If you use either of these optional SMS features in your Deputy account, you will incur extra fees on top of your regular account subscription costs:
Note:
- SMS notification is turned OFF by default in all new Deputy free trial accounts but can be enabled by System Administrators if desired.
- SMSs sent as part of new hire onboarding will NOT incur additional SMS fees as these costs are included in the new hire onboarding fees.
The SMS notification feature sends the following shift details to your team member as an SMS:
- date and time
- location and area name
- the address of the location
- any location notes you have added to the location
- any shift notes you have added to the shift
SMS charges vary by country. The prices are per 150 character SMS and are exclusive of any applicable taxes:
- US - 1c USD
- UK - 5p GBP
- Australia - 5c AUD
- Rest of the world - 7c USD
You'll be able to find out what SMS charges you have incurred in your account by following the steps outlined in Reviewing your SMS charges.
If you would like to reduce the SMS costs you incur there are several ways you can do this:
Disable SMS notifications completely
System Administrators can completely block the ability for SMS notifications to be sent from the Deputy account. If SMS notifications are disabled in your account then when any manager in the Deputy account publishes a shift, the team member will be notified instead by push notification (if they have the mobile app installed and are logged into Deputy) or email notification, which are both free.
Note: If you disable this setting:
- you will also be disabling the ability for team members to clock in and out via SMS
- you will NOT affect the ability to use SMS for new hire onboarding
Disable the ability to clock in and out with SMS
The setting to enable team members to clock in and out of shifts via SMS is turned OFF in your account by default. However, if you find that enabling it, increases your SMS costs you could disable the setting in each location in your account.
Send shorter SMS notifications
If you would still like to be able to send SMS notifications but wish to reduce the costs incurred you may need to shorten your SMS length.
SMS costs are charged per 150 characters so any information that might increase the length of the SMS sent may also increase the SMS costs.
There are two ways you can reduce the character count of your SMS:
Remove location/ area names when publishing shifts
The setting to remove the work location details and area name from each SMS notification can be enabled or disabled for each location by the Location Manager or System Administrator.
Note that location notes are also removed.
On the Location page select the location you would like to edit and click on Scheduling then toggle OFF the Display location and area name when publishing shifts via SMS.
Click Save.
LEFT: Example of a shorter SMS notification received with the setting turned OFF and location details and area names removed.
RIGHT: Example of a longer SMS notification received with the setting turned ON showing Location name, address, location notes and the full name of area scheduled.
Remove or reduce shift notes
If you have added notes to each shift then these would also be sent to the team member contributing to the character count of the SMS.
In the example below a note has been added to Katie's shift about the Friday night markets. You can see that when this note is included in the SMS notification it adds to the character count.
To reduce increased SMS costs incurred from sending messages over 150 characters you can reduce or remove shift notes from your shifts.