This guide explains how to set up Deputy for an education provider. 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 organisation.
• 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 education workflows
• Quick add-on and plan check
• Five-step onboarding checklist
• Avoid common education provider set-up mistakes
• Get more help

Choose your organisational structure

In Deputy, Locations usually represent campuses, schools, training sites, tutoring centres, programs, learning centres, or online teams. Areas represent the departments, roles, programs, subjects, or coverage groups where team members perform their work.

Choose a starting model that reflects how your organisation manages schedules, reporting, payroll export codes, access, and program or campus responsibilities. You can refine the structure as your use of Deputy grows.

Provider type	Suggested starting structure	Education Area examples	Things to consider
Single-campus provider Schools, colleges, training providers, tutoring centres, and learning centres	One Location representing the campus or learning centre	Teaching, Admin, Student Support, Reception, Library, and After-School Program	This structure keeps campus-level scheduling, attendance, approvals, and reporting together.
Multi-campus provider Education organisations operating across multiple physical sites	One Location for each physical campus or site	Teaching, Admin, Student Support, departments, programs, and roles	Campus managers can manage local schedules and approvals. Team members working across campuses need access to each relevant Location.
Program-based provider Tutoring, vocational training, online learning, and after-school programs	A Location for each program requiring separate management	Trainer, Tutor, Admin, Student Support, and delivery types	This can support separate program managers, approvals, reporting, or funding structures. It may add unnecessary complexity for small shared teams.
Online or hybrid provider Remote teaching, online tutoring, and hybrid education teams	An online or remote team as the Location	Online Teaching, Tutoring, Admin, Student Support, and delivery types	Review time zones, remote attendance workflows, and whether online educators also work across physical campuses.

When you plan your structure, consider:

• Shared team members: Team members who work across multiple campuses or programs need access to each relevant Location.
• Recurring schedules: Consider how your structure will support terms, semesters, tutoring cycles, class blocks, and other recurring patterns.
• Reporting and export codes: Consistent Area names and export codes can support payroll, finance, campus, program, department, and role reporting.
• Other education systems: Deputy is usually used alongside curriculum, student record, enrolment, LMS, assessment, lesson planning, and student communication systems. Keep those specialist workflows in the appropriate education system where they 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, map pin, and time zone: Accurate Location details support attendance workflows at physical campuses. Time zones are also important for online or distributed teams.
• Set up Training Tags: Training Tags can identify team members who are qualified, trained, or approved to work in specific Areas. Common education examples include Qualified Teacher, Trainer Assessor, Working with Children Check, First Aid, CPR, Child Safety Training, Subject Qualification, Campus Induction, and Online Delivery Approved.
• 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 managers to review casual educator hours, late starts, early finishes, and other 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 education users	Common responsibilities
System Administrator	Owners, administrators, and operations leaders	Manage account structure, integrations, access, and account-wide settings.
Location Manager	Campus and program managers	Manage schedules, labour budgets, wage visibility, approvals, and reporting.
Supervisor	Senior educators and team leads	Manage daily attendance and timesheet exceptions without access to wage or schedule cost information.
Employees	Teachers, tutors, trainers, admin, and support staff	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

Education payroll can include casual teaching rates, sessional trainer rates, ordinary admin hours, weekend or public holiday work, overtime, minimum engagement periods, term-only work, split teaching and admin roles, and different pay rules by classification. 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.
• Casual and sessional work: Confirm that casual educator, trainer, or sessional hours and rates appear as expected.
• Different work types: Test relevant scenarios such as teaching and admin work, minimum engagement periods, weekends, public holidays, or different classifications where these apply.

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 and review cost variance.
• 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+)

Campus, program, and workforce reporting

If labour reporting by campus, program, department, or role matters, use Areas, Area export codes, and consistent naming conventions. This can support cleaner payroll exports and workforce reporting across teaching, admin, and support teams.

Education providers may review workforce activity by:

• Campus
• Program
• Department
• Role
• Teaching versus support coverage
• Casual educator utilisation
• Scheduled versus actual hours
• Attendance exceptions
• Overtime trends

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

Run day-to-day education workflows

Clocking in: Kiosk, mobile app, or desktop

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

• Kiosk: A shared tablet Kiosk can support fixed campuses, schools, training sites, and learning centres.
• Mobile: Mobile can support online educators, remote teams, and other team members who do not work from a fixed campus.

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

Manage recurring schedules and adjustments

Education schedules often follow terms, semesters, class blocks, tutoring cycles, or after-school program patterns. Reusing recurring schedule patterns can reduce repeated administration and help managers keep coverage consistent.

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 an educator has the required qualification, subject suitability, campus access, availability, and approval before a schedule change is accepted.

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

Communicate with your team

News Feed and Messaging can be used to share campus updates, class changes, schedule changes, staff announcements, policy reminders, coverage requests, and urgent operational updates.

Messaging+ includes additional messaging features, such as larger groups, more message history, read receipts, and role-based conversations. This can support groups for campuses, programs, departments, or casual educator pools.

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 qualifications, Working with Children checks, certifications, or training expiry dates	Deputy HR	Organisations that need educator records, onboarding documents, qualifications, policy acknowledgements, or compliance records connected to workforce operations
Create custom reports, schedule emailed reports, and review campus, program, attendance, overtime, or staffing trends	Analytics+	Managers or operators who need deeper workforce reporting across campuses, programs, departments, and roles
Set up custom roles, additional Location hierarchy, and more detailed permission controls	Deputy Pro	Organisations with more complex campus, program, department, 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 organisation.

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 clock-in, breaks, leave requests, recurring schedules, schedule changes, qualification requirements, and notifications with a pilot group.
4. Review timesheets and payroll: Approve pilot timesheets and test teaching and admin work, casual or sessional hours, relevant pay conditions, and payroll output.
5. Go live: Train 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 education provider set-up mistakes

Common mistake	Why it causes problems
Creating an Area for every class	Can add unnecessary administration and make schedules and reporting harder to maintain. Use Areas for the level of coverage or reporting your organisation actually needs.
Not planning around terms or semesters	Can create repeated schedule changes and additional administration when recurring patterns need to be rebuilt each term or semester.
Mixing teaching and admin work without clear Areas	Can make payroll, reporting, and labour visibility harder to manage, particularly where different work types have different pay conditions.
Giving senior educators wage visibility by default	Exposes wage information when Supervisor access may be enough for attendance and timesheet management. Review Deputy access levels to choose the appropriate level of access.
Not assigning team members to every campus where they work	Can block scheduling, clock-in, or approval workflows when educators or support staff work across multiple campuses.
Not using Training Tags for qualification-sensitive work	Can result in team members being scheduled into Areas where they do not have the required qualification, check, induction, subject suitability, or approval.
Creating separate program Locations unnecessarily	Can add administration when the same small team regularly works across multiple programs. Use separate Locations when program-specific access, approvals, or reporting justify the additional structure.
Skipping a payroll test export	Can leave casual rates, classifications, minimum engagements, split work types, overtime, 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 organisation 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.