This guide explains how to set up Deputy for a construction business. Deputy brings scheduling, attendance, payroll, communication, and reporting together in one place. It covers how to structure Locations and Areas, manage team access, prepare payroll workflows, review scheduling and attendance settings, and plan your rollout.

Before you read

• Target audience: This article is for users with System Administrator access.
• Free trial: If you haven't signed up for Deputy yet, see Creating an Organization and Getting Started with a Free Trial. When signing up, select the industry that best matches your business.
• Returning to your trial: If you've already signed up, log in at once.deputy.com to continue setting up your account.
• Watch Deputy in Action: Before you start, watch Deputy in Action to see how Deputy works and what you'll be setting up throughout this guide.

This article covers:

• Choose your organisational structure
• Review Location settings before rollout
• Set access and approval responsibilities
• Prepare payroll and Smart Scheduling workflows
  • Smart Scheduling, analytics, and labour insights
• Run day-to-day construction workflows
• Quick add-on and plan check
• Five-step onboarding checklist
• Avoid common construction set-up mistakes
• Get more help

Choose your organisational structure

In Deputy, Locations can represent physical sites, projects, regions, depots, clients, or major contracts. Areas represent the trades, crews, job numbers, work types, project stages, cost codes, or other groups where team members perform their work.

Choose a starting model that reflects how your business manages schedules, reporting, payroll export codes, site access, and project workflows. You can refine the structure as your use of Deputy grows.

Business type	Suggested starting structure	Construction Area examples	Things to consider
Small-to-medium trades business Electricians, plumbers, HVAC, maintenance, and mobile service crews	A region or depot as the Location	Job numbers, trade types, Service Calls, Maintenance, Emergency Works, and Travel	This structure can keep scheduling and permissions simpler when teams move between many short-duration jobs.
Large commercial builder Long-running projects and businesses needing site-level management	One Location for each major site or project	Electrical, Plumbing, Framing, Labourers, Concrete Crew, cost codes, and Travel	Site-level Locations can support project-specific approvals, attendance, permissions, and labour reporting. Completed project Locations need to be maintained and archived.
Business using job management software Businesses where another system already manages jobs, work orders, or projects	A depot or region as the Location	Technician, Installer, Labourer, and Travel	Keep detailed job information in the specialist system where possible. Job numbers can be captured through integrations, export data, or timesheet questions where required.

When you plan your structure, consider:

• Changing sites and projects: Consider how Locations and Areas will be maintained as projects open, close, or change.
• Reporting and export codes: Consistent Location and Area names and export codes can support payroll, accounting, project, and job-costing workflows.
• Other business systems: Deputy is usually used alongside payroll, accounting, job management, or ERP systems. Keep project scope, estimating, quoting, procurement, materials, and construction programme management in your specialist systems where those workflows already sit outside Deputy.

For a complete overview, see Organisations, Locations and Areas.

Review Location settings before rollout

Location settings control many of the defaults used for scheduling, clock-in, timesheets, approvals, and reporting. Review the settings that apply to your workflow before your team starts using Deputy.

• Review the physical address and map pin: Accurate Location details support mobile clock-in settings and can help confirm that team members are working at the expected site.
• Set up Training Tags: Training Tags can identify team members who are qualified, inducted, or approved to work on specific sites or types of work. Common construction examples include White Card, Forklift Licence, EWP, Working at Heights, Confined Space, First Aid, Site Inductions, Trade Qualification, and Apprentice.
• Review Shift Locking: Shift Locking can limit changes to scheduled shifts after a configured time.
• Review Timesheet Auto-Approval: Manual approval during an initial rollout allows supervisors to review notes, travel time, breaks, allowances, and attendance exceptions.

For a complete overview of every Location setting, including General, Areas, Scheduling, and Timesheet settings, see Creating your Locations.

Set access and approval responsibilities

Access levels control who can manage schedules, approve timesheets, view wage information, and change account settings.

Deputy access level	Common construction users	Common responsibilities
System Administrator	Owners, directors, and account administrators	Manage account structure, integrations, access, and account-wide settings.
Location Manager	Site, project, and operations managers	Manage schedules, labour budgets, wage visibility, approvals, and site reporting.
Supervisor	Leading hands and site supervisors	Manage daily attendance, timesheet exceptions, and site activity without access to wage or schedule cost information.
Employees	Site team members and mobile crews	View schedules, clock in and out, request leave, and review team updates.

For a complete overview, see Deputy access levels and permissions.

Once you've set access levels, add your team members and assign them to the Locations where they work. You can add team members individually, add multiple team members, import them from another system, or invite them to join Deputy.

For a complete overview, see Adding team members.

Prepare payroll and Smart Scheduling workflows

Construction payroll can include overtime, travel allowances, meal allowances, site allowances, callback work, RDOs, TOIL arrangements, apprentice classifications, weekend rates, and leave. Pay Templates and Pay Rate Builder can support your pay conditions, while Leave Policies control the types of leave available to team members and how leave is managed in Deputy.

You can process payroll using Deputy Payroll where available, or connect Deputy to a supported third-party payroll provider.

Click to expand for each payroll option.

For more information on Leave management, see:

• Leave management overview (AU Only)
• Introduction to Leave management with Deputy Payroll (AU Only)
• Introduction to Leave Management (US only)
• Introduction to leave management (UK only)

Keep payroll testing simple

Run a test export before your first live pay run. Focus on:

• Regular hours: Confirm that standard hours and pay rates appear as expected.
• Overtime: Confirm that overtime hours and rates appear as expected.
• Allowances and travel: Confirm that any travel, meal, site, or other allowances used by your business appear as expected.

Custom timesheet questions

Custom timesheet questions can capture shift-level information that is not already captured through Locations, Areas, or integrations.

Construction businesses may use these questions for job numbers, kilometres travelled, travel reasons, sites attended, work completed, materials or equipment notes, or other information supervisors need to review before approving time.

Smart Scheduling, analytics, and labour insights

You can compare schedule costs with labour budgets, sales data, or other workforce information while building schedules. Business Insights cost panel can help you review labour cost information alongside other analytics and reporting views.

Common reports include:

• Schedule, timesheet and sales comparison: Compare scheduled and actual hours and wage costs, review cost variance, and track labour percentage against sales.
• Attendance & absence: Review no-shows, late arrivals, and early departures by Location, Area, or team member to see where attendance is affecting scheduled coverage.
• Schedule adherence by team member: Compare scheduled hours with actual hours worked and identify the cost variance when team members work outside the original schedule. (Requires Analytics+)

Project labour and job-costing visibility

If labour reporting by project, site, trade, crew, or work type matters, use Locations, Areas, export codes, and consistent naming conventions to support the level of reporting your business needs.

Construction businesses commonly review workforce activity by:

• Project or site
• Region
• Trade or crew
• Area or work type
• Overtime
• Travel time
• Attendance exceptions
• Labour cost

If another system owns detailed job costing or project cost structures, review how Deputy export codes and timesheet data should map to that system rather than rebuilding the complete costing structure in Deputy.

Click for a complete overview of Smart Scheduling, workforce reporting via Deputy Analytics, and business insights.

Run day-to-day construction workflows

Clocking in: mobile app or Kiosk

Choose the clock-in method that matches where your team works.

• Mobile app: Mobile clock-in with GPS capture can support construction crews that move between sites and projects.
• Kiosk: A shared tablet Kiosk can support larger fixed sites and can use PIN access and photo capture where enabled.

GPS capture without hard geofencing may provide more flexibility for mobile crews. Hard geofencing may suit fixed sites, but can create failed clock-ins when team members move between locations or GPS signals are unreliable.

If team members travel between sites, consider using a Travel Area so travel time can be scheduled, tracked, and reviewed separately from onsite work.

For a complete overview of the available clock-in methods, see Using Deputy across different devices.

Manage schedule adjustments

Construction schedules can change because of weather, project delays, site access, or urgent work. Keep scheduling workflows simple enough for supervisors to update quickly.

Open shifts let eligible team members apply for available shifts. Shift swaps let team members request changes to assigned shifts.

Manager review can help confirm that a team member has the required qualifications, site induction, availability, access, and permissions before a change is approved.

Click to learn more about open shifts, shift offers, and shift swaps.

Task management

Task management can help construction teams standardise daily site routines and make sure important work is not missed.

Common examples include pre-start checklists, site opening and closing tasks, safety acknowledgements, toolbox talk follow-ups, equipment checks, end-of-day handovers, and supervisor review tasks.

Communicate with your team

News Feed and Messaging can be used to share site updates, weather alerts, schedule changes, emergency communications, change-of-site instructions, toolbox talk reminders, policy reminders, induction updates, and team announcements.

Messaging+ includes additional messaging features, such as larger groups, more message history, read receipts, and role-based conversations. This can support site or project groups that need a clearer communication history.

Click to learn more about the News Feed and Deputy Messaging.

Quick add-on and plan check

The following add-ons and plan options may be useful as your use of Deputy grows. To check what is included in each plan or add-on, see our pricing plans.

If you need to...	Review this feature	Common use case
Send onboarding forms, store employee documents, and track licence, certification, induction, or training expiry dates	Deputy HR	Businesses that need employee records, licences, certifications, inductions, and compliance documents connected to workforce operations
Create custom reports, schedule emailed reports, and review labour, overtime, attendance, or project trends	Analytics+	Managers or directors who need deeper workforce, project, site, or labour reporting
Set up custom roles, additional Location hierarchy, and more detailed permission controls	Deputy Pro	Businesses with more complex site, project, hierarchy, access, or reporting requirements

Five-step onboarding checklist

These stages apply whether you are evaluating Deputy, testing it with a smaller group, or rolling it out across your full business.

1. Set up your structure: Create your Locations and Areas, choose naming conventions, and review any required export codes.
2. Add your team and schedules: Add team members, assign access levels, set up pay details, and create your first schedule.
3. Test your workflows: Test mobile clock-in, GPS capture, travel time, breaks, leave requests, schedule changes, and notifications with a pilot crew.
4. Review timesheets and payroll: Approve pilot timesheets and test regular hours, overtime, allowances, travel, timesheet questions, and payroll output.
5. Go live: Train supervisors, publish the live schedule, and roll Deputy out to the rest of your team.

For a guided onboarding checklist, open the Help menu by selecting the ? icon in your Deputy account, then select Start here.

Avoid common construction set-up mistakes

Common mistake	Why it causes problems
Creating too many Locations	Mirroring every project or short-duration job can increase administration, reporting complexity, and permission management. Use separate Locations where site-level settings, access, approvals, or reporting require them.
Using hard geofencing for highly mobile crews	Can create failed clock-ins when team members move between sites or GPS conditions make strict location boundaries difficult to use.
Not separating travel time where required	Can make it harder for supervisors and payroll teams to distinguish travel from onsite work. Consider a Travel Area where this distinction is required.
Giving every site manager wage visibility	Exposes wage information when Supervisor access may be enough for daily site management. Review Deputy access levels to choose the appropriate level of access.
Allowing schedule changes without manager review	Can create site coverage, qualification, induction, access, or overtime issues that supervisors have not reviewed.
Not using Training Tags	Can result in team members being scheduled to sites or work where they do not have the required qualification, induction, or approval.
Duplicating project or job management unnecessarily	Can create double handling when another system already manages project scope, work orders, estimating, materials, or detailed job information.
Skipping a payroll test export	Can leave pay rate, overtime, allowance, travel, rounding, or export issues undiscovered before the first live pay run. Learn how to export timesheets from Deputy and test your payroll workflow before going live.

Get more help

During your trial, use the Action Bar to access setup help without leaving Deputy.

From the Action Bar, you can:

• Select Start here to open Deputy Essentials, where you'll find bite-sized videos and guided walkthroughs to help you set up your business at your own pace.
• Select Ask an expert to connect with an SMB Consultant.
• Select the ? icon to open the Help menu and access support options.

You can collapse the Action Bar or drag it to another position on the screen.

Help Centre

For help and support, see Get help and request support from Deputy.