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In this article
Rostering sounds simple until you have casual staff, a dozen public holidays, and a Holidays Act compliance audit bearing down on you. The right scheduling software saves you from all three problems. The wrong one just adds a subscription fee to your existing spreadsheet habits.
Here's the honest comparison for NZ businesses in 2026.
Why NZ rostering is its own thing
Most international scheduling tools are built for US or UK payroll rules. New Zealand has a few quirks that knock out generic options:
- The Holidays Act 2003 requires leave calculations based on the higher of ordinary weekly pay or average weekly earnings. For casual staff with variable hours, this trips up a lot of businesses. Many NZ employers have faced remediation payouts for getting it wrong.
- 12 public holidays (Waitangi Day, ANZAC Day, Christmas, Boxing Day, and the rest) come with specific rules: staff who work them get time-and-a-half plus an alternative holiday if it's an "otherwise working day" for them.
- Minimum wage changes annually (currently NZD $23.15/hour as of April 2026). Your software should flag shifts that fall below it.
- Xero Payroll is the standard for most NZ SMBs. If your scheduling tool doesn't sync cleanly to Xero, you're re-entering hours twice every fortnight.
The three worth considering
Deputy
Deputy is the default choice for most NZ cafes, restaurants, and retailers. It's built for shift-based teams and has put genuine work into NZ compliance.
Pricing (billed in AUD for NZ customers):
| Plan | AUD/user/month | NZD equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Core | AUD $6.50 | ~NZD $7.90 |
| Pro | AUD $9.00 | ~NZD $10.90 |
NZD estimate based on AUD/NZD rate of ~1.21 as of June 2026. Deputy bills AU/NZ customers in AUD.
Minimum monthly spend: AUD $30/month regardless of team size (introduced September 2025). So a two-person team still pays at least AUD $30.
31-day free trial. Longer than most.
What you actually get in Core:
- Drag-and-drop rostering with auto-scheduling (builds shifts based on your settings)
- Demand forecasting, useful for hospitality where foot traffic varies by day
- Holidays Act leave calculations for casual staff
- Xero Payroll sync: approved timesheets push directly, no manual re-entry
- Compliance alerts when a shift breaches minimum wage or break rules
- Staff app for clock-in/out, shift swaps, and viewing rosters
The Pro plan adds SSO, custom access levels, 24/7 live chat, and analytics. Most NZ businesses under 50 staff won't need it.
Honest weak point: Pricing scales up with headcount, so a 30-person team is paying over AUD $195/month on Core. Check the maths against your roster size before committing to annual.
Tanda
Tanda is an Australian-built workforce management platform with a solid NZ presence. Where it beats Deputy is wage forecasting. Tanda shows you the exact labour cost of a roster before you publish it. For hospitality operators watching margin closely, this matters.
Pricing:
- All-in-one bundle (HR + Payroll + Workforce Management): AUD $12.80/user/month (~NZD $15.50)
- Individual module pricing available on request
14-day free trial.
Key strengths:
- Real-time wage cost display while building rosters
- Holidays Act compliant
- Xero integration
- Strong in hospitality, retail, healthcare, pharmacy, and early learning
What you give up vs Deputy: the interface is less polished, and Deputy's 31-day trial gives you more time to evaluate. Tanda's NZ support team is also smaller.
Best for: Restaurants, cafes, and retailers where labour cost control is the primary concern. If you need to keep wages at a specific percentage of revenue, Tanda's live cost display is worth the slightly higher per-user price.
Explore Tanda for NZ businesses
Humanforce
Humanforce (formerly Ento) is the enterprise option. Custom pricing, demo-only trials, and a feature set built for multi-site operations with 20+ staff. It's overkill for most NZ SMBs.
Worth considering if:
- You run multiple locations (retail chain, aged care group, hospitality group)
- You need complex award interpretation across different employee categories
- You have an in-house HR team who'll actually configure it
For a single-site cafe or retail shop under 20 staff, Deputy or Tanda will serve you better and cost less.
Feature comparison
| Deputy | Tanda | Humanforce | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price from (AUD/user/month) | $6.50 | $4.00 (WFM only) | Custom |
| Free trial | 31 days | 14 days | Demo only |
| Holidays Act compliant | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Xero integration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Staff mobile app | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Live wage cost forecasting | Good | Excellent | Yes |
| Auto-scheduling | Yes (Core+) | Yes | Yes |
| Demand forecasting | Yes | Partial | Yes |
| Best for | Most NZ SMBs | Cost-focused hospitality | Multi-site enterprise |
What NZ compliance looks like in practice
Both Deputy and Tanda handle the two trickiest Holidays Act scenarios:
Casual staff with variable hours. Annual leave entitlement after 12 months is calculated using the higher of ordinary weekly pay or average weekly earnings. Rostering software feeds the hours to payroll. If the data going in is accurate, the calculations come out right.
Public holiday work. When you roster staff on a public holiday, the software should flag it and apply the correct rates (time and a half, plus an alternative holiday for otherwise-working-day staff). Deputy and Tanda both handle this automatically when linked to Xero Payroll.
One thing to do: audit your payroll integration setup when you first connect. Get your leave types, pay rates, and casual/permanent categories mapped correctly from the start. Don't assume defaults are right for NZ.
Who should pick what
Under 15 staff, single site: Deputy. The 31-day trial is long enough to test it properly, the interface is easier, and the compliance features are solid for most NZ business types.
Hospitality or retail, labour cost is your biggest lever: Tanda. The live wage forecasting when building rosters is genuinely useful. Pay the slightly higher price for the insight.
Multi-site operation, 25+ staff: Talk to Humanforce. Deputy and Tanda scale fine in terms of features, but Humanforce's multi-site management and award complexity handling may be worth the enterprise price.
Very small team (under 5 staff) or very simple rosters: Deputy's Core plan with the AUD $30 minimum means you're paying for capacity you won't use. At that size, Xero Payroll's native leave tracking may be enough and you can roster on a shared Google Sheet until you grow into proper scheduling software.
Tip
Before signing up for any trial: export your current roster from wherever it lives (spreadsheet, paper, your memory) into a CSV. The onboarding for all three tools is faster if you can upload staff and their base availability on day one rather than entering them manually.
Deputy pricing sourced from deputy.com/pricing, June 2026. Tanda pricing sourced from tanda.co.nz/pricing, June 2026. AUD/NZD conversion rate approximately 1.21 as of June 2026 (Wise). Employment Leave Bill details from DLA Piper, March 2026.