This article explains how cleaning businesses can decide whether Deputy is the right fit, plan their set-up, trial key workflows, and prepare for rollout across client sites, cleaners, recurring schedules, 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 cleaning businesses manage
• Choosing a starting model
• Structuring Locations, Areas, access, and integrations
• Reviewing Location settings before rollout
• Setting access and approval responsibilities
• Preparing payroll, client reporting, and compliance workflows
• Running day-to-day cleaning workflows
• Quick add-on and plan check
• Trial and rollout checklist
• Common mistakes to avoid

Who this guide is for

This guide is for commercial cleaning businesses, domestic cleaning teams, facilities cleaning, office cleaning, school cleaning, aged-care cleaning contractors, industrial cleaning, and mobile cleaning teams.

It is especially useful for businesses that manage recurring shifts, many client sites, mobile cleaners, GPS attendance, site access notes, last-minute cover, travel between sites, client-level reporting, police checks, or site inductions.

What Deputy can help cleaning businesses manage

Cleaning businesses often need to manage recurring schedules, mobile teams, client sites, site access details, and payroll-ready attendance records. Cleaners need clear rosters, supervisors need attendance visibility, payroll teams need approved timesheets, and managers need labour visibility without duplicating contract or facilities management systems.

Deputy can help cleaning businesses manage recurring rosters, mobile clock-in, GPS attendance, timesheet approvals, client or site Areas, supervisor approvals, payroll preparation, site instructions, communication with mobile teams, task workflows, and labour visibility by client, site, or region.

Many cleaning businesses adopt Deputy because it can reduce weekly scheduling admin, improve mobile workforce visibility, and simplify day-to-day coordination across cleaners, site leads, supervisors, clients, payroll, and operations.

• Cleaners can clock in and out using mobile or fixed-site workflows.
• Managers can review GPS, missed clock-ins, and exceptions before payroll cut-off.
• Payroll teams can work from cleaner approved timesheets.
• Managers can review labour activity by client, site, region, or work type.
• Recurring rosters can reduce weekly scheduling admin.
• Task workflows can help support cleaning checklists and site routines.
• Communication workflows can help managers share site access changes, urgent cover requests, client updates, and last-minute replacements.

Deputy is usually used alongside contract management, client billing, cleaning quality audits, asset management, and detailed facilities management systems. Keep those workflows in your specialist systems if they already sit outside Deputy.

Many cleaning 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

• Cleaners know which site or client they are rostered to.
• Managers can review GPS, missed clock-ins, and exceptions.
• Payroll teams receive approved timesheets with the right site, Area, or travel detail.
• Recurring schedules reduce weekly admin.
• Site access instructions are available before shifts.
• Client-site reporting is captured without creating unnecessary complexity.
• Site leads can approve time without necessarily seeing wage costs.

Choose your starting model

Start by choosing the model that best matches how your cleaning 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 clients, sites, recurring schedules, and mobile work.

Structure Locations, Areas, and integrations

In Deputy, a Location does not always need to represent an office. Many cleaning businesses use Locations to represent regions, major clients, buildings, depots, facilities, or fixed sites.

Areas are usually used to represent the client site, zone, floor, task, contract, shift type, or reporting detail needed. For cleaning businesses, this might include Client A, bathrooms, common areas, night cleaning, office cleaning, school cleaning, travel, or supervisor work.

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

Option 1 — Region as a Location

This structure works well for cleaning businesses with many clients and mobile cleaners.

Commercial, domestic, and mobile cleaning teams commonly use this model because it keeps the set-up scalable while still allowing client-site reporting through Areas.

Option 2 — Major client as a Location

This structure works well for large contracts where client-level reporting, approvals, settings, or permissions matter.

Cleaning businesses often use this model for major office towers, schools, hospitals, aged-care facilities, industrial facilities, or long-term contracts.

Option 3 — Building or site as a Location

This structure works well for fixed cleaning teams working from one building, facility, or site.

Schools, hospitals, shopping centres, office buildings, aged-care facilities, and industrial sites commonly use this model when the team works from a fixed location.

Option 4 — Depot as a Location, work types as Areas

This structure works well for smaller cleaning teams that dispatch from one office or depot.

It keeps the structure simple when job or client detail is handled through notes, integrations, or another system.

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 region, client, site, building, or depot 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: region, client, or site name, address and map pin, operating days and hours, Location code, notes, and attachments.

For cleaning businesses:

• Clear Location names can help managers distinguish between regions, major clients, buildings, depots, or facilities.
• Accurate addresses and map pins matter where mobile clock-in, GPS, or geofencing are used.
• Use notes for access instructions, alarms, parking, key instructions, lock-up procedures, supervisor details, and site-specific requirements.

Area settings to review: client or site names, Area export codes, Area addresses where useful, preferred staff, and Training Tags.

For cleaning businesses:

• Areas are where you can set up client sites, building zones, floors, task types, contracts, night cleaning, or travel.
• Area export codes can support payroll, accounting, client reporting, or contract reporting workflows.
• Training Tags can help manage police checks, Working with Children checks, site inductions, chemical handling, food safety, and key holder roles.

Scheduling settings to review: recurring shifts, default break settings, shift offers, open shifts, notifications, and shift locking.

For cleaning businesses:

• Recurring rosters are usually important for cleaning businesses.
• Open shifts can help with last-minute cover, but site requirements and access permissions should still be controlled.
• Shift locking can help reduce retrospective schedule changes after work has already happened.

Timesheet settings to review: mobile clock-in, GPS capture, geofencing, kiosk clock-in for fixed facilities, employee timesheet edits, break settings, rounding, timesheet auto-approval, and custom questions where useful.

For cleaning businesses:

• This is where you can control important attendance and payroll behaviours.
• Mobile clock-in with GPS capture is usually more practical for mobile cleaners.
• Kiosk or tablet clock-in may work well where cleaners start from a fixed building or facility.
• Hard geofencing should be used carefully in large buildings, shared sites, or locations with poor GPS.

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, client visibility, and site reporting.

Most cleaning businesses allow cleaners to clock in, clock out, and submit leave requests. Site leads usually review daily attendance and exceptions. Area supervisors and operations managers usually manage site coverage, approvals, and labour visibility. Payroll and admin teams usually review payroll outputs and final exceptions.

Supervisor or Location Manager?

Most cleaning businesses use Supervisor access for site leads who approve time but should not see wage costs.

Use Location Manager access for operations managers or area supervisors who need labour cost visibility, roster cost visibility, or broader reporting.

Prepare payroll, client reporting, and compliance workflows

Payroll systems and payroll workflows

Cleaning businesses may need to manage early morning rates, late night rates, weekend rates, public holidays, broken shifts, travel between sites, minimum engagement, allowances, and client or job costing.

Many cleaning 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, client reporting, contract management, billing, or facilities systems may still choose to connect Deputy to a third-party payroll integration. This usually works best when another system already owns contracts, billing, audits, client records, or facilities management workflows.

Before rollout, decide which system should own:

• Employee records
• Payroll calculations
• Broken shift handling
• Travel handling
• Export codes and client, site, or contract structures
• Client, site, contract, 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, contract management, billing, or facilities system that needs to stay in place, review how Deputy should connect to that system.

Cleaning businesses commonly test payroll exports and approval workflows before rollout so supervisors, payroll teams, and operations managers can confirm that attendance, travel, broken shift, client, site, and approval workflows behave as expected.

Payroll testing

Test payroll before your first live pay run using real cleaning examples so payroll, operations, and supervisors can confirm the outputs match your business workflows.

• Early morning clean
• Late night clean
• Weekend clean
• Public holiday
• Broken shift
• Travel between sites
• Missed clock-in correction
• Client or site export code
• Employee working across multiple sites in one day

Client, site, and workforce reporting

If labour reporting by client, site, contract, region, or work type matters, use Areas, Area export codes, consistent naming conventions, notes, or integrations. This keeps reporting cleaner and helps avoid duplicating your contract management or facilities systems.

Cleaning businesses commonly review reporting by:

• Client
• Site
• Region
• Contract
• Work type
• Travel
• Rostered versus actual hours
• Missed clock-ins
• Overtime

Compliance, checks, and Training Tags

Training Tags help prevent cleaners from being scheduled into Areas where they are not checked, trained, approved, or suitable to work. This is useful for police checks, Working with Children checks, site inductions, chemical handling, food safety, key holder roles, and specialist client requirements.

Common cleaning Training Tags include Police Check, Working with Children, Site Induction, Chemical Handling, White Card, Supervisor, Key Holder, and Food Safety where relevant.

If your business needs to collect onboarding documents, store employee records, manage policy acknowledgements, police 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.

Run day-to-day cleaning workflows

Clocking in and attendance

Use mobile clock-in with GPS capture for most mobile cleaners. This provides attendance visibility while still supporting cleaners moving between clients, sites, and regions.

Use hard geofencing only for fixed, reliable sites where the GPS location has been tested.

Use kiosk or tablet clock-in only where cleaners start from a fixed building or facility.

Scheduling and shift changes

Use recurring roster templates for:

• Daily cleans
• Weekly cleans
• Night cleans
• School term cleans
• Weekend contracts
• Major client contracts

Keep scheduling workflows simple enough for supervisors to update quickly when cleaners call in sick, clients change access times, or urgent cover is needed.

Site instructions

Decide where site instructions should live before rollout so cleaners can find the information they need before a shift starts.

Useful examples include:

• Alarm codes
• Entry points
• Key pickup
• Parking
• Lock-up instructions
• Cleaning priority notes
• Supervisor contact details

Task management

Task management can help cleaning businesses standardise site routines, cleaning checklists, and supervisor review tasks so important work is not missed.

Cleaning businesses commonly use Task management for cleaning checklists, opening and closing tasks, supervisor inspections, site handovers, compliance checks, lock-up reminders, and end-of-shift review tasks.

Communication

News Feed and Messaging can help managers share urgent cover requests, site access changes, client updates, shift changes, supervisor instructions, and last-minute replacements.

Messaging Plus can support cleaning businesses that need larger groups, more message history, team-based conversations, or role-based communication. This can be useful when managers need groups for sites, regions, clients, contracts, or mobile teams.

Labour visibility and analytics

Cleaning businesses commonly review contract labour, missed clock-ins, overtime, attendance trends, labour by client or region, 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 cleaning 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 cleaning business in Deputy during a trial or first rollout. A focused rollout can help you test one real region, client, site, recurring roster, 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 supervisors, document site instructions, and review integrations. Use these stages as a guide, not a fixed timeline.

Avoid common cleaning business set-up mistakes

Final recommendation

If you are unsure where to start, begin with the structure your supervisors already use to plan cleaners across regions, clients, sites, or contracts.

For most cleaning businesses, use Locations for regions or major clients, and use Areas for client sites, building zones, floors, task types, travel, or contracts.

Use mobile GPS for mobile cleaners, keep hard geofencing only for fixed and tested sites, and consider kiosk or tablet clock-in for fixed facilities where cleaners start from one building.

Use Employee access for cleaners, Supervisor access for site leads, and Location Manager access for operations managers who need labour visibility.

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, recurring rosters, site instructions, and supervisor adoption before rolling Deputy out across the business.

The goal is to manage many client sites without making the account hard to maintain.

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