Deputy alternative for hospitality
Running more than one venue on Deputy? Keep the roster. Drop the per-person bill.
For hospitality groups in New Zealand and Australia with two or more venues. In 30 minutes Sam goes through your Deputy bill line by line, counts what your venues actually use, and shows what one rostering system you own would replace it with. Your staff, timesheets and roster come across, the break and rest rules are built in, and we run it for you for one setup fee, then a monthly retainer that does not move when you hire.
Deputy charges every person on the roster: A$6.75 to A$13 a month each, plus A$5 for Payroll and A$3.50 for HR. Three venues and 60 staff on Pro is about A$9,400 a year. A 150-staff group passes A$20,000.
- check_circle30 minutes with Sam, no obligation
- check_circleBring last month's Deputy invoice
- check_circleYou leave with the yearly number, side by side
The cost, side by side
Deputy charges per person. An owned system charges once.
Every Deputy plan is priced per person per month, so a hospitality group pays more each time it adds a venue, a casual or a tier. One rostering system you own costs a setup fee and a flat retainer, whatever your headcount.
Deputy: a price on every person
Lite A$6.75, Core A$8.75, Pro A$13, per person per month. One cafe with 20 staff on Core is about A$2,100 a year.
Deputy: every venue adds a bill
Three venues and 60 staff on Pro is about A$9,400 a year. A 150-staff group passes A$20,000, and the summer casuals are billed too.
Deputy: add-ons and a minimum
Payroll adds A$5 and HR A$3.50 per person per month on top of the plan. The A$30 monthly minimum bills through a closed site.
Owned: one system for every venue
One setup fee, then a monthly retainer. A fourth venue or forty more casuals do not change it, because nothing is priced per person.
Owned: the rules in, not on a higher plan
Rest gaps, meal breaks, duty manager cover and right to work are checked on every venue's roster before it goes out, with the Act named.
Owned: your six-year record stays yours
The rosters and timesheets the law says you keep for six years sit in a database your business owns, not behind a vendor's export.
What you get instead
The roster you own, with the employment rules built in
The roster
A roster that refuses the unlawful shift
The gates are in the open, cite their sources, and have no force flags. Deputy warns; this refuses and says why.
- check Nobody is rostered past the expiry of their recorded right to work (Immigration Act 2009 s 350)
- check Nobody is rostered over their own approved leave, and no one holds two overlapping shifts
- check A close-then-open inside the rest window is refused, not just flagged
- check Publishing checks every shift again and holds back the ones that fail, with the reason named
The day
Timesheets that stay honest
The timesheet is the wages and time record the law requires. This system treats it that way.
- check Clock in, clock out, and a forgotten clock-out is named the next morning, not found at payday
- check A meal break shorter than the law requires for the span worked is said out loud, with the rule cited
- check Every sheet shows its variance against the rostered shift, so quiet overtime is visible weekly
- check Approval confirms hours and refuses a record still open; it never invents time
The money
The cost of the week before it happens
Every shift is costed at that person’s rate the moment it is drafted, so the week has a price before anyone works it.
- check Next week costed by site and area before you publish, compared with the week before
- check Anyone rostered over the weekly hours ceiling is flagged while the roster is still draft
- check Worked against rostered for the week just gone, person by person
- check Rates cost the roster only: payroll keeps paying people, and one export hands it the approved hours
The rules
Compliance that names the day and cites the source
Eight rules run against the records on demand, each one citing the Act it comes from.
- check Every trading day at a licensed site is checked for a certified duty manager on the roster
- check A right to work or duty certificate expiring inside 30 days is raised before it becomes a breach
- check The printed weekly roster and each person’s hours render straight from the data, in your name
- check The record never deletes: shifts cancel with a reason, and the six-year record stays
Make it yours
Design your own Deputy replacement
Everything starts from the open-source base. Then it gets your name, the parts you run, your rules and your data from Deputy. Try it here, and we build the real one.
2. What it runs
3. Make it fit
4. Your colour
Answered from your own database
Good morning. Here is what needs you today.
We build it from the open-source base, bring your Deputy data across and run it for you.
What it looks like
Ask it like you would ask a colleague
Real answers from the demo data that ships with Rostering for Claude Code. It runs in Claude Code inside the Claude app, so it feels like any chat you already use.
Rostering for Claude Code
Connected to your own database
What needs my attention this morning?
Needs a decision, worst first
[1] work_rights Lucas Meyer 2 published shift(s) right to work on record expired 2026-09-14 and they still hold published shifts: employing a person not entitled to work is an offence (Immigration Act 2009 s 350). Confirm their new visa and record it, or take them off the roster today
[2] duty_uncovered Copper Kettle Eatery Sat 2026-10-03 4 shift(s) published and nobody rostered holds a current General Manager's Certificate: a licensed premises must have a certified manager on duty whenever alcohol is sold (Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 ss 212-214). Put a certified manager on that day or the bar does not trade
[4] leave_clash LV-101 Grace Okafor annual 2026-09-28 to 2026-09-30 Grace Okafor has 1 published shift(s) rostered over approved annual leave (Holidays Act 2003): reassign or open those shifts before the week starts
[5] rest_breach Ben Tuilagi SH-1031 then SH-1032 Thu 2026-10-01 Ben Tuilagi finishes 23:00 and starts again 07:00 (8.0h gap, window is 10h): a close-then-open is how people get hurt (Health and Safety at Work Act 2015; Hospitality Award cl 15 in AU). Move one of the shifts
[6] break_short TS-2006 Sofia Marino Thu 2026-09-24 Sofia Marino worked 9.2h with 0 break minutes recorded; the span requires 30 (Employment Relations Act 2000 Part 6D). If a break was taken, record it before approving; if it was not, fix the practice this week
Ask it anything
Questions Deputy cannot answer
Every one of these is a real question the demo answers today. Yours will be different, and that is the point.
Switching
How to switch from Deputy
Most of the move is exporting your people, timesheets and roster from Deputy, loading them in with a dry run first, then checking the record against Deputy for a short overlap before you turn Deputy off.
- 1
Export your records from Deputy
Pull your people, your timesheets and your roster or shifts out of Deputy in whatever format the account allows, usually CSV or Excel. Check Deputy's own export screen for the exact steps, since that can change. You want three files: staff, timesheets, and shifts. Any system that prints to CSV, including Deputy, Tanda or When I Work, can be brought across the same way.
- 2
Do a dry run first
Before anything touches your live data, run the import as a dry run. It reads your three files and tells you what it would do without changing anything yet. This is the point to catch a wrong column name or a file that does not match before it matters. Only once the dry run looks right do you run the real import.
- 3
Check what the import flags
The importer matches common column names and tells you which rows it skipped, so read that list. It also deliberately brings every person across with no right-to-work expiry and no duty manager certificate recorded, on purpose: that paper gets checked and re-entered fresh, not carried over blind from the old system. Confirm those before you rely on the roster.
- 4
Run both side by side briefly
Keep Deputy live and rostering off the new record for a short stretch. Compare the roster, the timesheets and the hours each system shows for the same week. This is where you catch anything the export missed or the import matched wrongly, while Deputy is still there as a check, before anyone depends on the new system alone.
- 5
Switch off Deputy
Once the two match for a full cycle and your team is being rostered and clocked from the new record without issues, cancel Deputy. Your data now sits in a plain database you own, so there is nothing else to migrate out later and no further export to arrange.
Where the real effort goes
The real work is not moving files, it is deciding what your fields and rules actually mean: how your break rules, sites and duty manager certificates map onto the new record, and how much timesheet and leave history you bother bringing across versus starting clean. When Enterprise DNA installs and runs it for you, this is the part they do with you.
Not ready for a call?
Get your Deputy switch plan by email
We will send you the step-by-step plan for moving your business off Deputy, what the move really involves, and how we would do it for you.
Sent. Check your inbox.
Your Deputy switch plan is on its way.
Rather talk it through? Book a call arrow_forwardThree ways to run it
Run it yourself, have it shaped to your venues, or have it run for you
Open source
Do it yourself
Free
- 1 Clone the repo
- 2 npm run demo, then open the folder in Claude Code
- 3 Type /attention
- 4 Import your Deputy exports and point it at your own database
Built around your business
We customise it
One setup fee
- check Your venues, areas, award or agreement rates and approval steps written in
- check Your Deputy staff, timesheets and the roster ahead brought across, with right-to-work paper checked person by person
- check A staff phone view or a clock-in screen at the counter, if your team needs one
- check Handed over for your managers to run
Omni by Enterprise DNA
We run it for you
One setup fee, then a monthly retainer
- check Everything in the customised version, installed and connected
- check The week's roster checks, timesheet approvals and the hours export to payroll run for you
- check Rule changes and new venues added as you grow, at no extra per-person cost
- check It runs inside Omni, our managed Command Centre, with the rest of your business
Questions
Instead of Deputy, answered
Is it really free? expand_more
Yes. MIT licence. Run it anywhere, change anything, no account with us.
How do my staff see their shifts? expand_more
The free version prints a weekly roster for the wall and drafts each person’s week as a message a manager sends. If your team needs an app on their phones with notifications, that is exactly what Enterprise DNA builds into your version.
What about clocking in on a tablet at the counter? expand_more
In the free version, whoever runs the day clocks people in and out by saying so. A kiosk or phone clock-in screen is a custom add we build for your version, writing into the same records.
Does it do payroll? expand_more
No, deliberately. It keeps the record payroll is built from: who was rostered, who worked, what breaks they took, what leave was approved. One export hands your payroll system the approved hours. Pay stays where PAYE lives.
We are in Australia and you keep citing New Zealand law. expand_more
The numbers the rules read, the rest window, the weekly ceiling, the roster notice, live in settings you change in one line, and the award references are already noted beside each rule. When we build your version, we write your award’s figures in properly.
Find out what Deputy costs your venues each year
Bring last month's Deputy invoice. In 30 minutes Sam works out what your group pays per year, what your venues use, and what one rostering system you own would replace it with. If it is a fit, we build it and run it. If it is not, take the free version and run it yourself.
Rostering for Claude Code is free and open source, published by Enterprise DNA.
Done paying for Deputy?
Book a 30-minute rostering bill review