Deputy

Deputy is a workforce management platform built around shift work: employee scheduling, time and attendance, leave management, team communication, and connections into payroll, with an AI layer (Deputy AI) bundled into every plan. The pitch on its homepage sums it up: from first hire to final pay, make the hard parts of shift work simple.

The scheduling core is deep. Managers can build schedules manually or use Auto-Scheduling and demand forecasting (Core plan and up) to match staffing to expected demand, while micro-scheduling and labor budgets keep wage costs visible as the roster is built. Employees handle availability, leave and shift swaps from the mobile app, and time clocking supports biometric verification on higher tiers. Labor law compliance features run through the plans, which matters for businesses juggling break rules and overtime thresholds.

Deputy AI is included in every plan, positioned to build schedules faster, answer workforce questions and automate routine tasks. The platform also leans on integrations rather than trying to be everything: payroll and HR system connections are built into even the Lite plan, a public API is documented at developer.deputy.com, and add-ons extend analytics and messaging on the Pro tier.

Pricing is published and per-user: Lite at $5 per user per month covers basic scheduling, timesheets, time clocking and compliance basics; Core at $6.50 per user per month (the most popular tier) adds advanced scheduling, auto-approval, forecasting and labor optimization; Pro at $9 per user per month adds SSO, a sandbox environment, custom access levels, a dedicated customer success manager and 24/7 live chat. Prices are USD excluding taxes, with a 10% saving for annual billing, and the free trial runs up to 31 days with no credit card required.

Where it falls short: per-user pricing means costs climb in step with headcount, which large hourly workforces should model before committing. The Lite plan is genuinely basic – most of the automation that makes Deputy compelling starts at Core. And businesses that want payroll processed inside the same product should check add-on availability for their region rather than assuming it is bundled.

Overall, Deputy is one of the strongest options in employee scheduling for multi-location, hourly teams: it says more than 320,000 workplaces use it internationally, the feature depth from scheduling through compliance to payroll connection is hard to match at this price, and the 31-day trial is long enough to run a real roster through it.