Compare · Time tracking
WorkMonitor vs Deputy
Shift scheduling, rostering and time clock for hourly teams, with award interpretation and labour-cost forecasting.
Written from public materials and reviewed September 7, 2026. Check anything here against Deputy’s own site before you decide, and everything below about WorkMonitor is read from the same catalogue as our product pages.
Filling in a timesheet, or having one already written
workmonitor.vsTimer-based time tracking
How the sheet gets filled
With WorkMonitor
Captured as the work happens, with idle detected and split out rather than rounded away.
Timer-based time tracking
Somebody starts a timer, or reconstructs the week on Friday from a calendar and memory.
Corrections
With WorkMonitor
Corrections append, carrying the author and the reason, with the original still readable.
Timer-based time tracking
A cell is overwritten. The original number is gone, and so is the reason it changed.
From hours to money
With WorkMonitor
Approved hours seed the invoice and the payroll run directly, through one shared rate engine.
Timer-based time tracking
Export, reformat, paste into payroll or invoicing, then reconcile to find what got mangled.
Rounding
With WorkMonitor
An integer-cent pre-flight that has to balance before a run can be exported.
Timer-based time tracking
Floating-point maths in a spreadsheet, discovered at audit as a recurring few pence.
Proving the hours
With WorkMonitor
A finalized invoice seeds a certificate the client checks themselves, without an account.
Timer-based time tracking
A line item and a total. The client either accepts it or opens a thread about it.
Who signs it off
With WorkMonitor
Multi-stage approval that refuses a self-approval rather than warning about it.
Timer-based time tracking
Whoever has the file, which is usually more people than anyone intended.
The question we get asked
Scheduling is the reason we bought our current tool. Does WorkMonitor replace it?
No, and it should not pretend to. There is no rostering engine and no award interpretation here. What it replaces is everything downstream of the shift: what actually happened during it, whether the hours reconcile, who approved them, and whether the client or auditor can verify them — which is why some teams run both rather than switching.
Timesheets — submitted hours against recorded hours
What WorkMonitor ships, with its real status
- Productivity scoring (score, heatmap, category breakdown, rollups)
- Score explainability / breakdown
- App classification & category overrides + per-app privacy deny-list
- Focus & deep-work analysis
- Workload capacity signal (feeds AI Burnout Guardian)
- BI warehouse export (connector in Integrations)
Switching
Bringing your Deputy history across
Nobody switches tools if it means abandoning a year of history. Export yours as CSV and the importer maps it onto our columns. There is no dedicated Deputy preset yet, so expect to line the columns up once rather than not at all.
The columns your export needs to line up with
- date
- minutes
- project
- task
- note
Six columns, mapped once on the first import. Rows that cannot be normalised still pass through, so the importer reports exactly which ones need attention rather than rejecting the file.
After the import
Where your Deputy history lands
Imported hours sit on the same ledger as everything captured after them, so a week from before the switch and a week from after it are read the same way. Corrections append with an author and a reason rather than overwriting, which is what lets you answer why a number changed long after anyone remembers.
Payouts — a payroll run built from approved hours
When Deputy is the better answer
You are rostering shift workers and need scheduling with award or union-rule interpretation. We do not build rostering, and that is the whole job for many of their customers.
If that is the deciding requirement, buy that instead. Nothing on this page is worth reading if the unflattering half is missing from it, which is also why every capability above carries its real status rather than a tick.
Questions
Moving from Deputy
Answered about what WorkMonitor does, including where the answer is no.
- Does WorkMonitor do shift scheduling and rostering?
- No. There is capacity planning — workload against a healthy band, so you can see who is overloaded before they tell you — but no roster builder and no award interpretation. If scheduling is the core requirement, keep the tool that does it.
- How do I move my Deputy data into WorkMonitor?
- Export it as CSV and the importer maps it onto our columns — email, date, minutes, project, task, note. There is no dedicated preset for this vendor yet, so the columns get lined up once on the first import. Rosters and award rules do not come across, because neither exists here — the hours do, and they land on the same ledger as everything captured afterwards.
- Can WorkMonitor tell me if a team is overloaded?
- That is what the capacity view is for: per-member load against a healthy band, at team level, so workload balance is visible as a distribution rather than as a total. Attendance derives first and last activity per local day, which matters once a team crosses time zones.
- Does WorkMonitor handle overtime and pay rules?
- It runs approved hours through one shared rate engine into a payroll run with an integer-cent pre-flight. Jurisdiction-specific award and union-rule interpretation is not modelled, so a workforce governed by complex awards needs the tool built for that.
- Can employees clock in from a phone?
- Yes, from the phone browser, with no app to install and no store account per worker. For desk-based staff attendance is also derived from real activity per local day, so most people never clock in at all — the punch is there for the work a machine cannot see.
- What does WorkMonitor cost for an hourly workforce?
- Per seat like any other team, with two free. Worth noting the fit before the price, though: without a native mobile app, an hourly deskless workforce is not who this serves best today.
Ask AI
Ask anything about your team
Plain-language answers about your own workforce data, with the figures behind them. Pick a question to see how it reads.
Pick a question above and WorkMonitor AI will answer from your team's real numbers.
Also comparing
Other time tracking tools
- WorkMonitor vs QuickBooks TimeTime tracking and scheduling inside the QuickBooks ecosystem, with clock-in, GPS and direct payroll handoff.
- WorkMonitor vs ConnecteamAn all-in-one operations app for deskless teams: time clock, checklists, training and internal communication on mobile.
- WorkMonitor vs HomebaseScheduling, time clock, hiring and payroll for small hourly businesses — retail, hospitality and local services.
- WorkMonitor vs ClockifyFree time tracking for unlimited users, with timesheets, reporting and paid tiers above it.
Take these with you
The software is the easy part of a rollout
Here is what we would send a manager doing one for the first time: how to read a productivity number, what to say to a remote team before anything is installed, and a policy you can adopt as written.
Point it at one team for a week.
Create the account, put the agent on a handful of desks, and leave it alone. On Friday you read the week instead of reconstructing it: hours against their projects, focus and idle per person, and the timesheets already filled in.
Free for two seats. No card, and no sales call to sit through.