Deputy: Employee Scheduling

What Deputy is for and who uses it

Deputy is built for two groups. Managers use it to build rosters, handle leave and keep track of hours. Employees use the same account to see their shifts, state their availability and clock in and out. The developer, Deputy.com, says more than 250,000 workplaces use it.

To start, you sign up for a free trial. The listing says there is no setup fee and that you can pick a monthly, annual or flexi plan for your business. Staff who join an existing team can use the app for free, by logging in.

If you run a shift-based business and mainly want a roster on your phone, this is the part of the app you will use most. The rest of the features hang off that schedule.

Building rosters and telling staff about them

The shift planner is where a schedule starts. The listing says you can build costed schedules in minutes from any device, so you see what each roster will cost as you fill it in. Once a schedule is published, it appears on each employee's own device.

Notifications go out by push, email or SMS, and each person gets their own shift details rather than a general notice. The app also sends a reminder to each employee on the morning of a shift, so you do not have to chase people for that.

Staff can see all their upcoming shifts in one place. They also get alerts on the days they are rostered to work.

Filling gaps: open shifts, swaps and leave

When a shift is empty, you can push an alert to the team and let them pick it up. This means you are not phoning round one person at a time. Shift swaps and shift changes can be approved from a mobile device in a few seconds.

Leave is handled from a central place. Staff can set their availability and time off, and see which requests have been approved. Because leave sits in the same system as the schedule, the listing says you will not roster someone who is unavailable.

The listing also says the app has fair workweek compliance built in, to help you stay within those rules when you publish shifts.

Clock-ins, timesheets and exporting to payroll

Staff clock in and out from the app. The time clock adds GPS validation to check the location of each clock-in. Alternatively, a tablet kiosk can be set up in place of phones, and it uses facial detection to identify the person clocking in. The listing describes the kiosk as optional.

Once hours are in, you finalise the timesheet and export it to payroll. The listing says this takes one click from a mobile device.

Team announcements, tasks and confirmations

Managers can send broadcast announcements to the whole team. They can also assign tasks to a named person or to everyone on a particular shift. The app asks for confirmation that each person has seen the message, so you can tell who has read it.

On the employee side, staff see company updates in the app, work through the tasks assigned to them and message their team from the same place.

Connecting to payroll, POS and other business software

Deputy connects to other systems. The listing names ADP, Square, QuickBooks, Xero, Gusto, NetSuite, Revel and LightSpeed, and says it syncs with more than 300 tools in total. The aim is to keep your schedule, sales and payroll data in step.

The POS and payroll links are used for staffing decisions. The listing says the app takes your POS and payroll information into account when it helps you schedule. It also pulls in real-time weather data, so you can see whether you need extra shifts on a given day.

The listing also mentions demand forecasting and performance management among the areas the app covers. It does not say more about those, so there is nothing further to add here.