Comparison
Deputy vs Project Payroll CrewTime for construction
15 minutes, your EBA, no sales script.
Who each one is for
Different tools, built for different environments
Both products are good at what they were designed for. The question is which environment you actually run payroll in.
Deputy
Fixed venues and predictable shifts
- Rostering across cafes, stores, clinics and warehouses where the workplace does not move.
- Shift swaps, availability and demand based scheduling for large casual teams.
- Award covered rostering where the pay rules come from a published modern award.
- Teams whose payroll runs in a separate general payroll product.
Project Payroll CrewTime
Multiple sites and moving crews
- Crews who split a day across jobs and cost codes rather than working one venue.
- Builders paying under an enterprise agreement sitting on top of the award.
- Site allowances driven by job, location and condition flags.
- Businesses who want capture and the pay run in one chain, with no export step.
Compared
Deputy and Project Payroll CrewTime, capability by capability
Built for construction sites
- Deputy
- Built for fixed venue rostering, then applied to other industries
- Project Payroll CrewTime
- Built for site work first: sheds, gates, multiple jobs a day
EBA (not just award) interpretation
- Deputy
- Award based pay conditions you configure. Deputy's own construction award (MA000020) documentation states its pay engine is not legal or payroll advice and that the employer remains responsible for paying correctly
- Project Payroll CrewTime
- We read your specific enterprise agreement clause by clause and build it into the payroll engine, then keep it current when rates move
Multi job days with cost codes
- Deputy
- Shifts sit against locations and areas
- Project Payroll CrewTime
- One day splits across jobs, each block lands on the right cost code
Condition flags for site allowances
- Deputy
- Allowances applied from roster and shift settings
- Project Payroll CrewTime
- Workers flag height, confined space or wet weather, foremen confirm, the rules engine prices it
Offline first punch
- Deputy
- Designed for connected venues with reliable wifi
- Project Payroll CrewTime
- Clock on with zero signal, queued and synced when coverage returns
Kiosk mode
- Deputy
- Shared tablet kiosk available
- Project Payroll CrewTime
- Site Sheet kiosk on the shed wall, for flat batteries and no phone days
RCTI for labour hire
- Deputy
- Not part of the product
- Project Payroll CrewTime
- Labour hire worker type with recipient created tax invoices generated from captured hours
Payroll included end to end
- Deputy
- Time and rostering, with payroll in a separate system
- Project Payroll CrewTime
- Capture, interpretation, pay run, STP and super with wages in one chain
If you run fixed venues with shift based rosters, Deputy is a strong choice and we will say so. If your pay rules come from an enterprise agreement and your crews move between jobs, that is the gap we built for.
Where we are different
What construction native actually means
Your agreement, built and verified
Award interpretation you configure yourself leaves the interpretation risk with you. We read your agreement clause by clause, build it in the engine, and test it against synthetic pay runs before go live.
Allowances from the job, not the venue
Site allowance, height, confined space, travel and fares follow the job and the conditions on the day. Workers flag, foremen confirm, the engine prices it, so the foreman is not the one arguing about it.
Synced, not uploaded
There is no CSV step. A clock on becomes a pay line with a cost code, and the pay run reads the same data your foreman approved that morning.
Australian construction obligations
Cbus and Incolink, redundancy fund contributions, RDO calendars and payday super are treated as core, not as custom fields bolted onto a rostering product.
More on the capture side in CrewTime, the pay rules in the EBA knowledge hub and the numbers on pricing.
Deputy comparison questions
Is Deputy bad for construction?
No. Deputy is built for different environments: fixed venues with predictable shifts, where rostering is the hard problem. On a building site the hard problem is interpreting an enterprise agreement and coding labour to jobs, which is what we specialise in.
Can we keep Deputy for rostering and use Project Payroll for pay?
Some builders do run rostering separately while payroll sits with us. It works, but you carry a hand off between systems. CrewTime removes that hand off because capture and the pay run share the same data.
Does Deputy interpret enterprise agreements?
Deputy supports award based pay conditions you configure, and its own construction award documentation is clear that its pay engine is not legal or payroll advice and that the employer remains responsible for paying correctly. We take on the agreement build and keep it current.
What happens on a site with no phone signal?
CrewTime queues the punch on the device and syncs when coverage returns, and the Site Sheet kiosk covers flat batteries and workers without a phone.
What does Project Payroll cost?
Pricing is published on our pricing page, per employee per month, plus a one off setup fee per enterprise agreement we read and build.
Reviewed August 2026. Comparison based on publicly available information.
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Send us your agreement and we will show you the difference.
Tell us the award and agreement you pay under and how many on the tools. We come back with the rules we would build and what it costs.
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