Labour Hire Software in Australia Compared on price and fit.

There's no single best labour hire software for every agency. The right pick depends on how many workers you place, whether you also recruit permanent staff, and how much of your payroll you want in one system.

Labour hire is harder to run than most businesses because every shift has two prices: what you pay the worker under their award or agreement, and what you charge the client. A good platform handles both from one approved timesheet. These are the platforms Australian agencies shortlist most, all built for that job:

• Astute Payroll by Deel: timesheets, award and EBA rules, payroll and client invoicing, with integrations to JobAdder, Bullhorn, Xero and MYOB. Pricing is by demo.
• Access FastTrack360: payroll, billing and invoicing for staffing agencies, now sold alongside Access Vincere (front office) and Access Onboarded (compliance) as Access Evo. Quote only.
• foundU: onboarding, rostering across client sites, clock in by app, award interpretation, invoicing and a client portal, with prices on its website.
• Entire OnHire: recruitment, rostering, compliance, payroll and invoicing in one platform for Australian staffing agencies. Quote only.
• JobAdder or Bullhorn plus a back office: a recruitment CRM at the front, connected to Astute or FastTrack360 for pay and billing.

Below is what to look for, a side by side table, real prices as of November 2026, and a verdict by business type.

At minimum, labour hire software should turn an approved timesheet into a correct pay run and a correct client invoice, without anyone retyping it. Everything else is built around that.

• Timesheets from site: workers clock in on a phone or submit time, and a supervisor at the client signs off. Geolocation helps when crews are spread across sites.
• Award and EBA interpretation: penalty rates, overtime, allowances and shift loadings worked out from rules, not from memory.
• Pay rates and charge rates: a rates book by client and position, so your margin shows on every shift.
• Payroll compliance: Single Touch Payroll, super and PAYG handled in the system or exported cleanly to your payroll.
• Worker compliance: licences, tickets and inductions with expiry alerts, VEVO visa checks and fatigue rules.
• A client portal: so host clients can see rosters and approve time without emailing spreadsheets back and forth.
• Accounting exports: to Xero, MYOB or whatever your bookkeeper uses.

Two sets of rules make this matter more than it used to. Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT run labour hire licensing schemes, and NSW said in May 2026 it has no scheme yet while it works on a nationally consistent approach. Separately, the Fair Work Commission can make same job, same pay orders that require a labour hire worker to be paid at least the host business's rate, so your software needs to handle pay rules specific to each host. Check your state's licensing rules and get advice on your own obligations.

The main split is whether a platform runs the whole agency or just the back office. Here's how the platforms on most Australian shortlists compare, using each vendor's own pages as of November 2026.

Prices and plan features change often, so confirm them with the vendor before you sign anything.

Labour hire software in Australia usually costs a few dollars per worker per week, or a per user fee, plus a one off implementation fee. Most of the bigger platforms don't publish prices, so plan on getting two or three quotes.

The published numbers as of November 2026:

• foundU: Essential about $12 and Everyday about $15 per active user a month, in AUD ex GST ($3.25 and $3.75 a week). Businesses with fewer than 25 employees pay a minimum of about $400 a month. Each SMS is 5c. An active user is anyone who works, or has a timesheet or payslip, in that week.
• Entire OnHire: a standard monthly platform fee charged per user or per shift booked, plus a one off implementation cost. No public number.
• Astute Payroll and Access FastTrack360: priced after a demo. Astute also runs a managed payroll service if you'd rather hand pay runs over.
• Deputy: about $6.75 to $13 per user a month in AUD, shown excluding taxes, with a $30 monthly minimum on monthly plans. Payroll is about $5 per user a month extra.

Per worker pricing moves with your busy weeks. On foundU Everyday, 60 active workers is about $900 a month ex GST, or $990 including GST. In a quiet week with 30 on shift, you pay for 30. Ask every vendor three things: what counts as an active user, what implementation costs, and whether you're locked into an annual term.

You can run a small labour hire crew on Deputy, but it isn't built for labour hire. Deputy is rostering and time tracking for your own staff. Its Australian pricing page doesn't mention labour hire, and it isn't designed around charge rates by client or invoicing clients from approved time.

Where it can work: one or two host clients, a small crew, and a bookkeeper who invoices from a timesheet export. Deputy also connects to Astute Payroll, so some agencies roster in Deputy and run pay and billing in Astute.

Once you're supplying several clients at different rates, software built for labour hire saves more admin than it costs. The same goes for Humanforce, a large workforce management platform whose industry pages focus on employers like aged care, healthcare, hospitality and retail rather than labour hire agencies.

If you only place a steady pool of casuals with a few clients, probably not. A labour hire platform like foundU or Entire OnHire covers onboarding and rostering. If you also recruit, run job ads and chase new clients, you'll want a recruitment CRM at the front and a back office behind it.

The common Australian setup is a front office plus a back office:

We compare the front office options in detail, with prices, in our guide to the best CRM for recruitment agencies.

Less often than you'd think. Don't build your own payroll or award engine. Astute, FastTrack360, foundU and Entire OnHire have spent years on award rules, Single Touch Payroll and super, and a custom build means paying to redo that work while carrying the risk of getting pay wrong.

Custom software is worth it around the edges of a good platform, where your agency does something the off the shelf tools don't:

• A client portal built around one big client's site inductions, sign in rules or reporting format.
• Connecting systems that don't talk, so a placement, a timesheet and an invoice don't get typed three times.
• Reporting on margin by client, site or worker that your platform's reports can't produce.
• An AI layer that texts new applicants back, asks screening questions and checks tickets before a recruiter calls.

Our custom business software ranges from $3,500 for a focused single purpose tool to $25,000 for a full multi module system, and most small business projects land between $8,000 and $15,000 + GST. It's a fixed price after a free scoping call, most builds take 2 to 8 weeks, and you own what we build with no per user licence fees to us. See custom business software or our guide to custom software cost in Australia. If the gap is mostly manual admin between tools, business automation may cover it for less.

Software is only half of it. Contractors and workers still have to find you. We built a 12 page website for Koorta Boodjar, an Aboriginal-owned labour hire and workforce business in Balcatta WA, with keyword targeting for both contractors and workers.

Start from what you place and how many. Here's the verdict by business type.

Book demos with two or three, and ask each one to run last fortnight's real timesheets through their award rules. Whichever gets your pay and your invoices right first time is usually the one to pick.