workmonitor.
Best for teams that bill for their time and want captured hours, live project margin and a payroll run that balances before it is exported.
- No timers to forget
- One engine for invoice and payroll
- Margin, live
VSTime tracking · For managers and finance
Deputy alternatives
Keep the roster. Make every hour reconcile to the cent.
- Free for two seats
- No card
- Deputy history imports by CSV
Updated October 3, 2026. Deputy details reviewed September 7, 2026 from public materials — check them against its own site before you decide.
workmonitor.
versusDeputyWhere WorkMonitor wins
- No timers to forgetHours are captured as the work happens, so the forgotten ones get billed too.
- One engine for invoice and payrollApproved hours bill and pay from the same rates, balanced to the cent.
- Margin, liveBudget burn updates as hours land — not when the invoice is drafted.
Where Deputy winsShift rostering with award and union rules
The difference that matters
Timers record what people remember. WorkMonitor bills what they worked.
WorkMonitor picks up after the shift: what actually happened, whether the hours reconcile, who approved them, and a payroll run that has to balance before it can be exported.
The real product — not a screenshot. Click a tab.
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Monitoring & Analytics
A clear picture of the working week.
Search or ask…
Northlight Studio · sample
Capacity
Workload against a healthy band
AVERAGE LOAD
63/ 100
HIGH LOAD
3people
ELEVATED
2people
NO DATA / OFF
1withheld
PERSONLOAD INDEXBAND
- LMLena M.After-hours load · rising86High load
- RPRavi P.No-break streak · rising79High load
- AKAria K.Context switching · rising74High load
- SDSara D.Workload trend · rising61Elevated
- JMJon M.Context switching48Elevated
- TVTravis V.No-break streak · tracking off28Steady
6 people measured · 1 with app tracking off, timing signals withheldWeek 36 · 28-day window
A workload signal, not a performance grade — activity minutes already captured, never emotion or affect recognition. The Burnout Guardian reads it only for people who granted that consent.
What it returns
What WorkMonitor returns on your own team
Your headcount and loaded cost, the subscription already subtracted.
$
Salary plus everything on top of it.
ESTIMATED ANNUAL RETURN
- Time recovered from idle and drift6% of paid time, back in the week$228,000
- WorkMonitor, 40 people at $10 a month−$4,800
Net, over a year
$223,200
Estimated net return $223,200 a year.
47.5×
the subscription, returned
1 mo
to pay it back
96
hours a week, across the team
Arithmetic on your figures at the calculator’s low-end assumption of 6% of paid time recovered — not a measurement of your team. Itemise it by region and add-on
A timer records what people remember. The invoice should carry what they worked.
workmonitor.vsTimer-based time tracking
6differences, worked through below
Hours that never get entered
With WorkMonitor
Captured as the work happens and attributed to the project, with idle split out rather than rounded in, so the sheet is drafted before anyone opens it.
Timer-based time tracking
Somebody forgets the timer or rebuilds the week on Friday from memory — and an hour nobody entered is an hour nobody bills.
From hours to invoice and payroll
With WorkMonitor
Approved hours seed the invoice and the payroll run directly, priced by one shared rate engine, so the two cannot disagree.
Timer-based time tracking
Export, reformat, paste into payroll or invoicing, then reconcile to find what got mangled on the way.
Project margin
With WorkMonitor
Budget burn and margin update as hours land, in hours and in money, so an over-running project shows while there is still time to act.
Timer-based time tracking
Discovered when the invoice is drafted, after the over-run has already been paid for.
Payroll errors
With WorkMonitor
A cent-exact pre-flight that has to balance before a run can be exported, with idle already split out of the hours it prices.
Timer-based time tracking
Spreadsheet arithmetic, found at audit as a recurring few pence — or a paid idle hour nobody caught.
Who signs off the money
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.
When a client disputes the bill
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 accepts it or opens a thread about it.
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 a manager gets, in one platform
- Projects, clients, tasks & budgets (rate cards, burn)
The shortlist
The 5 Deputy alternatives managers shortlist
WorkMonitor first, because this is our page. The other Deputy competitors in their own words, each with its own head-to-head.
QuickBooks Time
Time tracking and scheduling inside the QuickBooks ecosystem, with clock-in, GPS and direct payroll handoff.
WorkMonitor vs QuickBooks TimeConnecteam
An all-in-one operations app for deskless teams: time clock, checklists, training and internal communication on mobile.
WorkMonitor vs ConnecteamHomebase
Scheduling, time clock, hiring and payroll for small hourly businesses — retail, hospitality and local services.
WorkMonitor vs HomebaseClockify
Free time tracking for unlimited users, with timesheets, reporting and paid tiers above it.
WorkMonitor vs Clockify
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 last quarter’s cost and margin read the same way as next quarter’s. 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.
Questions
Deputy alternatives: what managers ask
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 a cent-exact 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 is the best Deputy alternative for office and project teams?
- For desk-based and project work, one that measures the shift instead of only scheduling it. WorkMonitor captures hours as they happen, shows load against a healthy band, routes timesheets through approval and prices the payroll run on the same rate engine as the invoice. For rostering hourly shift workers, a scheduling tool remains the better buy.
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.
Who's most at risk of burnout?
Pick a question above and WorkMonitor AI will answer from your team's real numbers.
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.