How to Get Deputy API Access (Rostering, Timesheets and Payroll)

Permanent tokens and OAuth

Deputy offers two ways in, and the right one depends on who the integration is for.

• A permanent token, for connecting your own Deputy account to your own systems. It behaves like a long lived API key, which makes it the practical choice for internal work.
• OAuth 2.0, for software that other businesses will connect their Deputy account to. If you are building a product, this is your path.

Most people searching for a Deputy API key want the first one. It is the lighter option and does not require building a consent flow.

Getting access, step by step

1. Confirm your Deputy plan includes API access before designing anything around it.
2. Sign in to the Deputy developer area with an account the business controls, not an individual's personal login.
3. Generate a permanent token for internal use, or register an application if other businesses will connect their own Deputy.
4. Note your install URL. Deputy accounts sit on their own subdomain, and API calls go to that address rather than a single shared endpoint. This trips up first attempts regularly.
5. Store the token securely and plan for rotation. A permanent token that lives in a spreadsheet is a problem waiting to happen.

What the Deputy API lets you do

• Employees, records, contact details and employment settings
• Rosters and shifts, read published rosters, create and update shifts
• Timesheets, actual hours worked, including start, stop and break data
• Locations and areas, which matters for multi site operations
• Leave, requests and balances
• Sales and demand data, used to drive rostering against forecast
• Journals and notes, the operational record around a shift

The most common request by a distance is moving approved timesheet data into payroll, and the second is bringing sales or job data in so rosters reflect actual demand.

The payroll reality nobody mentions

Before commissioning a custom Deputy to payroll integration, check the official connectors. Deputy already integrates with the major Australian payroll platforms, and if a standard connector covers your situation it will be cheaper and better supported than anything custom.

Custom work is warranted when the standard connector cannot express what your business actually does. That is usually one of:

• Staff working across multiple locations, entities or cost centres in a single pay period
• Cost coding that has to follow the job or venue rather than the employee's default
• Allowances, penalties or agreements the connector does not model
• An in-house or older payroll system with no Deputy connector at all

When to bring in a developer

Deputy is a capable platform with a clean API. When these projects get difficult it is almost never the integration itself. It is the payroll rules underneath, which is why we scope that part first and price it honestly rather than discovering it during the build.