Tanda does it. Deputy launched Deputy Payroll in 2025. Workforce One does it. Workforce.com does it. The pitch is always the same: one login, no export step, nothing to reconcile. It’s a good pitch. It’s also not automatically the right answer for a labour hire agency, and conflating the two models is how agencies end up paying for payroll features they never use — or worse, trusting pay rate accuracy to a system that wasn’t built to specialise in it.
Two models, one decision
There are two ways a workforce platform can handle the gap between “hours worked” and “money in someone’s bank account”.
Native payroll — the platform calculates pay rates, runs the pay cycle, and files Single Touch Payroll (STP) itself. Tanda, Deputy, Workforce One, Workforce.com and Entire OnHire all work this way. You log in once, and payroll happens inside the same system you roster in.
Timesheet-to-payroll export — the platform verifies hours and hands a clean, payroll-ready timesheet to a dedicated payroll engine. In OnCrew’s case that’s Xero, Employment Hero or MYOB. Two systems, one clean handoff, no double entry.
Neither model is wrong. They’re built for different operations.
What native payroll genuinely gets right
Give credit where it’s due. Tanda has spent over a decade on Modern Award interpretation — it’s what the company started out building — with base rates, penalty rates and allowances calculated automatically against Fair Work rules. Deputy’s 2025 payroll launch went further than a bolt-on: multi-entity across separate ABNs or venues, with its own Pay Rate Builder for custom conditions. Workforce One bundles award interpretation, automated payslips and STP Phase 2 reporting for group training and labour hire businesses specifically. Workforce.com does the same at global scale.
For a business running one or two consistent awards across a stable set of venues, that single-login simplicity is genuinely hard to beat. One vendor, one support line, one place pay disputes get resolved.
Where the export model earns its place
Labour hire doesn’t usually look like that. A single agency might place workers under a construction award on Monday, a healthcare award on Tuesday and a hospitality award covering a Friday-night event — sometimes all in the same week, across client sites the agency doesn’t fully control. That’s a very different payroll problem to a retailer rostering one award across 40 stores.
Three reasons the export model holds up well in that environment.
Payroll specialists stay current on every award, not just the popular ones
Xero, Employment Hero and MYOB exist to do payroll — full stop. They update for every Fair Work change, across every industry, because that’s their entire product. A workforce vendor’s in-house payroll module has to split its engineering time between scheduling, compliance, dispatch and keeping award interpretation current. When those priorities compete, payroll accuracy is rarely the one that wins the roadmap.
You’re not locked into one vendor’s pay engine
If OnCrew’s payroll logic had a bug, or fell behind on an award update, every business using it would be exposed at once. Route payroll through Xero, Employment Hero or MYOB instead, and you’re relying on infrastructure your accountant already trusts and audits independently — with a far broader base of businesses stress-testing it every pay run, not just OnCrew’s customer base.
Clean handoff, not competing systems
OnCrew’s timesheets are built to skip the export headaches that make this model look bad elsewhere: geofenced clock-ins become payroll-ready timesheets, corrections are handled in the app rather than by email, and supervisors approve a worker’s week in one tap before anything crosses into payroll. The friction point export-model critics point to — messy, error-prone handoffs — is exactly what that workflow removes.
STP Phase 2 and Payday Super change the calculus, not the winner
Since Payday Super began on 1 July 2026, super contributions must be received by an employee’s fund within seven business days of payday. That’s a real tightening on payroll timing whichever model you use, and it raises the stakes on late timesheet approvals and last-minute corrections either way — which is why verified hours at the point of work matter more now than they did under quarterly super.
For native-payroll platforms it means the pay engine and the compliance engine have to move in lockstep internally. For an export model it means the handoff has to be fast and clean — which is precisely why one-tap timesheet approval matters more than it might sound. A slow export is where Payday Super pressure would actually bite; a same-day, error-free one is where it doesn’t.
Native payroll vs export: side by side
| Aspect | Native payroll (Tanda, Deputy, Workforce One, Workforce.com) | Timesheet-to-export (OnCrew) |
|---|---|---|
| Who calculates pay rates | The workforce platform itself | Xero / Employment Hero / MYOB |
| STP filing | Filed from inside the platform | Filed by Xero / Employment Hero / MYOB |
| Award update speed | Depends on that vendor’s payroll team | Depends on your payroll provider’s own dedicated team |
| Best fit | Stable venues, one or two awards, one login preferred | Multi-award, multi-site, multi-industry labour hire |
| Vendor lock-in | Payroll and rostering tied to one vendor | Payroll stays portable if you ever switch rostering tools |
| Where the friction usually is | Payroll accuracy competing for roadmap time with scheduling and compliance | The handoff itself — solved by clean, automatic timesheet export |
Pricing and specific feature availability change — always confirm current details directly with each provider before deciding.
The real question to ask
Don’t start with “does this platform do payroll”. Start with: how many different awards does my business actually run, across how many sites, and who do I want accountable for getting each one right?
If the honest answer is “one award, one or two venues, and I’d rather not think about a second system”, a native-payroll platform like Tanda or Deputy is a legitimate, well-built choice. If it’s “a dozen sites, five industries, awards that change depending on which client we’re staffing this week” — that’s the operation OnCrew was built for, and the case for letting a dedicated payroll specialist own pay rate accuracy while OnCrew owns getting the hours right in the first place.
Where OnCrew fits
OnCrew’s compliance engine, geofenced clock-ins and one-tap weekly approval exist to solve the hard part of labour hire payroll — verified, dispute-proof hours, ready to pay — and then get out of the way. From there Xero, Employment Hero or MYOB take it the rest of the way, with STP filing built into tools your accountant already knows.
