What’s new?

We're excited to introduce Leave Balance Limits, a new feature designed to give you greater control, flexibility, and financial oversight when managing your team's leave requests.

You can now set specific thresholds on leave policies to prevent employees from accruing excessive negative balances, ensuring your leave management process is compliant with your company’s policies and reduces the time spent on manual reviews.

What is it?

Leave Balance Limits allow you to configure rules directly within your leave policies. Here’s what you can do:

• Set custom balance limits: Define specific positive or negative leave balance thresholds for each leave policy.
• Choose your enforcement style: Either automatically block employees from submitting requests that exceed the limit, or warn and allow the request to proceed while instantly notifying the manager for review.
• Gain granular control: Because limits are set at the policy level, you can have different rules for different leave types - for example, stricter limits on paid time off versus more flexible rules for sick leave.

How does it work?

As a system administrator or manager you can set up leave balance limits in the leave policy builder. These are the steps to set things up:

1. Select Business Settings from the drop-down menu under your name on the top right of the web page.

2. Click on the Leave policies tab

3. To edit an existing policy, hover over the policy and click Edit. Alternatively to create a new leave policy entirely, select Create leave policy

4. In the leave policy configuration, scroll down to the 'Balance options' section and select Leave request balance limit so that it opens the setting 'Set balance limit for leave requests'

5. Configure your limit settings:

• Set balance limit in days: Enter a positive or negative value for the limit. This figure will act as the minimum allowable balance for this leave policy. Example: to allow your team members to go into 2 days' negative leave balance, enter -2 in this field.

• Action when limit exceeded: Choose one of the following options:

  • Block requests that exceed limit: Prevents employees from submitting leave requests that would exceed the set limit
  • Allow requests that exceed limit and notify managers: Permits the leave request to be submitted and notifies the assigned manager

6. Save your leave policy changes

Further information

For further details on setup, principles, and other FAQs please read our Help Article.

Callouts

Leave balance limits for future leave years will not be supported for this version.

For this release, the system applies limits only to leave requests with start dates in the current calendar year. Leave requests starting in the next calendar year will bypass these restrictions and be processed normally.

Availability 

This feature will be rolled out progressively to all eligible customers starting in October 2025. 

Once available, you will find the new settings within your existing Leave Policy configuration page. 

To learn exactly how to set up and use Leave Balance Limits, please read our detailed guide.

If you would like earlier access to Leave Balance Limits, please fill out this Google Form.

To make managing company documents easier, we’ve introduced folders in the Document Library. Managers can now organise and access documents more efficiently, ensuring important files are easily found and managed.

Set up your document library now

Deputy Time Clock delivers a reimagined kiosk experience built from the ground up with consistent functionality across iOS, Android, and Web platforms. It provides a unified time tracking solution that supports both traditional timesheets and advanced micro-scheduling, empowering employees with clearer shift visibility and managers with simplified device management. Available to download now on iOS and Android.

Time Clock will help

• Boost operational consistency by delivering the same reliable experience across all devices and platforms.
• Enhance workforce flexibility with full micro-scheduling support, enabling employees to clock in and out of shift segments seamlessly.
• Improve manager efficiency with multi-location kiosk configuration, reducing setup time for businesses operating across multiple sites.

Time Clock  Key Features

• Consistent time tracking experience across iOS, Android, and Web platforms with modern, intuitive interface
• Full micro-scheduling support with Shift Plan visibility, allowing employees to see upcoming shift details before clocking in
• Multi-location kiosk setup within the same time zone, perfect for mid-market businesses with multiple locations

Important: Two Apps During Transition During this transition period, you'll see two kiosk applications available:

• Deputy Kiosk - Our legacy application with full feature set
• Deputy Time Clock - Our new application built for the future

Time Clock 2.0 launches with core functionality and micro-scheduling support. Features like newsfeed access, offline mode, and employee self-service capabilities (shift swapping, leave requests) will be added in future releases. Check our feature parity article to understand which features are available in each app.

Check the FAQ page to learn more about Deputy Time Clock 2.0 and how to set up your kiosks.

Deputy Micro-scheduling enable managers to divide a shift into multiple segments that fit the business needs. It provides a comprehensive experience to support staff moving across different areas to work on different tasks throughout their shift.  General availability of Deputy Micro-scheduling suite started today.

Micro-scheduling will help

• Boost workforce productivity by maximising utilisation of the whole workforce with flexibility.
• Enhance operational efficiency with better dynamic controls and optimised labor coverage on areas.
• Improve employee satisfaction by providing clearer, predictable, fair and detailed daily game plan with accurate pay.

Micro-scheduling Key Features

• Delightful scheduling experiences down to the minute across Desktop and Mobile Apps
• Effectively manage shift dynamic to replace/swap/offer the Micro-scheduling shifts , or split/link shifts via multi-select for optimised scheduling.
• Clear employee guidance with seamless clock in/out experience across Mobile, Time Clock Kiosk(new), and Desktop.
• Streamlined timesheet review, update, approvals to ensure employee get paid accurately.
• Dedicated reporting features on micro-scheduling hours to help managers spot the gaps before they cost you.
• Effortless universal 3rd party integrations via APIs or payroll exporter. 

Check the FAQ page to learn more about Deputy Micro-scheduling.

As part of our ongoing commitment to privacy, we’ve refined Hire permissions. Managers will now only see job listings and candidates for the locations they’re assigned to—ensuring access is limited to what’s relevant, protecting confidential details, and making Hire simpler and easier to use. 

Start using Hire today

Document Library just got more powerful. Now, when uploading a document or video, you can choose whether an acknowledgement requires a signature. Easily upload, share, and track acknowledgements in Deputy HR—with full visibility in Company Document reports.

Create your Document Library

Contracts often require multiple signatures, so we’ve enhanced the signed document experience in Deputy HR. You can now assign up to five parties to sign a contract—while still enjoying automated notifications and seamless storage of the completed document directly in the employee’s profile, both on desktop and in the app. 

Create a multi-party contract now 

Building on the success of Document Library in Deputy HR—and thanks to customer feedback—we’re excited to introduce a powerful new feature: the ability to upload, share, and track acknowledgements for MP4 videos.

This means you can go beyond documents and bring policies, training, and updates to life with video.

Create your Document Library today

• Company Documents
• Kudos
• Team Member Payroll Details (AU only)

• Access easily via the Reports tab
• Trial Deputy HR today 🚀

We’ve improved the shift dynamic changes experience in the Mobile app, making it easier for managers and employees to handle the updates on the go.

What’s new:

The whole dynamic changes workflow supports both Micro-scheduling shifts and normal single area shifts.

• Intuitive workflow – The shift dynamic workflow has been redesigned to be more user-friendly and fully compatible with Micro-scheduling shifts.
• Manager shift replacement – Managers can now find replacements for an entire micro-scheduling shift directly in the Mobile app.
• Employee flexibility – Employees can swap or offer their assigned shifts with colleagues straight from Mobile.
• Manager approvals – Managers can approve or reject swap requests from both Mobile and Web.
• Backward compatibility – Dynamic shift features continue to work for single-area rosters as usual.

⚠️ Note: Currently, the whole workflow apply to the entire shift (including all sub-shifts in a Micro-scheduling shift). Partial swap/offer/replacement isn’t yet supported. As a workaround, managers can use the Link/Split Shift feature to divide shifts and reassign parts.

Read help doc for more details