This article explains how childcare businesses can decide whether Deputy is the right fit, plan their set-up, trial key workflows, and prepare for rollout across rooms, educators, qualifications, payroll, and operations.

Before you read

• Target audience: This article is for users with System Administrator access.
• Plan restrictions: To check whether your plan includes this feature, see our plan guide.

This article covers:

• Who this guide is for
• What Deputy can help childcare businesses manage
• Choosing a starting model
• Structuring Locations, Areas, access, and integrations
• Reviewing Location settings before rollout
• Setting access and approval responsibilities
• Preparing payroll, compliance, and reporting workflows
• Running day-to-day childcare workflows
• Quick add-on and plan check
• Trial and rollout checklist
• Common mistakes to avoid

Who this guide is for

This guide is for childcare centres, early learning centres, daycare centres, preschools, kindergartens, OSHC providers, vacation care providers, and multi-room education and care services.

It is especially useful for businesses that manage room coverage, educator qualifications, responsible person coverage, break coverage, float educators, split shifts, casual educators, kiosk clock-in, centre-level approvals, or multi-centre operations.

What Deputy can help childcare businesses manage

Childcare businesses often need to manage room-based coverage, qualifications, breaks, responsible person requirements, and payroll-ready attendance records. Educators need clear rosters, centre directors need room visibility, payroll teams need approved timesheets, and managers need labour visibility without replacing specialist childcare systems.

Deputy can help childcare businesses manage room-based rosters, kiosk clock-in, educator scheduling, qualification visibility, break coverage, responsible person coverage, timesheet approvals, payroll preparation, staff communication, task workflows, and labour reporting by centre, room, or role.

Many childcare businesses adopt Deputy because it can reduce roster admin, improve attendance visibility, and simplify day-to-day coordination across educators, room leaders, centre directors, payroll, and operations.

• Educators can see which room or role they are rostered to.
• Centre directors can review room, float, and responsible person coverage.
• Kiosk clock-in can capture accurate attendance for fixed-centre teams.
• Payroll teams can work from approved timesheets with the right role or allowance detail.
• Training Tags can help make qualifications visible before shifts are published.
• Task workflows can help support centre routines and handovers.
• Communication workflows can help managers share room coverage updates, urgent cover needs, staff announcements, and policy reminders.

Deputy is usually used alongside child records, enrolments, parent communication, compliance reporting, incident records, curriculum documentation, and ratio calculation systems. Keep those workflows in your specialist childcare systems if they already sit outside Deputy.

Many childcare businesses start with scheduling, attendance, and timesheet approvals first, then expand into reporting, communication, onboarding, analytics, or broader workforce workflows over time.

What good looks like

• Educators know which room or role they are rostered to.
• Centre directors can see room, float, and responsible person coverage.
• Qualifications are visible before shifts are published.
• Kiosk clock-in captures attendance.
• Payroll teams receive approved timesheets with the correct role or allowance detail.
• Break coverage is planned without losing room visibility.
• Room leaders can manage daily exceptions without necessarily seeing wage costs.

Choose your starting model

Start by choosing the model that best matches how your childcare business works today. You can add more reporting detail later once your team is using Deputy consistently.

Use these models as a starting point only. Your final set-up should reflect your payroll rules, reporting needs, integrations, approval process, and how your team manages rooms, educators, breaks, and centre operations.

Structure Locations, Areas, and integrations

In Deputy, most childcare businesses use Locations to represent centres, campuses, OSHC sites, or services.

Areas are usually used to represent rooms, roles, or coverage groups. For childcare businesses, this might include nursery, toddlers, preschool, kindy, float, kitchen, admin, responsible person, or OSHC care types.

Some integrations can create or update team members, payroll data, finance data, or reporting information in Deputy. Review your integration requirements before you finalise your structure so your Deputy set-up matches your payroll, accounting, finance, or operational workflows.

Option 1 — Centre as Location, rooms as Areas

This structure works well for most childcare centres.

It keeps whole-centre visibility clean while allowing centre directors to review room, float, break, and responsible person coverage in one roster.

Option 2 — Room groups as Locations

This structure works well for very large centres where approvals or manager responsibilities are separated by room group.

Use this model only when separate approval boundaries, wage visibility controls, or manager responsibilities genuinely matter.

Option 3 — OSHC as a Location

This structure works well for before school care, after school care, and vacation care providers.

OSHC teams often use different shift patterns from centre-based care, so a dedicated Location can make split shifts and program reporting easier to review.

Option 4 — Multi-centre model

This structure works well for providers with several centres.

Use this model when centre-level reporting, centre director approvals, and multi-centre visibility are important.

Review Location settings before rollout

Location settings control many of the defaults that affect scheduling, clocking in, timesheets, approvals, and reporting. Review these settings before go-live so each centre, room group, OSHC site, or service works the way your team expects.

This section is not a full set-up guide. Use it as a quick reminder of the settings to review, then refer to the detailed Location, Area, scheduling, and timesheet settings articles for step-by-step guidance.

General Location settings to review: centre name, address, operating days and hours, Location code, notes, and attachments.

For childcare businesses:

• Clear Location names can help managers distinguish between centres, OSHC programs, services, or room groups.
• For OSHC or multi-site providers, confirm that each centre or service has clear naming and operating hours.
• Centre notes can help store operational reminders, site information, or manager contact details.

Area settings to review: room names, role names, Area export codes, preferred educators, and Training Tags.

For childcare businesses:

• Areas are where you can set up nursery, toddlers, preschool, kindy, float, kitchen, admin, responsible person, or OSHC coverage.
• Area export codes can support payroll, accounting, finance, or labour reporting workflows.
• Training Tags are especially important for qualifications and responsible person coverage.

Scheduling settings to review: default shifts, breaks, shift swaps, shift offers, open shifts, notifications, and shift locking.

For childcare businesses:

• Open shifts should be controlled because qualifications, room suitability, and ratios matter.
• Break coverage should be reviewed carefully so room visibility remains clear.
• Shift locking can help reduce retrospective schedule changes after work has already happened.

Timesheet settings to review: kiosk clock-in, photo capture, employee timesheet edits, break settings, rounding, timesheet auto-approval, and unscheduled shifts.

For childcare businesses:

• Most childcare businesses should use kiosk or tablet clock-in with photo capture.
• Mobile GPS is usually unnecessary because staff typically work from a fixed centre.
• Timesheet auto-approval should be avoided until break coverage, room changes, and exceptions are reviewed consistently.

Set access and approval responsibilities

Access decisions should be made during set-up. The right access model helps managers control scheduling, timesheet approvals, payroll visibility, labour cost access, room visibility, and centre reporting.

Most childcare businesses allow educators and casual educators to clock in, clock out, and submit leave or availability. Room leaders usually review daily attendance and room exceptions. Centre directors usually manage rosters, approvals, and labour visibility. Payroll and admin teams usually review payroll outputs and final exceptions.

Supervisor or Location Manager?

Most childcare businesses use Supervisor access for room leaders who approve time but should not see wage costs.

Use Location Manager access for centre directors who manage rosters, labour visibility, and approvals.

Prepare payroll, compliance, and reporting workflows

Payroll systems and payroll workflows

Childcare businesses may need to manage Children’s Services Award or relevant award rules, room leader allowances, higher duties, responsible person duties, split shifts for OSHC, casual loading, public holidays, breaks, overtime, and RDOs where applicable.

Many childcare businesses want payroll workflows that sit close to scheduling, attendance, and approved timesheets. Deputy Payroll (AU) and Deputy Payroll (US) can help support that approach where available.

Businesses with established payroll, accounting, finance, childcare management, enrolment, or compliance systems may still choose to connect Deputy to a third-party payroll integration. This usually works best when another system already owns child records, enrolments, ratio calculations, or compliance reporting.

Before rollout, decide which system should own:

• Employee records
• Payroll calculations
• Allowance and higher duties handling
• Responsible person workflows
• Export codes and centre, room, or role structures
• Centre, room, qualification, or labour reporting

Compare payroll approaches

Start by reviewing whether Deputy Payroll is available and suitable for your region and business needs. If your business already has a payroll, accounting, finance, childcare management, or compliance system that needs to stay in place, review how Deputy should connect to that system.

Childcare businesses commonly test payroll exports and approval workflows before rollout so room leaders, centre directors, payroll teams, and operations managers can confirm that attendance, room changes, allowances, OSHC shifts, and approval workflows behave as expected.

Payroll testing

Test payroll before your first live pay run using real childcare examples so payroll, centre directors, and operations teams can confirm the outputs match your business workflows.

• Educator shift
• Room leader shift
• Responsible person shift
• Split OSHC shift
• Casual educator
• Missed break
• Overtime
• Public holiday
• Allowance or higher duties
• Educator moving between rooms
• Educator working across centres

Qualifications, compliance, and Training Tags

Training Tags help managers identify whether educators have the right qualification or suitability before publishing rosters. They can support decision-making, but they do not replace formal compliance review.

Important childcare Training Tags include Cert III, Diploma Qualified, Early Childhood Teacher, First Aid, CPR, Anaphylaxis, Asthma, Working With Children Check, Food Safety, Responsible Person, Educational Leader, and Room Leader.

If your business needs to collect onboarding documents, store employee records, manage policy acknowledgements, Working With Children checks, right-to-work checks, or track licence and certification expiry dates, Deputy HR can help support those workflows. Deputy HR requires an add-on.

Room, centre, and workforce reporting

If labour reporting by centre, room, role, qualification, or work type matters, use Areas, Area export codes, consistent naming conventions, notes, or integrations. This keeps reporting cleaner and helps avoid duplicating your childcare management systems.

Childcare businesses commonly review reporting by:

• Centre
• Room
• Role
• Float coverage
• Responsible person coverage
• Rostered versus actual hours
• Attendance
• Overtime
• Room-level labour

Run day-to-day childcare workflows

Clocking in and attendance

Most childcare businesses should use kiosk or tablet clock-in with photo capture.

Mobile GPS is usually unnecessary because staff typically work from a fixed centre.

Scheduling and shift changes

Use Areas to manage:

• Room coverage
• Float staff
• Break cover
• Responsible person coverage
• Kitchen and admin support
• OSHC coverage

Keep scheduling workflows simple enough for centre directors and room leaders to update quickly when coverage changes.

Qualification visibility

Training Tags can help managers identify whether educators have the right qualification or suitability before publishing rosters.

Training Tags should support decision-making, but they do not replace formal compliance review.

Break coverage

Breaks should be planned so room coverage remains visible.

If float educators cover breaks, make sure the Float Area is clear and used consistently.

Task management

Task management can help childcare businesses standardise centre routines, room handovers, opening and closing tasks, and supervisor review tasks so important work is not missed.

Childcare businesses commonly use Task management for opening checks, room checks, kitchen checks, cleaning routines, handovers, policy acknowledgements, and end-of-day review tasks.

Communication

News Feed and Messaging can help with roster changes, room coverage updates, urgent cover, centre announcements, policy reminders, and staff updates.

Messaging Plus can support childcare businesses that need larger groups, more message history, team-based conversations, or role-based communication. This can be useful when managers need groups for centres, rooms, room leaders, OSHC teams, or multi-centre teams.

Labour visibility and analytics

Childcare businesses commonly review attendance, labour trends, roster performance, staffing patterns, room-level labour, centre comparisons, and rostered versus actual hours.

Analytics can help businesses review workforce activity inside Deputy. Analytics Plus can support deeper reporting needs, including custom reports, scheduled emailed reports, and labour reports for managers or owners who need visibility without logging in every day.

Quick add-on and plan check

Some childcare businesses need more than scheduling, attendance, and payroll preparation. Use this section as a quick guide to what may be useful as your rollout becomes more complex.

To check what is included in each plan or add-on, see our pricing plans.

Trial and rollout checklist

You do not have to build your full childcare business in Deputy during a trial or first rollout. A focused rollout can help you test one real centre, room structure, attendance workflow, payroll scenario, and approval process before expanding the set-up.

The timeline is up to your business. Some businesses move quickly, and others need more time to validate payroll, train room leaders, review Training Tags, and check integrations. Use these stages as a guide, not a fixed timeline.

Avoid common childcare set-up mistakes

Final recommendation

If you are unsure where to start, begin with the structure your centre directors already use to plan room coverage.

For most childcare businesses, use Locations for childcare centres and Areas for nursery, toddlers, preschool, float, kitchen, admin, responsible person, or OSHC coverage.

Use kiosk or tablet clock-in with photo capture, use Employee access for educators and casual educators, Supervisor access for room leaders, and Location Manager access for centre directors.

Use Training Tags for qualifications, Working With Children checks, First Aid, CPR, Anaphylaxis, Asthma, responsible person coverage, and room suitability.

Choose one starting model, build one pilot Location, test clock-in, review Location settings, review approval workflows, test payroll, and decide whether add-ons are needed before expanding your set-up.

Review attendance workflows, payroll testing, reporting requirements, integrations, add-ons, Training Tags, break coverage, and room leader adoption before rolling Deputy out across the business.

The goal is to maintain room coverage and qualification visibility without overcomplicating set-up.

Need help? Use the help menu in your Deputy account to access support, online training, and guidance.