its business along belong to that organisation. No software can ship them ready-made, and they shift as the structure evolves. An employee changes BU, a project switches from time and materials to fixed price, a new office opens.

AlibeeZ answers both halves of the problem. You create the axes yourself, as tags. And changing them does not rewrite history: each value stays attached to the period when it was true. The panel above shows both at once, on one person’s career.

What the panel shows

At the top, the record in question: Camille Roux, and the “Business Unit” tag category, marked “Mandatory”. Below, the life of that tag on a timeline:

  • BU Data from January 2023;
  • BU Cloud from September 2024;
  • BU Delivery from March 2026.

Each change is marked on its seam, with its date. Under the timeline, a bracket marks the window of an analysis: the year 2023. It falls entirely inside the first period, well short of the first seam.

At the bottom, the question and its answer. “Revenue for 2023, by BU?”: Camille counts under BU Data. Two moves later, that past has not shifted.

Your categories, on your entities

Categories you create

In AlibeeZ, a tag belongs to a category: “Business Unit” in the example. These categories are not a closed list supplied by the vendor; you create them yourself from the admin area, with the values that match your organisation. Tags are one of the levers that are entirely yours, with no call to our teams.

Put on your entities

A category goes on the entities that need it: people, projects, contracts, companies, accounts and more. The same mechanism therefore says which BU a person works in, which contract model a project follows, or which sector an account belongs to.

Mandatory if you decide so

Any category can be made mandatory, like Camille’s “Business Unit” in the panel. A record then cannot go out without its axis. That is what guarantees an analysis by BU covers every record, not just the ones someone remembered to fill in.

What historisation does

A historised tag does not only keep its current value. It keeps each of its successive values, with the period during which it applied, like the three segments of the timeline.

When an analysis covers a period, the value for that period is the one that counts. Two examples from the product:

  • Camille moves to BU Cloud in September 2024, then to BU Delivery in March 2026: her 2023 activity is still counted under BU Data.
  • A project moves from time and materials to fixed price in March: an analysis of last year still counts it as time and materials.

Nothing to freeze by hand, no copy of the organisation to archive at each year end: the tag change is recorded as a change, not as a correction of the past. Without it, those three years would all swing into today’s BU, and the BU-to-BU comparison would go wrong with nothing to flag it.

Where these axes are used

A tag is only useful if it cuts the analysis. In AlibeeZ, it does so where decisions are made:

  • Margin: steering tracks margin by project and by business unit, and the historised tags on your projects let you cut the analysis along axes you define. The detail is in the article on margin and forecast.
  • The capacity plan: beyond reading by entity, team or person, it can be cut along your own axes, such as business unit, office or practice. See the capacity plan article.
  • Reports and dashboards: dashboards are configurable, and historised tags add your axes to them. A margin grouped by office, as in the article on reports, is the kind of table that relies on them.

Tag or field? Both describe what the standard product does not. A tag is for grouping and comparing along a shared axis; a field carries data specific to one record, to be read or passed on. For the latter, see the article on custom fields.

What it changes

  • axes of analysis that are your own, created and maintained by your teams;
  • no record without its axis, when the category is mandatory;
  • year-on-year comparisons that stay right, even after a reorganisation;
  • the same way of slicing in margin, the capacity plan and reports.

Going further: to understand why a tool without historisation skews your comparisons, and how to check it in a demo, read our article on margin by business unit. To see these axes at work, the article on margin and forecast and the one on reports.

Frequently asked questions

Can we create our own tag categories in AlibeeZ?

Yes. You create your categories and their values from the admin area, then put them on your entities: people, projects, contracts, companies and others. It is a lever you handle without us.

Can a tag be mandatory?

Yes, any category can be made mandatory. No record then goes out without that axis, which avoids gaps in the analyses that depend on it.

What happens when an employee changes Business Unit?

The tag takes its new value from the date of the change, and the old one stays attached to its period. An analysis of the previous year therefore still counts that person in their former BU.

Where are tags used in AlibeeZ?

Wherever the analysis is sliced: margin by project and by business unit, the capacity plan, and configurable reports and dashboards.