This guide explains how to set up Deputy for a call center or contact center. 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 Services and Call Center, or 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 scheduling workflows
- Reporting and workforce visibility
Run day-to-day call center workflows
Quick add-on and plan check
Five-step onboarding checklist
Avoid common call center set-up mistakes
Get more help

Choose your organisational structure

In Deputy, Locations can represent offices, contact centers, support sites, departments, remote teams, regions, or large operational groups. Areas usually represent the coverage being planned, such as sales, support, billing, retention, live chat, escalations, campaigns, queues, channels, or team leader coverage.

Choose a starting model that reflects how your business manages recurring rosters, queue coverage, breaks, reporting, payroll export codes, time zones, and approval responsibilities.

Business type	Suggested starting structure	Call center Area examples	Things to consider
Single-site call center Teams working from one office or contact center	Office or site as the Location, with Areas for teams or queues	Sales, Support, Billing, Retention, Live Chat, Team Leader	Keeps site-level scheduling, approvals, attendance, and reporting simple.
Multi-site call center Operations across multiple offices, regions, or time zones	Each site as a Location, with Areas for teams, queues, or campaigns	Inbound, Outbound, Escalations, Campaigns, Team Leaders	Useful when sites need different managers, time zones, settings, or reporting.
Remote or hybrid team Agents who work from home or across mixed locations	Remote team as the Location, with Areas for work types, queues, or channels	Phone Support, Email Support, Live Chat, Escalations	Desktop or mobile clock-in may be more practical than a fixed kiosk.
Large department-based operation Separate departments with their own managers or approvals	Department as the Location only when stronger boundaries are needed	Sales, Customer Support, Billing, Retention, Escalations	This can improve permission separation, but may add admin if agents move between departments often.

When you plan your structure, consider:

Queue and team reporting: Use Areas for teams, queues, campaigns, channels, departments, or work types.
Break coverage: Keep Areas simple enough that supervisors can plan breaks without creating unnecessary roster complexity.
Export codes: Check whether payroll, HR, reporting, or finance systems need department, queue, campaign, or team codes.

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 these settings before go-live so each site, department, remote team, or operational group works the way your team expects.

Key settings to review include:

Review Location details and time zones: Clear Location names and accurate time zones help managers distinguish between sites, departments, remote teams, and regions.
Review Areas and Training Tags: Areas can represent teams, queues, campaigns, channels, or team leader coverage. Training Tags can help manage specialised queues, escalation permissions, product knowledge, language skills, or compliance requirements.
Review scheduling settings: Confirm default shifts, break settings, schedule start day, shift swaps, shift offers, open shifts, notifications, shift confirmation, and shift locking.
Review timesheet settings: Confirm kiosk, desktop, or mobile clock-in, employee timesheet edits, break recording, rounding, timesheet auto-approval, unscheduled shifts, and missed clock-in workflows.

Break settings are worth reviewing carefully because service levels often depend on queue coverage. Timesheet auto-approval should usually wait until supervisors are confident exceptions are being reviewed properly.

For a complete overview of every Location setting, including General, Areas, Scheduling, Timesheets, Notifications, Public Holidays, and Preferences, see Creating your Locations.

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, and team-level reporting.

Call center role	Recommended Deputy access	Common responsibility
Agents	Employee	View rosters, clock in and out, request leave, and review updates
Team leaders	Supervisor	Review attendance, breaks, missed clock-ins, and timesheet exceptions
Operations managers	Location Manager	Manage rosters, labour visibility, approvals, and site activity
Payroll and administrators	Advisor or System Administrator	Review approved timesheets, payroll exports, and employee records
Owners and senior operations	System Administrator	Manage account settings, structure, integrations, and access

Most call centers use Supervisor access for team leaders who approve time but should not see wage costs. Use Location Manager access for operations managers who need labour visibility, roster cost visibility, or broader site reporting.

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. For a complete overview, see Adding team members.

Prepare payroll and scheduling workflows

Call center payroll can include ordinary hours, overtime, weekend shifts, public holidays, part-time contracted hours, casual loading, late shift penalties, paid and unpaid breaks, TOIL or RDO workflows, 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.

Deputy Payroll (AU)

Deputy Payroll (AU) is Deputy's integrated payroll option for Australian businesses. It keeps scheduling, attendance, approved timesheets, and payroll within Deputy, so you can move from worked hours to a pay run without exporting timesheets to a separate payroll provider.

Set-up includes your business and payroll details, pay calendars, superannuation, deductions, extra earnings, and team member payroll information.

For a complete overview of setting up and using Deputy Payroll (AU), see Getting started with Payroll (AU).

Deputy Payroll enabled by Paycor (US)

Deputy Payroll enabled by Paycor (US) connects Deputy workforce management with Paycor payroll. Deputy manages scheduling, time tracking, leave, pay rates, and approved timesheets, while Paycor can be used to handle payroll functions such as tax filings, banking, and year-end processing.

Approved timesheets can be exported directly from Deputy to Paycor, reducing the need to manually re-enter worked hours.

For a complete overview of how Deputy and Paycor work together, see Getting started with Deputy Payroll enabled by Paycor (US).

Third-party payroll integration

If you already use another payroll provider, you can keep Deputy focused on scheduling, attendance, timesheets, and pay calculations, then send approved timesheet data to your existing payroll system. Deputy supports payroll integrations including Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, ADP, and other providers, with the exact workflow and data available depending on the integration you use.

For a complete overview of the available payroll connections, see Payroll integrations.

For more information on Leave management, see:

Keep payroll testing simple

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

Attendance exceptions: Test late starts, missed clock-ins, early finishes, and timesheet corrections.
Breaks and overtime: Test paid and unpaid breaks, overtime, weekend work, and public holidays where applicable.
Area and reporting detail: Confirm that team, queue, campaign, or department data exports correctly.

Reporting and workforce visibility

If labour reporting by team, queue, site, campaign, supervisor, or work type matters, use Areas, Area export codes, and consistent naming conventions. This keeps reporting cleaner, simplifies payroll exports, and improves workforce visibility.

Common reports include:

Schedule, timesheet and sales comparison: Compare scheduled and actual hours and wage costs, and review cost variance where relevant.
Attendance & absence: Review no-shows, late arrivals, missed clock-ins, break exceptions, and early departures by Location, Area, or team member.
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+)

Training Tags and employee records

Training Tags help prevent agents from being scheduled into Areas where they are not trained or approved to work. They can support decision-making, but they do not replace formal compliance review.

Common call center Training Tags include Escalations, Billing, Retention, Product Support, Live Chat, Sales, Compliance Training, Language Skill, and Team Leader.

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

Run day-to-day call center workflows

Clocking in: kiosk, desktop, or mobile

Most office-based call centers use kiosk or desktop clock-in. Remote teams usually use desktop or mobile clock-in depending on the attendance workflow.

For desk-based teams, GPS is usually less important unless location verification is required.

For a complete overview, see Using Deputy across different devices.

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Manage recurring rosters and shift changes

Call center schedules are often recurring. Roster templates can reduce weekly admin and help managers keep coverage consistent across queues, campaigns, teams, and operating hours.

Open shifts, shift offers, and shift swaps can help fill gaps, but manager approval is usually useful so coverage changes are reviewed before they affect service levels.

For a complete overview, see open shifts, shift offers, and shift swaps.

Break coverage and tasks

Break planning is important for call centers because service levels often depend on queue coverage throughout the day. Schedule breaks where possible so supervisors can review coverage before rosters are published.

Task management can help standardise opening checks, queue review tasks, coaching follow-ups, QA review reminders, policy acknowledgements, escalation follow-ups, and end-of-day handover tasks.

Communicate with your team

News Feed and Messaging can help managers share team announcements, urgent coverage needs, shift changes, system outage updates, policy reminders, and roster reminders.

For a complete overview, see 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.

Do you need to...	You may need...	Common fit
Store onboarding records, training records, policy acknowledgements, or employee documents	Deputy HR	Businesses that hire agents at scale or need records connected to workforce operations
Create custom reports, schedule emailed reports, and review overtime, attendance, break exceptions, or team trends	Analytics+	Operations leaders who need deeper workforce and labour reporting
Use larger messaging groups, more message history, read receipts, polls, or role-based communication	Messaging Plus	Supervisors who need better communication with teams, queues, departments, or remote agents
Process payroll from approved Deputy timesheets where available	Deputy Payroll	Businesses that want payroll connected more closely to Deputy scheduling, attendance, and timesheet approvals
Set up custom roles, additional Location hierarchy, and more detailed permission controls	Deputy Pro	Businesses with more complex operational requirements or stronger reporting, communication, hierarchy, or permission needs

Five-step onboarding checklist

These stages apply whether you are evaluating Deputy, testing it with one team or queue, or rolling it out across your full business.

Set up your structure: Create your Locations and Areas, choose naming conventions, and review any required export codes.
Add your team and schedules: Add agents, team leaders, managers, payroll users, and administrators, assign access levels, set up pay details, and create your first schedule.
Test your workflows: Test kiosk, desktop, or mobile clock-in, breaks, missed clock-ins, recurring rosters, open shifts, shift swaps, and notifications with a pilot group.
Review timesheets and payroll: Approve pilot timesheets and test late starts, breaks, overtime, weekend work, public holidays, remote clock-ins, and payroll export.
Go live: Train team leaders and managers, 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 call center set-up mistakes

Common mistake	Why it causes problems
Creating too many Areas	Makes rosters harder to manage and can create unnecessary reporting complexity.
Ignoring break coverage	Can affect queue coverage and service levels during busy periods.
Giving team leaders pay visibility unnecessarily	Supervisor access may be enough when team leaders only need to approve time and review exceptions.
Overusing mobile GPS	Desk-based teams usually do not need GPS-heavy workflows unless location verification is required.
Not testing recurring rosters	Errors can repeat across multiple weeks if templates are not reviewed carefully.
Using auto-approval too early	Can allow missed clock-ins, break exceptions, and late starts to pass through without review.

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.