# Delete department

`DELETE /api/configuration/departments/{id}`

- **Products:** Operator (`FOH`)
- **Features:** Front of House Generic Access (`FOHGENERIC`)

HTML version: [Delete department](https://support.gladstonesoftware.cloud/reference/configuration/delete-department)

## Overview

Removes a department — the financial grouping that products and activities are booked against, and which links them to a cost centre.

**This is a hard delete with no dependency check of its own.** The department is looked up and removed; there is no soft-delete flag, no archive and no "in use" test before the delete is attempted. Nothing is returned that you could use to reverse it, so re-creating the department means creating a new one with the same identifier.

**A department that is still referenced fails as a `500`, not a `409`.** The only thing preventing the delete is that other records — products among them — still carry the department id, and that failure is reported as a generic `500` with an empty body. Nothing is deleted when this happens, but the status code will not tell you that a dependency was the reason. Check what still points at the department before you call, because the endpoint will not tell you.

A repeat call is not a no-op: it answers `404`. On a retry that is confirmation the first attempt succeeded.

On success, a subsequent read reflects the deletion straight away.

## Endpoint

`DELETE {base_url}/api/configuration/departments/{id}`

`{base_url}` is the environment URL issued to your integration. See [Authenticating with Gladstone APIs](../../guides/authenticating-with-gladstone-apis.md).

## Path parameters

| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `id` | string | Yes | The department code, as returned by the retrieve-departments endpoints — a string of up to 15 characters, not a number. Departments the platform generated carry a `DEPT` prefix; ones created with an explicit identifier keep whatever you gave them. The lookup is an exact match with no trimming, so a stray space or the wrong case returns `404`. |

## Sample request

```bash title="cURL"
curl -X DELETE '{base_url}/api/configuration/departments/{id}' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer {accessToken}' \
  -H 'X-Use-SSO: true'
```

## Errors

| Status | Meaning | When |
|--------|---------|------|
| `404` | Not found | No department has that identifier — it never existed, the case or spacing does not match, or a previous call already deleted it. The body is empty. |
| `500` | Internal server error | The delete failed. In practice the usual cause is that something still references the department, which blocks the removal; the failure is reported without detail. Nothing is deleted. The body is empty. |