Deputy vs Lightyear
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Deputy
This app simplifies employee scheduling, time tracking, and workforce management for businesses. It allows for easy creation of balanced schedules, communication with staff, and integration with payroll systems. Employees can view their schedules, manage availability, and clock in/out.
- Create balanced, cost-effective schedules
- Publish shift information via push notification
- Fill open shifts with team pick-up
- Approve leave and shift changes
- Manage team communications and tasks
- Track time and attendance
- Integrate with payroll and POS systems
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Deputy is the ultimate employee scheduling app, shift planner, staff timesheet app, & complete workforce management solution. Get started for free today! Over 250,000 workplaces in 90+ countries trust Deputy for their employee scheduling software, leave management, time & attendance tracking, team task management, staff communication, demand forecasting and performance management. HOW DEPUTY HELPS BUSINESSES ◆ Easily create balanced, cost-effective schedules in minutes from any device. ◆ Publish personalized shift information to your team via push notification, email, and SMS. ◆ Fill open shifts easily by pushing alerts to your team and letting them pick up available shifts. ◆ Approve leave from your mobile easily so you're never caught off guard. ◆ Quickly approve employee shift swaps and shift changes in seconds straight from a mobile device. ◆ Manage team communications easily in one place: broadcast announcements, assign tasks to specific individuals / shifts, and get confirmation that your team has seen it. ◆ Get greater insight and control of your business, and keep yourself compliant with inbuilt fair workweek compliance. ◆ Connect with your existing apps to give you end-to-end visibility. Deputy syncs with over 300+ of the world's most used solutions such as ADP, Square, QuickBooks, Xero, Gusto, NetSuite, Revel, LightSpeed and many more! HOW DEPUTY HELPS EMPLOYEES ◆ Get your work schedule on your device as soon as it’s published. ◆ View all your upcoming shifts in one place and receive alerts on days when you’re due to work. ◆ Manage your availability and time off easily, see what’s approved, and make it simple for your manager to know when you are and aren’t available. ◆ Clock in and out of work quickly from the app. ◆ See important company updates, manage your tasks and communicate with your team from your mobile device. TRY DEPUTY TODAY Setting up your business? Sign up for a free trial today. No setup fee. Pick the plan to suit your business: monthly, annually or flexi. Always know that you have the right people scheduled with our Shift Planner: Deputy makes it easy to create fully costed schedules in minutes, then notify staff when they’re working. Deputy will even automatically remind employees of their shifts on the morning that they are due to work. Manage employees’ leave requests or unavailability from a central location, then integrate with your online schedules so there’s no risk of scheduling someone who is not available. Need to be smart about staffing levels? Deputy integrates with your POS & payroll information to make sure you’re scheduling efficiently, and pulls in real-time weather information so you know if you need extra shifts or not! Clocking in to work is made simple with our time clock software, including GPS validation, to quickly track time and attendance (or optionally from a tablet Kiosk, using our inbuilt facial detection technology). Finalizing your timesheets and exporting to payroll can be done with one click from your mobile device. Joining an existing team? It's free - just log in. CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS “Straightaway, the time and attendance headache disappeared. There’s no need to manually enter data from one system to another. It’s all uploaded effortlessly. And on our tablets or phones, we can sign off timesheets with a swipe." "Everyone gets alerted to their shifts, which they can check on their smartphones. Everyone knows where they should be, when they should be there and what they should be doing." "Deputy has been a revelation for our business. We’re saving approximately $30,000 a year in admin costs alone. But even more importantly, we’re now able to optimize all shifts and staffing levels." ABOUT DEPUTY APP Our staff scheduling app is updated regularly to make sure we’re always providing the best and most flexible features to the businesses we work with. Any feedback? Need help? Email experience+ios@deputy.com Terms of Use: https://www.deputy.com/subscription-agreement
Lightyear
Automate purchasing and accounts payable processes for large businesses. Streamline approvals, extract data with AI, and gain real-time financial insights. Offers a secure, reliable solution to eliminate errors and improve cash flow management.
- Automated purchase orders and bill approvals
- AI-powered data extraction
- Real-time payables overview
- Business intelligence for cash flow
- Eliminates human error
- Mobile document upload and approval
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Lightyear is an award-winning, 5* cloud app built to automate large SMEs & Enterprise level Purchasing & Accounts Payables processes. Our end-to-end approvals workflows allow purchase orders & bills to be approved in seconds, saving businesses more than 80% of their costs and time. Lightyear's instant AI data extraction enables businesses to get a real-time overview of their payables data & our business intelligence feature allows them to make smarter & better-informed cash flow & forecasting decisions. Lightyear provides a reliable, secure, stress-free automation solution that eliminates human error, so businesses can confidently move forward with their business goals. With 24-hr local support, partnership programs & referral schemes, plus our 30-day free trial, you can be sure of a smooth transition into automated success! —----------------------------------------- Please note: This is a companion mobile app for Lightyear’s desktop app. You must have a Lightyear account to use the app. The Lightyear mobile app is designed to create purchase orders, scan bills, receipts and credit notes and approve bills on the go. —------------------------------------------- Mobile App Features Upload documents including bills, receipts and credit notes Approve bills Attach documents to a bill Leave notes against bills View received and actioned tasks Switch between entities or accounts View mentions from other users Create purchase orders Cloud accounting integrations: Xero, Sage Intacct, Quickbooks Online, Oracle NetSuite, MYOB, Abcom, WCBS, Iplicit, AccountsIQ Desktop accounting integrations: Sage 50, Sage 200, Pronto, Infor, SunSystems, Sassu, Reckon, Adept Inventory sync: Bepoz, SDS POS Magic, SwiftPOS, SenPOS, IdealPOS, Order Mate, Retail Technology, iControl
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Deputy at 4.8 against Lightyear's 3.0. Deputy also leads on review sentiment (59% vs 33%) and ratings volume (5.4K vs 2). Lightyear's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 2) and iOS requirement (15.0 vs 17.0). On price, ads and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Deputy sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $59.99 per month. Lightyear asks for nothing beyond the download.
Deputy holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 3.0. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Deputy has 5.4K ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 59% of Deputy's written reviews are positive against 33% of Lightyear's.
Deputy ships an update weekly, Lightyear every 5 weeks. The most recent releases landed on September 24, 2026 and August 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Deputy | Lightyear |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.8 (5.4K ratings) — better | 3.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 58.9% of reviews — better | 33.3% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 5.4K — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Every 5 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 285 MB | 24 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Deputy.com | Access UK Ltd |
Customer experience
Deputy
Lightyear
Bugs and requests
Deputy
Reported bugs
4 issues- App crashes or freezes frequently
- Timesheets not accurately recording hours worked
- Shift scheduling issues after updates
- Notification system not reliable
Requested features
5 requests- Add ability to cancel shifts
- Improve communication features between employees
- Provide more detailed reporting and analytics
- Allow employees to view their leave balances
- Integrate with more payroll/HR systems
Lightyear
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Deputy
- 10 users1 Month trial$59.991 Month
- 25 users1 Month trial$144.991 Month
Lightyear
No in-app purchases









