With Deputy Break Policy, managers will save time to avoid manual break compliance — no more carrying the rules from your head or spreadsheets. And breaks compliance are proactively planned upfront, cutting payday rework — while break pay continues to flow through the existing Pay Rate Engine. 

We are inviting customers to join the early access program of this feature. Please register your interests by filling the early access program form here.

What's New

• System Admins can self-serve creating and customising break policies via Business Settings → Scheduling
  • A list of pre-configured break policies tailored to accounts' regions will be surfaced upfront for an easy start.
• Each policy defines 
  • Required breaks by shift length - eg. 6h+ shifts need 30 mins unpaid break + 2 *10 paid breaks.
  • Break windows (optional) — ensure breaks from being taken within a set number of hours of the start or end of a shift.
  • Assignment to locations/areas , or special cohorts via Rule Group for employees under certain age to define different breaks between Minor and Adult employees.
  • Enforcement setup when a violation occurs — Warn (managers can review and override) vs. Hard block (saving is prevented entirely).
• Breaks are auto-loaded into the Add Shift Popover when a manager clicks + in Schedule View.
• Breaks auto-update when a shift's area, assignee, or duration changes.
• Breaks are auto-validated on save — firing a warning confirmation or blocking the save, per the enforcement setting.

How to join the Early Access Program?

• Click here to register your interests.
• We will contact you by email shortly.

Stop chasing sick notes and supporting documents over email or shared drives, they now live directly on the leave request, with rules to request them automatically.

What's New ✨

• Attach documents to any request: Add supporting evidence to a leave request, or an existing one, on mobile or desktop, including your own leave
• Control access: Two new permissions, View leave documents and Manage leave documents, decide who can see, download, or delete what's attached
• Request documents automatically: Set a rule per leave type, e.g. require a document for sick leave over 7 days. Optional, always required, or required after a threshold
• Prompted, not blocked: Employees and managers are nudged when a document is expected but missing - never blocked from submitting or approving

Why you'll love it? 💖

• No more chasing evidence over email or shared drives
• Everyone with the right permission can see and manage documents in one place
• Request the right documents automatically

How does it work? 🛠️

1. Create or edit a leave request and attach a file (up to 5).
2. Managers with Manage leave documents can view, download, or remove documents any time.
3. To automate requests, open a leave policy → Supporting document → choose your rule.

Read the full guide: How to set up leave policies

Who is it available to?  

• Attach & manage documents: available now in the UK/US as part of Leave Management+ (HR & Pro), AU on HR and Pro plans.
• Automatic document rules: available now for UK/US (Leave Management+, HR & Pro). Not yet available in AU - coming with the new leave engine.

What's new ✨

Take the hassle out of public holiday pay with automated calculations that ensure your team is paid correctly, whether they work or not.

Why you’ll love it 💖

• Automated holiday payments: Set up public holidays in Deputy & automatically apply holiday pay to your employees.
• Accurate pay, every time: Ensure your team receives the correct holiday pay without manual intervention.
• Stay compliant: Reduce the risk of payroll errors and stay on top of local labor laws with built-in holiday pay automation.

How to use it 🤓

This feature is currently only available to Australian customers; we have plans to roll out to our other regions in the near future.

Additionally, to set up pay for Public Holidays Not Worked, you will need access to Pay Rate Builder, accessible through Business Settings (for eligible plans). 

If this is released to your Deputy account, the following steps need to be done:

1. Have your public holidays set up in Deputy
2. Add this new pay rule to the pay rate used by your employees in Pay Rate Builder
3. After this is done, if no shift is worked on a public holiday, a leave request will be created with payment for the not-worked public holiday.

Click here to read more about how to use it

Got feedback to share? Go to Deputy > Help > Give us feedback

Build the exact permission set your business needs to keep your payroll secure.

What’s New ✨

Included with Deputy Payroll Australia at no extra cost - Previously reserved for Pro and Enterprise customers, custom roles are now included in the Deputy Payroll Australia subscription with all Deputy plans (Lite, Core, Pro)

Build a role from scratch or copy a default and tweak it - With custom roles, you can build an entirely new role from scratch, or take one of our templated defaults and tweak it to your business needs. Need a system admin level user but without payroll access? Now you can have it.

Default roles remain - For those who's business needs are met by the default roles, these remain available and function the same as before.

How does it work?

1. With Deputy Payroll Australia enabled, open Business Settings and click Access & permissions.

2. Once the default Access & permissions screen has opened, click Access levels.

3. To create a brand new role, click + Add access level. To create a copy of a default role for customisation click the name of the role you want to clone.

4. This will open a read only view of the permissions that are available in that role.

5. Click the three dots icon near the Save button in the top right, and select Duplicate level.

6. This will open a new view where you can customise the new role, save it and have it available to apply to team members.

Why you will love it?

Tighter control - We know with payroll data in Deputy, you are storing some of your most sensitive business information. This gives you much tighter control over users who can see areas of the Deputy product.

Easier to move to Deputy Payroll - We know meeting your security requirements is critical in a transition to a new payroll product. Custom roles allows you to tweak access levels to your exact needs.

Enterprise flexibility without an Enterprise plan - Deputy Payroll Australia users now have access to a powerful role builder, previously only available to our Enterprise subscribers.

When will it be available ?

Custom roles is now available to all Deputy Payroll Australia subscribers.

Peak season and a thin roster don't mix. With the new Maximum People on Leave setting, you can cap how many team members can be on leave at once per location so you're never caught short-staffed by overlapping leave requests.

What's New ✨

You can now set a maximum number of people who can be on leave at the same time, with a different limit for each location if you need one. Once the limit is reached for a set of dates, team members can't submit a new leave request for those dates and they see a clear message explaining why, on both web and the Deputy mobile app. Managers, however, keep the final say: when approving a request that would reach or exceed the limit, they see a warning rather than a block, so genuine exceptions can still be approved at their discretion. The limit applies across all leave types by default, but you can exclude specific types so they never count towards the cap.

How does it work?

1. Go to Business Settings → Leave → Global leave settings.
2. In the Leave Limits section, toggle the setting on and enter your maximum number of people.
3. Add any excluded leave types, and set location-specific limits if needed. Save, and the limit applies immediately.

Read the full guide: How do I set a limit to the maximum number of people on leave at one time?

Why you will love it?

Protect your busiest periods: Minimum staffing stays intact because overlapping leave is caught before it's even submitted.

Fewer awkward declines: Team members see upfront when dates aren't available, instead of submitting a request only to have a manager decline it later.

Guardrails, not handcuffs: Employees get a clear boundary; managers keep discretion for the exceptions that matter.

When will it be available?

Maximum People on Leave is available now with a subscription to the Pro plan (or HR, where available in your country).

When a part-timer moves from 3 to 4 days a week, their leave entitlement should move with them. For leave policies that accrue Based on regular working hours, Deputy now recalculates leave balances automatically whenever a team member's regular working hours change, no manual adjustments required.

What's New ✨

Update a team member's regular working hours individually, or in bulk from the People page and Deputy now recalculates their leave entitlement to match their new working pattern. Before applying the change, Deputy shows you exactly which leave policies will be recalculated, so there are no surprises. The maths is fair and proportional: each working pattern is applied to the period it was in effect, so a 20-day full-time entitlement at 3 days per week is 12 days, and moving to 4 days per week takes it to 16. You control how recalculated balances round, and to what increment then every recalculation is logged in the leave audit log with who made the change, when, and the complete calculation breakdown available on hover.

How does it work?

1. Open a team member's profile, go to the Employment tab, and edit their regular working hours (or select multiple team members on the People page to update in bulk).
2. Review the confirmation showing which leave policies will be recalculated, then save.
3. The updated balance appears on the team member's Leave tab, with the recalculation recorded in the leave audit log.

Read the full guide: Automatically recalculate leave when a team member's regular working hours change

Why you will love it?

No more manual balance adjustments: Working pattern changes used to mean recalculating entitlements by hand — now it happens the moment you save.

Entitlements that are always right: Team members whose hours change mid-year get the leave they're actually entitled to, calculated proportionally across each pattern.

Every change is accountable: The audit log shows the who, when, and how of every recalculation, so questions about a balance take seconds to answer.

When will it be available?

Automatic leave recalculation is available now for leave policies using the Based on regular working hours accrual option, with a subscription to the Pro plan (or HR, where available in your country).

If your team works overtime that's compensated with time off rather than overtime pay, Deputy now handles the whole TOIL lifecycle from earning it, tracking it, to taking it, with a transparent record of every hour.

What's New ✨

Until now, tracking TOIL has meant spreadsheets on the side. You can now set up TOIL policies in Deputy to match your award or agreement, including custom multipliers; for example, accruing TOIL at 1.5x for weekend overtime. When a timesheet with TOIL-eligible hours is approved, Deputy automatically creates an accrual record with the right multiplier applied, and every accrual links back to the timesheet that earned it, so managers and team members can see exactly how a balance was built up and used. Team members request TOIL the same way they request any other leave, balances update in real time as leave is approved, and if you're bringing existing TOIL balances into Deputy you can load them with a manual entry per team member or a bulk CSV import for your whole team.

How does it work?

1. Create a TOIL policy and set your accrual multiplier to match your business rules.

1. When a team member's timesheet with TOIL-eligible overtime is approved, their TOIL balance accrues automatically.

1. Team members request TOIL as a leave type; managers approve with full visibility of how the balance was earned.

Read the full setup guide: Getting started with Time Off In Lieu (TOIL)

Why you will love it?

No more manual overtime tracking: Every TOIL-eligible hour is captured automatically the moment a timesheet is approved.

Fewer balance disputes: Team members and managers can both see exactly how every hour was earned and spent, with each accrual traceable to its source timesheet.

Compliant by design: Multiplier-based policies let you mirror your award or agreement precisely, so overtime is compensated correctly every time.

When will it be available?

TOIL is available now with a subscription to the Pro plan (or HR, where available in your country).

If your business runs on seasons, for example a ski resort that wins down over summer or a beachside venue which goes quiet in winter, you know the annual grind of offloading those temporary staff you bring in for the busy period and hiring them back once the season turns again. 

What’s New ✨

Until now when using Deputy Payroll, you have been required to fully terminate team members to keep them out of your payruns only to add the returning staff back in to the business again in a few months. You can now pause a team member in Deputy Payroll instead. A paused team member is taken out of your payruns and you're not charged for them as active staff but their profile, pay history and payroll reporting all stay intact. When they return again, one click brings them back fully into service as if they had never left.

How does it work?

1. With Deputy Payroll Australia enabled, open the employee profile and go to the Personal tab. 

2. Click the Archive team member button

3. The above dialog will display, if the employee is intended to return in the future, select the Pause employment option and hit archive.

The employee will now be paused, and no longer appear in payruns or schedules.

Why you will love it?

Keep your seasonal teams, and use Deputy Payroll without the additional admin: No more terminating and re-onboarding people who were always coming back to the business in the next season.

Pay only for the people are working: We do not bill for Paused team members allowing you to reduce costs alongside reduced revenue during the off seasons.

Nothing is lost: Pay history and reporting are preserved, so year end compliance and reporting stays complete.

When will it be available?

Pausing employees is available now to all Deputy Payroll Australia customers.

Offer flexibility to your employees and split their wages across two bank accounts, offering team members more options on how their pay is distributed.

What’s New ✨

Split net pay: Team members can now have their net pay split across up to two bank accounts; a primary account and a secondary account, all setup from within the existing bank account area of the payroll profile.

Fixed or percentage:  Splits can be a fixed dollar amount or a percentage

Automatic remainder: The remaining amounts after any split is automatically calculated and paid into the primary account. 

Duplicate detection: Ensures team members do not enter the same bank details twice and if a primary account is removed, the secondary is automatically promoted ensuring pay day can always happen.

Flows to the ABA file: Splits are automatically added to the ABA file so no disruption to pay day processes.

How does it work?

Open the team members profile, go to the Payroll tab and find the bank accounts section.

1. Add a second bank account with account name, BSB and account number.

2. Pick your split: Fixed amount ($) or Percentage (%)

3. Set the amount. The primary account picks up whatever's left over.

Why you will love it?

Retain team member flexibility: Moving to Deputy Payroll means you can continue to offer your team members the ability to have split wage payments, no disruption to team member options.

Seamless process: No per pay run admin, no spreadsheets on the side, all handled in the exported ABA files automatically. 

When will it be available?

Multiple bank accounts in employee profiles is available now for all Deputy Payroll users in Australia.

We're releasing a performance improvement to how the Add Shift Popover fetches recommended employees especially those borrowed from non-associated locations, delivering faster load times with a minor-to-moderate change to the Add Shift Popover.

What's new:

Previously, the popover fetched every employee across all selected locations, including borrowed employees (those not assigned to the location in their profile). 

Now, the initial list only loads employees assigned to those locations. Borrowed employees are no longer fetched by default — managers can load them on demand via a "Show more" button, or find them directly through the assignee search box.

Why this matters for you:

• Businesses that don't borrow employees (the majority) will see no change to the list — just a faster popover.
• Businesses that do borrow employees will see the recommended list load noticeably faster, and can still access the full list as before with one extra click — with a shorter wait overall than before.

When will it be available?

This feature is currently rolling out to every Deputy customer.