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Getting started with Deputy from Planday (AU)

Lisa Kirby
  • Updated

Before you start setting up your new Deputy account there are a few things you might like to consider to make the process as smooth as possible for your business and your team:

  1. The structure of your organisation
  2. Timing of your account set up and go live date
  3. Payroll or other integrations
  4. Set up a Deputy account
  5. Add your team members to Deputy
  6. Complete the set-up of your team members
  7. Import or create new schedules
  8. Set up optional Timeclocks (Punch clock)
  9. Invite your team to join Deputy and log in
  10. Getting help and learning more about Deputy

 

1. The structure of your organisation

Deputy and Planday use slightly different terms to describe how your organisation is set up.

In Deputy, Locations (rather than Departments) differentiate between separate physical work locations and Areas allow us to distinguish between different work areas within those locations.
Areas can be configured with training requirements and employees with training tags to ensure the right employee is scheduled in the right area.

Here are two diagrams showing the key differences between the Planday and Deputy organisations structures:

Planday account structure

planday account structure.png

Deputy account structure

organisation location areas in Deputy.png

When setting up an account in Deputy, if you only have one work location in your organisation then you will likely just need to set up one Deputy Location and then you can configure Areas within that Location.

If you have multiple work locations you might wish to set up multiple Locations in Deputy each with their own Areas.

Have a think about how this structure would work for your organisation and perhaps map out a rough plan before you start to set up your Deputy account.

Want more information on organisational set up in Deputy? Watch a video on Locations and Areas.

 

2. Timing of your Deputy account set up and go live date

You can start a free up to 31 day trial with Deputy at any time (no credit card required) and begin to configure your account while your team continues to use PlanDay as usual.

It may take you a few days or weeks to get everything set up and become comfortable with the new system so perhaps consider your existing pay cycle and plan to work towards a switchover date from PlanDay to Deputy at the end of an upcoming pay cycle.

You can set up your Deputy account at your own speed and then invite your team to create accounts and log in to Deputy when you are ready.

Remember there is an exclusive offer for PlanDay customers to sign up to a paid Deputy plan before May 31st and receive 30% discount on Deputy subscription costs for the first 5 months.

 

3. Payroll or other integrations

Consider other software operating in your business and how it could connect to Deputy to streamline your business.

Xero

Deputy has an integration to Xero which allows you to export timesheet data directly into Xero.

The table below shows the current differences between the Planday and Deputy integration with Xero.

Integration features and functions Deputy Planday
Allowances Yes No
Automatically sync new pay rates No Yes
Export hours worked for mapped pay items only No Yes
Multiple Xeo companies in one account Yes No
Sync and map leave types (without using hardcoded export codes / external IDs) No Yes
Sync leave balances Yes No
Tracking categories Yes No
Validation to avoid employee duplicate creation No Yes

Note: Deputy is also building out the capability to be embedded directly within Xero in the future.

 

Other connections

Deputy also connects to many other payroll systems as well.

Connections to 3rd party systems such as point of sale allow you to upload sales data to Deputy which assists with the scheduling of your team and business costs analysis for metrics such as sales vs wage costs.

Look into whether your existing business systems will connect to Deputy and the type of data you might be able to utilise between the different systems.

 

4. Set up a Deputy account

If you haven’t already, start a free trial account to begin setting up your Deputy account.

The email address you use to start the free trial will mean that you become the System Administrator for the account so remember to use a work email address where possible. You can add other System Administrators to the account later if necessary. There must always be at least one System Administrator in your Deputy account.

Find out about what other access levels are suitable for your team in Deputy.

When you set up the free trial account:

  • You will be asked to nominate your first Location and Areas so refer back to the plan you made in Step 1. Of course, you can change the Locations or add more Locations and Areas to Deputy later on. There is no limit or cost associated with adding as many Locations or Areas as your business needs.
  • You will also be asked to start adding team members to your account but if you have lots of employees you might prefer to skip this step for now and later use our importer to upload your employee data from PlanDay export files instead.

Once your Deputy account has been created there are a few settings that System Administrators can access to customise how Deputy performs for your business such as:

Watch a video on customising your business settings.

System Administrators and Location Managers are also able to further configure these settings specific for each Location in Deputy:

 

5. Add your team members to Deputy

There are lots of ways you can add your team to Deputy.

If you only have a few team members you might prefer to add them individually to your Deputy account. You can enter their basic contact details and their work location and choose whether to add and invite them to join Deputy or just add them for now (and invite them later).

If you have many team members to add we recommend you export your data from Planday and use the Deputy bulk import tool to import the employee data from a file. Read this additional help guide to step through that process and then come back to this guide to continue setting up your employees and Deputy account.

 

6. Complete the set-up of your team members

Now that your employees have been added to Deputy, there is still some more information you may need to add.

Check you have added the following information for each employee:

Consider if you need to transfer information in Deputy from Planday such as:

Watch a video on the People tab.

 

7. Import or create new schedules

Once you have added your employees to Deputy you can start to build out your Schedule.

You can export your Schedule from the Tools menu on the Schedule tab in Planday and import it to Deputy but you may find a better learning experience from building out your schedule in Deputy yourself.

There are lots of ways you can create a schedule in Deputy:

Once you have added shifts to Deputy you will need to publish them before your team members will be able to see them.

While you are in the configuration phase of setting up Deputy and have not started using it yet then you might like to wait until your team members have been invited to and joined Deputy before you publish shifts so that they can notified of the new shifts.

If shifts are published first and then a team member later joins Deputy, they can still log in and view their schedule.

Watch a video on scheduling in Deputy

 

8. Set up optional Timeclocks

Note: Timeclocks are called a punch clocks in Planday.

Deputy’s Premium plan includes not just scheduling but also time and attendance.

Your team can clock into shifts and log their time at work in many different ways such as:

Alternatively, your workplace can set up a fixed timeclock for team members to clock into shifts such as:

Need a comparison of exactly what features are available across the different devices with Deputy?

 

9. Invite your team to join Deputy and log in

Once you have your account set up and you are ready to invite your team you can send the invites as a bulk action from the People tab.

You can send these resources to your team if they have any questions about using Deputy:

For your managers, there are also these resources to introduce them to Deputy:

 

10. Getting help and learning more about Deputy

If you need more help there are lots of ways you can find the information you need:

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