Deputy vs Tanda vs Employment Hero: rostering, time and attendance and Modern Award interpretation for Australian employers

Getting Modern Award pay wrong is one of the few small-business mistakes that gets worse in silence. A misread penalty provision or a wrong classification does not announce itself. It produces a fortnightly pay run that looks entirely normal, that your employees accept, that your accountant reconciles without comment — and that quietly accrues a liability for every shift worked. By the time someone asks the question, usually a departing employee or a Fair Work inspector, you are not fixing one pay run. You are fixing years of them, across every person who ever held that classification, plus superannuation, plus interest.

That asymmetry is why rostering and award interpretation software has become close to standard for Australian employers with shift workers. Deputy, Tanda and Employment Hero are the three platforms most small and medium businesses end up choosing between. They overlap heavily, they are marketed almost identically, and they are genuinely different underneath. This article is about which one fits which kind of business — and about what none of them will do for you.

What award interpretation software actually does (and doesn't)

Award interpretation software takes recorded hours and applies rules to them: ordinary hours versus overtime, weekday versus weekend versus public holiday, whether a break was taken and whether its absence triggers a payment, whether a shift was long enough to satisfy minimum engagement, which allowances attach to which conditions, and how casual employment differs from part-time. It produces pay categories and hours that flow into payroll. That is a real saving — doing it manually for a café with twenty casuals is a spreadsheet exercise nobody performs consistently for long.

Here is the part vendors say quietly. The software does not assume your legal liability. Under the Fair Work Act, the employer is responsible for correct payment. If you tell the system a person is a Level 2 when the duties they actually perform make them a Level 4, the system will not notice. Attach the wrong award to a business unit, forget an allowance that attaches to a particular task, or configure a minimum engagement period incorrectly, and the platform will apply your mistake perfectly, every pay period, without hesitation. A wrong configuration does not produce obviously wrong pay. It produces confidently wrong pay, which is far more dangerous, because nothing looks broken.

The other honest constraint: this article does not quote pay rates, penalty percentages, loadings or allowance amounts, anywhere. Award figures change, most commonly from the first full pay period on or after 1 July following the Annual Wage Review, and vary by award, classification, level, pay point, age, apprenticeship year and employment type. A number published here would be stale within months and could lead an employer to underpay. Where this article describes rules, it describes their structure — that weekend and public holiday work attracts penalty rates differing by award and classification, or that casuals receive a loading in lieu of leave entitlements. For figures, use the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay and Conditions Tool or the award text published by the Fair Work Commission.

At a glance

	Deputy	Tanda	Employment Hero
Core strength	Rostering and demand-driven scheduling	Award interpretation and time capture accuracy	All-in-one HR and payroll
Payroll	Integrated only	Integrated, or Tanda's own payroll	Built in
STP Phase 2 lodgement	Via connected payroll	Via Tanda payroll or connected payroll	Native
Award library	Broad, pre-built, customisable	Deepest and most configurable	Broad, held in the payroll engine
Time clock	iPad kiosk with facial recognition, GPS mobile	Purpose-built kiosk, photo and facial verification	App and tablet kiosk
Demand forecasting	Strongest	Strong live wage-to-sales tracking	Basic
HR depth	Minimal	Moderate	Extensive
Typical setup effort	Low to moderate	Moderate to high, usually vendor-assisted	Moderate, higher if migrating payroll
Pricing shape	Per user per month, tiered	Per employee per month, modular	Per employee per month, plan-based

The verdict. If your main problem is building good rosters quickly across shifting demand, Deputy is the most pleasant tool to live in daily and the easiest to get running. If your award is genuinely hard — SCHADS, an enterprise agreement, complex allowances, or a history you are nervous about — Tanda is built for that fight and worth the longer setup. If rostering is secondary and you want one system for hiring, onboarding, HR records, leave, payroll and STP, Employment Hero consolidates the most into a single subscription. None of the three removes your obligation to verify the configuration.

Deputy

Deputy is a rostering and time-and-attendance platform, Australian in origin, and it shows in the award handling. It sits deliberately in front of payroll rather than replacing it, pushing approved timesheets into Xero, MYOB, Employment Hero Payroll, QuickBooks and others.

Who it suits. Multi-site hospitality and retail, allied health practices with variable clinic hours, and any business where the daily pain is building the roster, not running payroll. Businesses with 5 to 200 staff get the most from it.

Strengths. The scheduling experience is the best of the three by a clear margin — building a week, copying a template, publishing, handling swaps and open shifts, and filling a last-minute gap are all fast. Demand forecasting is a genuine differentiator: pull sales data from a connected POS and Deputy can propose a roster shaped to expected trade and a wage target. The pre-built award library covers the common Australian awards and can be customised. The iPad kiosk with facial recognition is well executed, and mobile clock-in with geofencing suits staff moving between sites.

Genuine weaknesses. Award interpretation is good but not the deepest — for unusual award structures or an enterprise agreement you will spend real time on custom pay rules and may hit limits. With no native payroll, your compliance story is only as strong as the Deputy-to-payroll mapping, and that mapping is your responsibility. HR functionality is thin. Pricing rises noticeably when you add time and attendance, and per-user pricing stings a business with a long tail of casuals who work a handful of shifts a year.

Standout capability. Sales-driven demand forecasting and auto-scheduling to a labour cost target.

Tanda

Tanda is Australian, Brisbane-based, and has always led with compliance rather than convenience. Its positioning is essentially: your award is complicated, we will model it properly, and we will make sure the hours you pay against are real.

Who it suits. Aged care, disability and home care providers under SCHADS; larger hospitality and retail groups; manufacturing and logistics; and any employer covered by an enterprise agreement or an award with awkward clause interactions. Businesses from roughly 20 staff upwards, especially where a compliance review has already made someone nervous.

Strengths. The rules engine is the most configurable of the three, and implementation is hands-on — you are set up with help rather than pointed at documentation. It handles the structurally hard cases better: broken shifts, sleepovers, travel between clients, split shifts, minimum engagement across multiple attendances in a day, and allowance triggers tied to specific tasks. Time capture is a strength in its own right: the tablet clock with photo and facial verification suits environments where buddy-punching is a real cost, and exception-based approval surfaces anomalies before they reach payroll. Live wage-to-sales tracking gives managers a cost signal during the week, not in hindsight.

Genuine weaknesses. The rostering interface is more utilitarian than Deputy's — capable, but built for correctness first. Setup takes longer and is harder to do yourself, the flipside of the depth; for a simple business under a straightforward award that investment is disproportionate. Tanda's own payroll is newer than the established Australian products and worth evaluating carefully rather than adopting by default. HR features exist but do not replace a proper HR platform.

Standout capability. Depth of award and agreement configuration, with implementation support that actually engages with your specific clauses.

Employment Hero

Employment Hero is a different animal: an HR platform with payroll at its core that added rostering and time capture, rather than a rostering platform reaching toward payroll. Its payroll engine is the widely used Australian one many accountants and bookkeepers already know.

Who it suits. Businesses that want to consolidate — one place for hiring, onboarding, contracts, policies, leave, payroll and STP. Professional services, allied health practices, offices with some shift work, and growing businesses tired of stitching four subscriptions together.

Strengths. The HR breadth is real and the other two do not attempt it: contracts and templates, policy acknowledgement, onboarding checklists, certifications, performance reviews, hiring, and an employee app carrying benefits and discounts. Payroll and STP Phase 2 reporting are native, removing an entire category of integration risk — no mapping mismatch between two vendors' pay categories, because there is only one vendor. Leave balances and accruals live in the same system as the roster.

Genuine weaknesses. Rostering is the weakest of the three. For a café juggling shifting demand, last-minute swaps and tight labour cost targets it will feel less capable than Deputy, and demand forecasting is basic. Award interpretation sits in the payroll engine rather than being visible at the roster, so managers get less feedback about the cost consequences of a rostering decision at the moment they make it. Plan and module structures can be confusing, and the full stack costs more than a rostering-only tool. Migrating payroll mid-financial-year is a real project.

Standout capability. One vendor from job ad to STP lodgement.

Head to head

Award interpretation depth and which awards are pre-built

All three ship pre-built configurations for the commonly used awards: hospitality and retail, health and community services, clerks, and the main building and construction group. Coverage overlaps heavily for MA000119 Restaurant Industry Award and MA000004 General Retail Industry Award, where the structural problems — evening, weekend and public holiday penalties, casual loading, minimum engagement, span of hours, overtime thresholds, break entitlements and split shifts — are well understood and well modelled.

Difficulty concentrates in three places. First, MA000100 SCHADS, where broken shifts, client cancellation, travel time and vehicle allowances between clients, sleepovers, remote response and shift-type-specific minimum engagement interact in ways that defeat simple rule engines. Tanda is strongest here, and this is the clearest single case for choosing it. Second, the trades awards — MA000025 Electrical, MA000036 Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers, MA000020 Building and Construction — where apprentice progression by year and competency, tool, travel and site allowances, RDO accrual and inclement weather provisions all need attention. Apprentice progression is a recurring source of underpayment simply because nobody updates the record on the anniversary. Third, MA000038 Road Transport (Long Distance Operations), where the payment structure itself can differ from ordinary hourly rostering and interacts with fatigue management rules that are not an award matter at all.

Whichever platform you choose, the pre-built award is a starting template, not a finished configuration. It does not know your classifications.

Rostering and demand forecasting

Deputy wins on rostering experience and forecasting. Tanda is close on capability and better on live cost visibility during the week. Employment Hero is adequate for stable, repeating shift patterns and noticeably behind for volatile trade. If a manager spends an hour a day in the rostering screen, that difference compounds.

Capturing time accurately

Award rules only matter if the hours are true. All three offer mobile clock-in with location and tablet kiosks with facial or photo verification. Tanda's hardware story is the most deliberate, Deputy's kiosk the most polished, Employment Hero's the most basic. One caution applies to all three: biometric information is sensitive information under the Privacy Act. Get informed written consent, explain what is stored and for how long, and offer a genuine non-biometric alternative.

Rounding rules deserve a mention. Any rule that systematically rounds clock-ins later and clock-outs earlier will underpay over time. If you round, round neutrally, and document why.

The timesheet-to-payroll handoff

This is where most real-world errors originate, and it is the least discussed part of the stack. Every hour the interpretation engine classifies has to map to a pay category in payroll, and that mapping is a configuration you own. A new allowance added in a wage review, a new pay category created in payroll, a business unit added without its award attached — any of these can silently break it. Employment Hero avoids the cross-vendor version of this problem by having only one vendor. Deputy has the most mature integrations but the most joins. Tanda sits in between depending on whether you use its payroll. Whatever you use, reconcile interpreted hours to payroll output for the first few runs, line by line, by hand.

STP Phase 2 reporting

STP Phase 2 is not simply "the ATO gets your payroll file". It requires gross earnings to be disaggregated into separate components — paid leave, allowances itemised by type, overtime, bonuses and commissions, directors' fees, lump sums and salary sacrifice — alongside income type, employment and tax treatment codes, and cessation reasons where employment ends.

The practical consequence is that how you classify hours upstream determines whether the ATO report is right downstream. Bundling an allowance into ordinary hours, or treating overtime as ordinary time, produces an STP report that misstates the components even when total pay is correct. It matters for superannuation too, because ordinary time earnings treat overtime and various allowances differently, and an SG calculation built on a wrong base is wrong every quarter. Confirm current superannuation guarantee timing and rate requirements with the ATO, including payday superannuation arrangements, rather than assuming last year's settings still apply.

Only the payroll product lodges. Deputy never does. Tanda does if you use its payroll. Employment Hero does natively.

Built-in versus integrated payroll

Built-in means fewer joins, one vendor to call, one place for records — and a harder exit if you outgrow it. Integrated means keeping the payroll your bookkeeper knows and your accountant can audit, at the cost of a mapping you must maintain. There is no universally right answer, but if you already run payroll in Xero or MYOB and it works, do not tear it out to buy a rostering tool.

Implementation effort

Deputy will have you rostering in a day and correctly configured in a few weeks if you take the award work seriously. Tanda takes longer, usually with vendor involvement, and produces a better result on hard awards. Employment Hero's HR side goes live quickly; payroll migration is the long pole, and the sane time to do it is the start of a financial year.

Which should you choose?

Café or restaurant under MA000119 with heavy weekend trade. Deputy, integrated with your POS and Xero or MYOB. Demand forecasting genuinely reduces wage cost, and the award is well modelled everywhere, so you are not paying for interpretation depth you will not use. Pay close attention to split shifts, minimum engagement and break rules in setup.

Retailer under MA000004 with casuals across a few stores. Deputy for the rostering experience, or Employment Hero if you also want onboarding and HR records in one place. Watch junior classifications and roster change notice rules.

Disability or home care provider under SCHADS MA000100. Tanda. Broken shifts, travel between clients, client cancellation and sleepovers are exactly the cases that break simpler engines, and implementation support matters more than the interface. Budget for an adviser to review the configuration.

Trades business with apprentices under MA000025 or MA000036. Tanda if you have more than a handful of apprentices and site or travel allowances in play; Deputy if the crew is small and the award use is straightforward. Either way, set a calendar reminder for each apprentice's progression date — this is where trades businesses most often underpay.

One system for HR, payroll and rostering. Employment Hero, accepting rostering as the compromise.

Already committed to Xero or MYOB payroll. Deputy or Tanda in front of it. Do not replace working payroll to solve a rostering problem.

Getting your configuration right

Software reduces risk. These steps are what convert it into compliance.

• Confirm the award, classification, level and pay point for every employee individually, based on the duties they actually perform, not the job title on the contract. This is the single largest source of systemic underpayment.
• Verify the first two or three pay runs by hand against the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay and Conditions Tool. Pick a weekday shift, a weekend shift, a public holiday, a shift with overtime and a shift with an allowance, and check each manually. If it is wrong on one, it has been wrong on every equivalent shift.
• Check allowances explicitly. They are the most commonly missed component because they attach to conditions rather than hours, and they must be itemised separately for STP Phase 2.
• Keep records for seven years, legible, in English and readily accessible, and issue pay slips within one working day of payment. Export periodically so changing vendors never orphans your history.
• Re-check after every Annual Wage Review, from the first full pay period on or after 1 July. Confirm the platform applied the change, on the right date, to the right people.
• Have an adviser review any complex setup — SCHADS, an enterprise agreement, annualised wage arrangements, or apprentices. Annualised salary arrangements carry their own record-keeping and reconciliation obligations under several awards and are a common trap for salaried staff working award-covered hours.
• Document your reasoning. A written note on a judgement call is far better evidence of good faith than a memory two years later.

Frequently asked questions

Does award interpretation software make me compliant with the Fair Work Act? No. It automates the calculation; it does not take on your liability. Treat it as a control that reduces arithmetic error, not a guarantee, and verify the configuration driving it.

Which platform lodges Single Touch Payroll for me? Whichever product runs your payroll. Employment Hero lodges STP Phase 2 natively. Tanda lodges if you use its payroll, otherwise your connected payroll does. Deputy does not lodge at all.

Why won't this article tell me the penalty rates for my award? Because they change, most commonly from the first full pay period on or after 1 July following the Annual Wage Review, and differ by award, classification, level, age and employment type. A number published here would go stale and could cause you to underpay. Use the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay and Conditions Tool.

How long do I have to keep time and wages records? Seven years, legible and in English, readily accessible to a Fair Work Inspector. Pay slips must be issued within one working day of payment.

Do I still need a bookkeeper or workplace relations adviser? For setup and periodic review, yes — a small bounded cost against an open-ended underpayment liability.

What if I discover I have underpaid staff? Act promptly and get advice. You will owe back pay, superannuation and potentially interest, and civil penalties can apply; intentional underpayment can attract criminal liability under changes that commenced in 2025. Small businesses should also review the Voluntary Small Business Wage Compliance Code.

A note on pricing

All three price per employee (or per user) per month in Australian dollars, generally excluding GST, and all three change pricing periodically. At the time of writing, Deputy's scheduling-only tier is the cheapest entry point, with the combined scheduling and time-and-attendance tier costing meaningfully more per user; Tanda quotes per employee per month as a bundle, with payroll priced separately; and Employment Hero's per-employee cost is the highest at comparable feature levels because it includes HR and payroll rather than rostering alone.

Two modelling notes. First, per-employee pricing punishes a long tail of rarely-worked casuals — check whether you are billed on headcount or on active users in the period, because the difference is substantial for a hospitality business with fifty names on the books and twenty working in a given month. Second, the headline price is rarely the total: payroll, HR, hiring and advisory modules are usually add-ons, and a realistic full-stack quote can be several times the advertised entry price. Confirm current pricing directly on each vendor's website before budgeting — the descriptions above are indicative only and are not a quote.

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Important disclaimer

This article is general information only. It is not legal, workplace relations, tax or financial advice, and it does not take account of your particular circumstances.

No pay rates, penalty rates, loadings, allowance amounts or superannuation percentages are stated anywhere in this article, deliberately, because those figures change and vary by award, classification and circumstance. Do not rely on any description of award structure here as a statement of your specific obligations.

Confirm your obligations using the Fair Work Ombudsman and its Pay and Conditions Tool, the award text published by the Fair Work Commission, and the Australian Taxation Office for Single Touch Payroll and superannuation guarantee requirements. For anything complex — SCHADS, enterprise agreements, annualised wage arrangements, apprentices, or a suspected historical underpayment — engage a qualified workplace relations adviser or employment lawyer.

Product features, integrations and pricing reflect the position at the time of writing and change frequently. Verify current details with each vendor before purchasing. Startup Help is not affiliated with Deputy, Tanda or Employment Hero.