This training covers everything you need to manage leave in Deputy, including the different leave types, adding & approving leave, syncing and tracking leave balances, and general time-saving tips. This training session is suited to managers who are new to Deputy and experienced users looking to optimise their leave management in Deputy.

Due to the number of questions and demand, we created this Help guide containing the training recording and the live questions and answers.

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Q & A Topics

Leave Balances

Requesting Leave

Leave Management


Public Holidays


Other Questions

Leave Balances

If leave is not visible to the employee will it then not show on lists available to staff?

If leave is not visible for employees, they won’t be able to see their leave balances but managers (who approve the leave) can still see the balances.

How to add the leave balances to employee profile?

You click on the employee’s profile and then click on “leave” on the left side.

What can I do if the leave accruals are not working correctly in my account?

This is an account specific question. Please reach out to our 24/7 support chat for further assistance.

How do you update employee leave balances per pay period?

Depending on which payroll software you're using and if we have a direct integration with that software it would either happen automatically through the integration whenever you do the timesheet export. Otherwise you would have to update the employee leave balances manually. We can directly sync leave balances from Xero & MYOB.

Does deputy keep track of TOIL balances. For example, if someone worked 40 hours last week does it keep a record that he is 2 hours in credit?

Leave accrual has to happen in your payroll software. We only show (if the sync is on) what is in your payroll software.

How does the leave accrual work in Deputy?

We don't recommend to accrue leave in Deputy. The source of truth for leave balances is always the pay roll software and therefore that's where the leave should be accrued.

Can we have it so employees see annual leave, but not the sick leave balance?

Yes, you can go into the leave rules in the business settings and then edit the sick leave and make it "not visible to Employees" which means only managers can see the sick leave balances.

Requesting Leave

I entered leave for an employee but Deputy included the 0.5 hrs unpaid meal break each day as a part of their vacation time. How do I exclude the meal break from the leave hours?

By default Deputy will subtract the meal break if enabled paid meal breaks is set to all meal breaks are unpaid for all locations. You may have a location have this setting set to all meal breaks are paid instead. Deputy bases the leave times for an employee by their main location settings which is: location's open time + default shift duration - meal break e.g. 9am + 8 hrs = 5pm - 60 min = 4pm.

Where can I set up default hours per one annual leave day taken please? ie 7.6 hours.

It should be by default 7.6 hrs. If this is not the case (We had a bug for salaried staff members with this in the past) please reach out to our 24/7 support chat and they’ll be able to help with your account.

Is there a way that all leave forms go to a specific manager for all employees issue is we are a small business with 6 employees with manager and administrator - the approval often goes to the administrator (we don't want that to occur).

The staff members can choose the manager where the leave requests go to when requesting leave.

How do I change the number of hours allocated to a leave day? We have an 8 hour day but 7.5 comes up when they apply. I currently have to undo the approval and change the hours.

This should be by default. Please reach out to our 24/7 support chat if this is not the case and they can assist you further.

Once you select approve leave how do I get them to stay on the schedule?

Change the Schedule view to one of the “by Employee” and you’ll be able to see the leaves in the schedule.

When I do personal leave for few hours I am unable to still have the employee on the roster. Can this be change?

If someone is on leave they’re blocked in the roster for that reason. This is by default.

When we have been adding and approving leave for our staff, it is not popping up in the schedule. Is there a reason this wouldn't be coming up like the view it is now?

Yes, you would have to change the schedule view to one of the "by Employee" options instead of "by Area". That will give you visibility of leave in the schedule.

Can we set up leave for just a few hours, not a full day?

This is unfortunately not possible at this stage.

Do only ‘approved’ leave appear on the schedule?

No, unapproved leave requests also appear on the schedule.

What scenario would not allow a Supervisor to approve leave?

A Supervisor can't approve leave for access levels above them (Location Managers & System Admins) or for other Supervisors.

Is there a way that we can force the employee to actually choose their manager for leave approvals? Sometimes they cherry pick and choose someone where they think they will get the approval.

You can't really force your employees to choose their managers for leave requests but you can limit the amount managers they can choose from depending on which managers are attached to the location that the employee is attached to.

There are extra leave types that have been added and employees are using both. If I want to remove one of the extra ones, how will that impact accruals in Deputy?


Can I set up visibility of specific leave types only to certain employees?

No but you can set the visibility per leave type, meaning you can make "Sick Leave" not visible but for every employee besides managers.

Can a supervisor see employee's personal leave balances during the timesheet approval process?

Yes, but not directly when approving timesheets. They can just click on leave balances in a staffs profile beforehand and then decide whether to approve or not.

Can extra leave types be deleted or do I just make them not visible to staff?

This depends on if the specific leave type has been used in your account in the past or if it hasn't. If it hasn't been used you can delete it under leave rules in the business settings. If they have been used in the past you'd have to make it invisible for employees.

Can supervisors be made into being unable to approve leave?

Yes, this can be achieved through a custom access level. Please reach out to our 24/7 support chat for further information.

One of our employees used her leave last week but set it up as an unavailability, how can we fix this? Is there a way to set it up as annual leave instead?

Yes, you can just add it as a leave timesheet on the timesheet approval page. Just choose the leave type in the "Area of work" and approve the timesheet.

Can leave request hours or leave types be edited after being approved by Admin only and not Employees?

Yes, once a leave request has been accepted the employee cannot modify it any further, only the approver can unapprove it and make changes to it.

Leave Management

When i added leave entitlements to my employees, it did not save. It just kept the default ones. I tried this a number of times but had the same result. What can I do?


Could you also add a new leave type for "Non Worked PHs"?

Yes, you can. Custom leave types can be created in the Business settings within Leave rules.

What's the best way to do RDO in Deputy?

The employee can just request a "Time off in Lieu" day and then deal with it like any other leave type.

Can a declined leave request be seen on the Time Off & Schedules Report as 'declined'?

No, declined leave requests can't be seen in the Time Off & Schedules report. Only approved and requested leaves are shown in this report.

Is there a report that we can add to our payroll documentation that shows who has requested the leave, type of leave and who had approved the leave?

The leave report has a colour legend showing requested and approved leave but at the moment it does not show the approver. You can add this as a feature request through the "Help" button on the top right corner.

Can you set up standard hours for each employee as ours all vary?

Standard hours is something that our product team is currently working on and it will be possible in the future to set this up for each employee individually.


Can you block out time so that it is not available for staff to apply for leave?

Yes, you can click on the date in the schedule and then tick the box “Block time off requests”.

Regarding unavailability, when I am building the schedule anyone who is unavailable is shown as blocked for the day, when in fact they may just be unavailable from 11 - 12 for example. How can I see easily what times they're unavailable for?

Yes, that is correct. Given that the employee has put an unavailability in for only 11-12 you can change the view in the schedule to "View by Employee / Day" and then see that employees unavailability in detail.

How do I approve annual leave so that it leaves staff member in the schedule but showing as on leave?

If you change the view in the schedule to any of the “by employee” views you’ll be able to see leave and unavailabilities in the schedule.

Public Holidays

When rostering staff on a public holiday, is there a way add regular staff who are normally rostered this day but not working?

Yes, it's a bit of a work around but you have to create an area and name it something like "Public Holiday not worked" etc. and then reach out to our support team so we can take that specific area off the Public Holiday pay (that area won't have a red background on Public Holidays). Then you can roster all the staff members that get paid the normal rate for not working a Public Holiday into this area.

How do you process paid public holidays?

Just add a public holiday in the schedule and we’ll attach the public holiday rates automatically to the timesheets. We will also show this in the demo.

Is it possible to set Public Holidays in the Time Off & Schedules Reports for all employees?

This is not possible at this stage but you can submit this as feedback through our "submit a feature request" which you can find when clicking on "Help" in the top right corner in your Deputy account.

That public holiday not worked workaround - Will it add those hours NOT worked into the report of hours worked?

Yes, it will do this but it will be in a seperate area called "Public Holiday not worked" so it will be easy to take it off the report.

Do you guys set up the public holiday in the schedule?
Easter next week is red for few days in our schedule. Was this done on your end?

Public Holidays have to be put in by the customer as we're operating in a lot of countries with a lot of different public holidays. For assistance in you specific account please reach out to our 24/7 support chat.


I would like to know how to set up Public Holidays in Deputy and Xero so that XERO automatically picks the PH rate when I export the time sheet?

When you put a Public Holiday into the schedule in Deputy it attached the Public Holiday rates automatically to the timesheet that gets exported into Xero.

Can we setup something called 'Time Off in Lieu"? Does this map to Xero?

We will talk about this briefly in the Q&A section coming up.

Do leave balances pull information directly from Xero?

Yes, if you have that integration turned on in the locations settings. This happens once every 24 hrs.

If someone has approved leave in Xero (not yet paid or taken) - is this picked up by Deputy?

This depends if you are referring to leave balances. If so, then Deputy does sync the leave balances across (if the import leave balance extension is enabled). It will update the leave balances for approved leave occurring on the same day leave is taken. You can read further into this at -

Does MYOB have a leave integration function?

Yes, we also have this integration with MYOB.

When integrating/syncing leave balances between Deputy & MYOB - what is the matching done on - first name and surname?

When the MYOB import leave extension is enabled Deputy matches the employees by Timesheet Export Code, then First Name and Last Name. This doesn't include the preferred name.

How does the leave increment work cause our payroll platform does not sync?


Does it depend more on your payroll system as to whether leave can be pulled through and paid as opposed to manually added?

Yes, we can sync leave balances with Xero & MYOB AR. Other payroll softwares we can only export leave timesheets too.

If we are using Deputy for salaried staff who do not complete timesheets, will the leave requests (approved) flow through to Xero and update the Xero leave balances in a given pay run?

Yes, once the leave was taken and the leave timesheet was submitted it will be exported in the pay run to Xero.

How do I add Xero to the services for Notifications & Integrations? I have gone to Edit Services, clicked on Xero, then clicked Save, but it is not saving my selection?


Should the syncing of leave balances be done manually or can we set up how frequent it should run and sync with Xero?

The syncing of leave balances with Xero is done automatically in Deputy once a day at around 2am once you've turned the leave sync on in your location settings (Notifications & Integrations).

Does the leave requests flow through and appear in Xero payroll as leave approved by the area?

Leave requests don't flow through to Xero. Once the leave was taken and the leave timesheet is created it flows over to Xero as a leave timesheet.

How do I set up to export timesheets for the fist time to Xero?

Firstly, make sure to connect your active Xero subscription with Deputy through the location settings under "Payroll". You're required to be a system administrator on both accounts. Then you can just choose "Xero" as your export option when exporting the timesheets. For more information about exporting to Xero have a look at this article from our help portal:

With the export codes for leave types - What if we have changed the ones we should not have changed if we are working with MYOB AR?

If these leave types haven't been used you can still delete them in Deputy. You'll see this if they have a red "X" next to it on the right side. If that's not the case the only option would be to make them "not visible for Employees" in the settings and change their name to something like "DO_NOT_USE_leave" etc. and educate your managers to not use those leave types anymore. Make sure you don't have multiple leave types with the same export code as well!

If you are creating a custom leave item, what does the export code need to match in Xero?

The export code for your custom leave item has to match the leave name in Xero and character sensitive.

Why would my locations show this integration option multiple times as activated?

This can happen if the integration was turned on multiple times (even by multiple people). You can just delete all the double ups. Just make sure to not delete the one that has "Used in all locations" underneath it if you want to use the integration in all locations.

What information do you need from MYOB to sync with Deputy?

This is a hard question to answer broadly and depends on a few factors, i.e. if you want to sync leave balances with MYOB, where you want to keep the source of truth for your pay rates and also if create new employees first in Deputy or in MYOB. Please reach out to our 24/7 support chat for assistance in your specific account.

We have a handful of staff that do not match with what is in Xero and we have the sync turned on. How can this be?

There are various reasons why this sync is not successful. For example: mismatch employee names/email, different hiring dates or pay rates. Please reach out to our 24/7 support chat for assistance in your specific account.

We have leave balances in Xero but it's still showing as "No leave Balance found" in Deputy. How can this be?


How do leave applications in Deputy sync with Xero? Is it when we export the timesheets to Xero?

Yes, once a leave has been taken and therefore a leave timesheet submitted it will export with all your other timesheets to Xero.

Is there a specific help page on the portal to get more information about the correct export to MYOB?

Yes, please have a look at this article from our help portal and choose your MYOB version:

The MYOB option for the integrations shows as MYOB AccountsRight. Will this also work with MYOB Essentials?

We don't have a direct integration with MYOB essentials in the sense that you can sync leave balances or pay rates etc. but we can export timesheets directly into MYOB essentials. Just choose the "MYOB essentials" option when exporting timesheets.

Other Questions

What version of Deputy are you demonstrating this on, Premium?

Yes, we’re always demoing our training sessions on a Premium account.

Is the guide in the training settings to setup export codes for leave?

Export codes for leave types should be put in at the business settings on the right top side of your profile. Just click on “business settings” and then click on “leave” and then “leave rules” to change the export codes for your leave types.

How do I reach the 24/7 support?

The blue speech bubble on the right bottom side of your screen in Deputy.

Where can we download the recording of the session?

All our webinars can be found on our website.

Are you going to add functionality to upload documents to attach to leave applications such as copies of Death Notices or Doctor's Certificates etc?

Currently you can’t do this in an employee’s profile in the HR forms but you could add a “training requirement” to this employee and call it “Doc Cert” etc. and attach it there.

Where can we put staff stress profiles, would that be part of the sick leave?

You can find staff stress profiles in their profiles under "Job information". If you require a custom stress profile in your account please reach out to our 24/7 support chat to assist you with this.

If an employee only worked 1 hour and then went home sick do we still need to pay the extra hours for minimum engagement?

This would be award specific and giving you advice on that could be considered legal advice and therefore please reach out to FairWork Australia for this.

How far back can we access leave management data?

Since the Deputy account was created.

How can I create/add an area?

To add or create an area, once in the "Locations" tab, click on "Edit Settings" for the location you have selected. Then click on "Areas" on the left side of the window. Once in the Area tab, you should have near the top in grey "Quickly enter a new area..." and in there you can create your new area.

Is there a way to track time and half owed for an employee? Not all NZ holidays pick up the extra time.

Currently, Deputy doesn't provide an option in NZ to track TOIL or other variations of time owned. You can submit this as a feedback through our feature request function under "Help".

Can the wording "Area of work" be renamed to include or "Area of work or leave"? Managers seem to forgot where this is.

The wording is part of our core product and can't be easily changed but feel free to submit this feedback as a "feature request" to our product team. You'll find the link through clicking on "Help" in the top right corner within the system.

How do you track the hours that go towards time off in lieu?

You can set up a location called "Time off in lieu" and then turn on the leave accrual through the location settings. Just click on "Notifications & Integrations" and turn the "Leave accrual" integration. You can then choose the leave type "Time off in lieu" and set an accrual ratio of 1:1 which means an hour worked in this location accrues an hour of TOIL. Feel free to reach out to our 24/7 support chat for assistance in your specific account.

Can you explain the differences between Location Manager, Supervisor and System Admin Access.

Yes, those are our default access levels. For more detailed information have a look at this article from our help portal:

Does the clock on notification include the Kiosk or just the Ipad clock on?

Yes, the notification includes all clock ins, including from Kiosks & all mobile devices.

What does the "X" next to leave type in the settings mean?

The red "X" allows you to delete this certain type of leave. Please note that you cannot delete a leave that has already been used and you cannot recuperate a deleted leave type

If you change an employees rate AFTER the timesheet has been approved do you have to "un-approve" the timesheet, then change the rate and then re-approve the timesheet?

Yes that's correct. You un-approve the timesheet, then make the change in pay rate and then immediately re-approve the timesheet to ensure the right pay is set up.

Where does the attachment save to after it is sent in newsfeed?

It remains within the post history. Using the filter options, you can view all the different types of posts.

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