Deputy
Shift scheduling and workforce management with compliance
What it does
Deputy is shift scheduling and workforce management built for hourly, shift-based businesses, restaurants, retail, healthcare, hospitality, handling auto-scheduling, shift swaps, timesheets, break-compliance rules, and demand-based staffing. The compliance angle matters here, it's built to help businesses in regulated industries (mandatory break laws, overtime rules) stay on the right side of labor law, not just fill a calendar.
Free tier
No
Starts at
$5/mo
Setup
easy
Key features
Integrates with
ADP, Gusto, QuickBooks, Square, Zapier
Who this fits
- Restaurants, retail, healthcare, and hospitality businesses scheduling hourly staff across shifts
- Multi-location operations needing centralized scheduling with local compliance rules baked in
- Businesses wanting shift-swap self-service to cut down on manager back-and-forth over coverage
Who it does NOT fit
- Salaried, non-shift-based teams, this tool solves a problem (shift coverage, break compliance) that doesn't exist for a standard office team
- Businesses that can't tolerate mobile app instability, users report clock-in bugs, random logouts on mobile, and being incorrectly marked absent despite having worked the shift (Source: user reviews via WebSearch summary, 2026)
- Anyone needing fast support when something breaks, support responsiveness is a consistent, sharply negative complaint theme (Source: user reviews via WebSearch summary, 2026)
Pricing
Real gotchas
- Mobile app reliability is a genuine, repeated concern, reports include clocking in failing or randomly logging users out, and employees being incorrectly marked absent despite working the shift, a real payroll-accuracy risk if hours feed directly into pay (Source: user reviews via WebSearch summary, 2026)
- Schedule display bugs are reported, including shift times rendering incorrectly on the employee-facing view (a 1 AM-1 PM shift showing as 4 AM-4 PM in one documented case), verify displayed schedules match intended shifts, especially during rollout (Source: user reviews via WebSearch summary, 2026)
- Leave management setup is reported as genuinely difficult to configure correctly, with leave balances sometimes mismatched, budget extra setup time here specifically
- Customer support quality is described by some reviewers as among the worst they've encountered, factor slow support response into any rollout timeline, especially for time-sensitive scheduling issues
Integrations that matter
Otto’s take on this tool
Recommend Deputy for shift-based, hourly-workforce businesses (restaurants, retail, healthcare, hospitality) needing scheduling plus break/overtime compliance. Flag the mobile app reliability and support responsiveness concerns explicitly, especially since clock-in bugs directly touch payroll accuracy, recommend the client spot-check timesheet data against actual worked hours during the first few pay cycles. For salaried, non-shift teams, this tool has no real application.
Affiliate disclosure: if you sign up through the link above, Ottomately may earn a referral commission at no cost to you. We only feature tools we have actually used or vetted through our recommendation engine.Partnership: Partner program via Direct.
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