Deputy Reviews

Pros

The most helpful feature for us is the "Training" which allows us to know which of our Employees are qualified to undertake different tasks. It is also extremely handy when it comes to paying our wages - no more time sheets !! Once the Employees times have been approved which we try to do on a daily basis, it is just a matter of pushing the button & our payroll in Xero is ready to go. Also the "Scheduling" is wonderful & extremely easy to use.

Cons

The Android app doesn't provide as many features as the IPhone app.

Pros

Easy to learn. As the person in charge I not only had to learn this product, but I had to train everyone else on this product. And not just train them, but sell them on why it was better than what we were using. Luckily, Deputy is so complete, it was easy. They haven't forgotten a single step.

Cons

I wish it synced with my Google calendar. Only thing missing.

Pros

It is easy to schedule, roster available on smart phone and has a time clock system so employee work hours can be tracked and monitored.

Cons

If a software is going to suit many businesses (as advertised) the company needs to be open to discussions with all types of businesses so that the software is adaptable. This does not happen.

The customer support is atrocious. You get a robot answering then a online chat forum. It is time consuming to interact with this forum - they waste time repeating your questions, responses are very condescending, they have no power to make any changes.
For example, I have for the last month requested that someone from the country I live in and is involved with the software design(and therefore have the ability to make changes) contact me (?telephone) I have finally been told that even if they call they will not be from within the country I live in - and therefore are just one level higher in the overseas call centre.
One frustrating example - the time clock system is an important part of any rostering system - and they have just issued a new feature where staff can clock in and out from home, without any consultation or ability to turn off this feature. While this may suit some businesses it does not suit mine and I am sure I am not alone. Unfortunately this leaves the door open for staff to be fraudulent and defeats the purpose of a clock on/clock off system.

Pros

The simplicity of Deputy's time-tracking, vacation request, and attendance functions is its greatest strength in my book. Having the app readily accessible on my phone is a huge plus.

Cons

Disappointingly, the clock-in/out process is sometimes delayed, causing me to lose a few seconds of my time, or incorrectly register that I arrived or left a minute late. Which is a major hassle.

Pros

User friendliness of the interface is high. It gives just enough information to make decisions, without overwhelming the reader with facts that are unrelated to the topic at hand.

Cons

The inflexibility of Deputy's design architecture means that users cannot alter the interface's appearance. It would be convenient if each user could customize their own color scheme and background image.

Pros

Constantly updated, great user interface with lots of features.

Cons

Can be slow to load on older machines /with a slow internet connection

Alternatives Considered

Opsyte and Alvaria Workforce

Reasons for Choosing Deputy

The workforce was too basic for our needs.

Switched From

CEIPAL Workforce

Reasons for Switching to Deputy

Had the easiest-to-use interface and was easily accessible on phones /tablets /computers etc. Ran into limitation issues with other hardware.

Pros

Ease of communication with employees, flexibility of the program, schedule execution and viewing, timeclock ease of use.

Cons

Some limitations of features. We like the employee review at the end of each day, but you cannot view or sort who left the review, so there is some value lacking there. We also are lacking an HR management option with our program.

Pros

The ease of use for both myself and my staff.

Cons

Sometimes hard to figure out different pay areas. No way to track staff during on-call situations, so we had to figure out a work around

Alternatives Considered

Acuity Scheduling and Square Payroll

Reasons for Switching to Deputy

Better ease of use and functionality for what we needed.

Pros

I liked I could easily personalise the calendar and let it appear as I wanted and I could easily edit it by my phone

Cons

That it doesn't remember employee's hours, so we always need to correct the hours from the ones we have registered

Pros

I like that its easy to understand, its better than other tracking sites

Cons

theres 1 thing i can do on my phone but i can't do on my pc, that is selecting the specific days and times i want to copy for the following week

Pros

We love the fact that it gives both the manager and the staff the flexibility to control their shifts and it gives the employees a sense of ownership - they are almost responsible for their own time management.

Not to mention all the flexibility it gives the management of building shift templates, managing leave and the especially the time sheets (now that paid breaks are a feature) it makes payroll preperation a breeze. (We haven't yet used the Xero payroll integration and the Xero payroll has not yet been rolled out in our country, but we are looking forward to it).

As a busy little cafe we have also used the task management feature to cover off all of our daily / weekly food safety requirements which makes it much easier for everyone to input their duties and the simple fact is - if its easier, it gets done.

Before moving to Deputy we tried a few other products but this one seemed to suit us best and one of the main reasons we moved is because we felt it offered the best value for money especially as our staff numbers change all the time.

We have recently expanded our operation to second location and without Deputy the shift management could have been hectic. Having this system already in place just meant that we had one less thing to worry about.

Deputy has become an integral part of our daily routine.

Cons

As mentioned earlier we are a busy little cafe so we spend most of our time on the shop floor, whilst Deputy has a fantastic mobile options and visibility, as managers it would be great if had more flexibility to "approve" more employees requests on the go like shift swaps and leave applications.

Also I found that the employees with Android phones seem to have a few bugs still hiding away in their app and they also don't yet have access to the task manager on their phones.

However, these are fairly small issues in the great scheme of things and based on the development rate and technical support I have received to date I have no doubt that these are already in the development pipeline. We look forward to the updates as they roll out.

Pros

Relatively easy to get staff setup. Ipad, mobile and desktop integrations are good.

Cons

When looking at timesheets on screen, Deputy does not allow employees to be sorted any other way than by FIRST NAME! Seriously, such a basic function is has been lacking for our entire time with Deputy (~5 years). I keep thinking this has to be on their radar and will get added, but nope! Still organizing my staff like their a class of 2nd graders, lol! Also, many promised integrations (like Square and Xero) have been highly problematic for me. I've just given up. I export raw data from Deputy into spreadsheets and handle it on my own from there. Failed promises. Abismal customer service outsourced to non-English speaking countries.

Pros

I love the daily photos your staff have to take. I love that it flows so well with Gusto. I truly enjoy how easy it is to clock in and out on a daily basis. It has a very friendly user format. I love how easy it is to edit the time when I screw up and forget to clock back in after my break. I like how I can see who is working on what days. It helps with planning ahead with the schedule.

Cons

I truly get frustrated when it automatically adds your 30 min break if you did not take one. Sometimes it can be hard to get the picture taken to clock in and out. I have had to restart the device a few times, and when you are done for the day and need to get going, that can be very frustrating. It would be a nice feature to see when other staff are asking for time off, so I do not bother asking for that time off as well if I do not need to take that same time off.

Pros

I liked that my coworker who was blind could easily navigate the app using her iphone and text-to-speech. I also like that I can look back at dates and see I did that day, as well as my hours total count for the week. The hours total count is a change that I requested to the app and the updated showed in a reasonable amount of time. The design is easy to use with the iphone app, and I like that the categories can be designed to fit your business tasks for streamlined documentation of how much time is spent doing a certain task. Also, you can put notes to detail what you were doing during that time period which is crucial for staff that are changing tasks all day.

Cons

Sometimes the app will glitch when putting in an end time and after changing the end time from the current time it will default several times back to the current time instead of the end time you want.

Pros

The ease of scheduling and communicating with employees

Cons

Would like to be able to sort by last name, if need to print time cards can't sort by last name either.

Pros

Ease of use and excellent scheduling and timeclock function

Cons

Extra cost for onboarding employees on top of license fee

Alternatives Considered

Planday

Reasons for Switching to Deputy

Ease of use

Pros

Deputy has been a saving grace when it comes to writing schedules. I love the ease of saving locations and being able to house all of my employees' unavailability information in on place. What used to be a beast and take me anywhere from 3-5 hours to complete now can take me 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on staffing changes. Customer service is excellent, especially when setting up your account and being able to decide if Deputy is the best product for your company's use.

Cons

I wish the interface for System Administrators on the mobile application was more user friendly. With my work being partially field based, it would be super helpful to be able to manipulate scheduled on the go instead of needing to use a computer to solidify schedule changes. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this product.

Pros

Inexpensive, feature rich, and easy for me to export timesheets to our payroll provider, Gusto. It was easy to add our existing employees when we made the switch. Employees have no complaints using it for time off requests, unavailability or integrating with their calendar so they know when they're scheduled.

Cons

The manager side of the mobile app is lacking full access to make it easy to approve time off requests. Depending how I pull up the request from my phone sometimes it also shows the date as Christmas Eve from years in the past (like 2015). Hasn't been a big enough pain for me personally to be mad enough to contact them, though I should so they can tell me I'm dumb and using it wrong or fix it.

Pros

Easy to search for shift by employee, Easy to make templates and load templates.

Cons

Cannot filter locations, can be slow to load, Supervisor notifications go to the wrong person.

Pros

Staff scheduling is by far the hardest job in the company but deputy makes it a lot easier. The ability to copy weekly shifts, add and remove staff easily is great. Staff find it very easy to use, even those that aren't tech savvy.

Cons

There is no ability to set staff as sick from your mobile device. This is really frustrating when you are on-call and out and about.

Pros

Reasonably price. It seemed easy to use.

Cons

The product messed up our payroll month after month. Need I say more?

Alternatives Considered

Homebase

Switched From

Homebase

Pros

Easy to use for a normal business operation. Very straightforward and clear.

Cons

The location notification doesnt work very well - when I sign in Deputy at the front door of the restaurant, it says I'm 500m away. Or when I have more than 10 events a week at various locations, the locations cannot be set independently. Also, it gets very messy to allocate 30 shifts to 10 different people at 5 locations.

Pros

As a business, we decided to implement Deputy software because we were finding it difficult to keep a track of time and attendance of employees. This problem started to be faced as we started growing and hence more employees started to be employed. Deputy has surely met our expectations with its extensive range of features we are now able to keep a proper track of all employees attendance as well as distributing tasks to them.

Cons

Apart from the fact that it may take a few time to get comfortable to using the software, we did not face any issues.

Pros

The price is excellent and you receive a quality, well-rounded software that allows you to effectively manage payroll and attendance sheets among employees. This took a lot of stress off my back as for a while I was doing everything manually, by hand, and then having to input all of this into a spreadsheet on my computer. Deputy helped make this process 1000x easier, and the price point didn't put even the slightest dent into our business's budget. Within Deputy, you can also use it as a platform to communicate with your employees as well, which is a perk if you need a software that allows you to do such as well.

Cons

I don't have any cons. Everything runs as it should!

Pros

I like that the Deputy UI is really easy to navigate. There is a lot of information held in Deputy and it could easily be set up non-user friendly, but I find that I have no trouble navigating all of the different hierarchies of information to get to where I need to go. Our staff hasn't had any trouble signing up or jumping in with their schedules. I also really enjoy that it reminds people (and me) when they forget to clock in!

Cons

While I like that I get reminders that people forget to clock in, I often receive them after they've already clocked in, I wish I got a second notice that they in fact did clock in after receiving their notification. This may seem petty, but it can save some leg work (literally).