Setup is the hub for platform-level configuration that scopes every enterprise app you install. Think of it as "things you set up once, that then apply everywhere." You'll spend more time here in the first week than in month two.
What lives in Setup today
- Companies - the legal entities that scope your transactional data (see the Multi-Company guide)
- Tenant defaults - the currency, timezone, and taxonomy every app inherits when it doesn't override them
- Master lookups - reference lists like industries, tax codes, and units of measure that show up in every app's dropdowns
Who has access
Setup is scoped to Org Admins by default. Individual sections can be delegated to specialist roles - your Finance lead might own the fiscal-period configuration while your HR lead owns the country-and-currency defaults. The RBAC matrix controls the split.
Why it's separate from any single app
The legal entity you sell from is the same one you buy for, employ people through, and file taxes under. It's not a Finance concept or an HR concept - it scopes every module. Setup being a top-level hub makes that scoping explicit and stops teams from hunting for the right screen inside whichever app they happened to open.