Rostering Software for Customer Support Teams in Australia (2026)

Rostering software for an Australian customer support team has to do two jobs at once: put enough agents on chat and phones for every hour of the week, and keep every shift inside the rules, such as the 38-hour maximum weekly hours under the National Employment Standards and the 7 days' notice the Clerks Award requires before changing a shiftworker's start and finish times. General rostering tools like Deputy, Tanda, RosterElf and Roubler handle the second job well. The first job, turning ticket and call volume by channel and hour into a roster with the right channel skills on each shift, is where support teams usually end up back in a spreadsheet.

This guide covers what Australian rostering tools are built for, what a support roster needs on top of that, which Fair Work rules matter for in-house support teams, and how to decide between a general tool and one built for support.

Key takeaways

• General rostering software is built for shift work. Deputy describes itself as "purpose-built to simplify shift work", and Tanda and Roubler forecast staffing from point of sale data. That suits retail and hospitality, where sales drive demand.

• Support demand is tickets and calls, not sales. A support roster needs forecasts by channel (chat, phone, email) and by hour, plus channel skills on each shift.

• Many in-house support teams fall under the Clerks Private Sector Award, not the Contract Call Centres Award. The Fair Work Ombudsman says the call centre award does not cover businesses running their own in-house customer contact.

• The Clerks Award caps ordinary hours at 10 a day and requires at least 7 days' notice to change a shiftworker's start or finish times, unless the employee agrees.

• Decision rule: if your team is under 20 agents, or mostly email, a general rostering tool plus a spreadsheet forecast is usually enough. At 20 or more agents on live chat or phones, evaluate a tool that rosters from ticket and call volume.

Which rostering tools do this?

Lorikeet Workforce Manager builds the support roster from your ticket and call volume by channel, day and hour, then checks each draft week against contracted hours, rest between shifts, channel skills and approved leave before you publish (launch post). It is built for support teams of 20 or more agents running live chat or phones. Alternatives worth knowing:

• Deputy: AI auto-scheduling that forecasts labour demand, with pre-configured modern awards and native Australian payroll.

• Tanda: roster templates, validations for overtime and qualification risks, and predictive rostering from historical point of sale data.

• RosterElf: positions itself for Australian SMEs in hospitality, healthcare and retail with 5 to 200 staff.

• Roubler: demand-based rostering from forecast hourly sales, with award checks built into roster building.

What is rostering software, and why do support teams need something different?

Rostering software plans who works when, checks those shifts against award and contract rules, and sends the roster to staff. Tanda's definition is a good one: a roster is used "to plan their staffing needs and organise when people work", and it is the basis for paying people correctly. Every major Australian tool does this, and most connect the roster to timesheets and payroll.

The difference for support teams is what "staffing needs" means. In a cafe, demand tracks sales, so the tools pull forecasts from the point of sale system. Roubler, for example, builds "rosters based on forecasted hourly sales using data imported from your point of sale system". In a support team, demand is the number of chats, calls and emails arriving each hour, and each channel has its own response time target. A phone queue needs people available the moment a call arrives. An email queue can wait hours.

That creates three requirements general tools were not designed around:

1. Volume by channel and hour. The forecast has to come from your helpdesk and phone system, split by channel, not from sales.

2. Channel skills. Not every agent can take phones, handle billing chats or work the Mandarin queue. The roster has to know who is qualified for what.

3. Coverage reporting. You need to see, by channel and hour, where next week falls short of forecast demand before it happens, not after your first response time has already slipped.

For background on the wider discipline, see our workforce management (WFM) glossary entry and the contact centre workforce management guide.

What do Deputy, Tanda, RosterElf and Roubler do well?

They handle Australian award compliance, timesheets and payroll far better than any support-specific tool, and for most shift-based businesses they are the right choice. Here is how each one describes its rostering, from its own pages.

A note on sources: RosterElf's buying guide is useful for structure (it scores tools on compliance, ease of use, value, support and integrations), but RosterElf ranks itself first, so read it the way you would read any vendor comparison, including this one.

What none of these tools describe on their rostering pages is a forecast built from support tickets and calls by channel, or channel skills as a coverage constraint. You can model some of it: Tanda supports qualification checks, Roubler supports demand ratios, and Deputy can forecast labour demand. But someone still has to turn helpdesk data into demand numbers, usually in a spreadsheet, and keep that spreadsheet in sync with the roster.

Which Australian rostering rules apply to customer support teams?

For most private sector, in-house support teams, the starting point is the National Employment Standards plus the Clerks Private Sector Award 2020 [MA000002], unless an enterprise agreement or a different industry award applies. This section is general information from Fair Work Ombudsman pages, not legal advice. Use the Fair Work Ombudsman's Pay and Conditions Tool or call 13 13 94 to confirm your award.

Which award covers your support team?

The Clerks Award summary lists "answering calls" and "billing clients and customers" as clerical and administrative work. It does not apply where an industry award with clerical classifications covers the business, for example the Banking, Finance and Insurance Award, the Telecommunications Award or the Health Services Award. So a fintech or insurer may be on a different award from a software company.

The Contract Call Centres Award [MA000023] sounds relevant but usually is not. It covers businesses supplying customer contact services to clients on a contract basis. The Fair Work Ombudsman says it does not cover "businesses who do their own customer contact services (eg. a bank that has its own in-house call centre)". If you outsource to a BPO, that provider's staff may be on it. Your own team usually is not.

Clerks Award rules that shape a support roster

Sources: the Clerks Private Sector Award 2020, and the Fair Work Ombudsman pages on hours of work, breaks and rosters.

Two of these rules catch support teams in particular. First, evening chat coverage: once a shift finishes after 7.00 pm, the employee is working an afternoon shift under Part 6 of the award, with different break, hours and penalty rules. Second, the 7 day notice rule means a roster is not something you can redo on Friday for Monday. That is the strongest argument for forecasting volume early and publishing a checked roster well ahead.

How do you build a support roster from ticket and call volume?

Start from demand, not from last week's roster: forecast contacts by channel and hour, convert that into agents needed, then fill shifts with qualified people inside your award rules. The steps are the same whatever tool you use.

1. Pull volume history. Export at least several weeks of tickets and calls from your helpdesk and phone system, grouped by channel, day and hour.

2. Forecast and adjust. Turn history into expected volume per hour, then adjust for known events like a product launch, a billing run or end of financial year. Our guide to seasonal support spikes covers this in more depth.

3. Convert volume to headcount by channel. Phones and live chat need agents available inside the response window; email can be smoothed across the day. Our contact centre benchmarks give reference points for service levels.

4. Draft shifts against the rules. Check contracted hours, the daily and weekly limits, time off between shifts, approved leave and who holds each channel skill.

5. Check coverage before you publish. Compare scheduled agents to forecast demand by channel and hour, and fix gaps while you still have 7 days' notice to play with.

6. Plan capacity months out. Compare hours needed against hours available so hiring starts before the shortfall, not after.

This is the workflow Lorikeet Workforce Manager automates. According to the Workforce Manager launch post, you can import your current roster model from a spreadsheet or a helpdesk export (Lorikeet customers skip the upload because it reads ticket history directly). It turns volume by channel, day and hour into a staffing forecast you can fine-tune for known events. Each week starts as a draft checked against contracted hours, rest between shifts, channel skills, approved leave and demand. If phone coverage falls below forecast because someone is on leave, it flags the shift and suggests qualified, available agents. Coverage reports show shortfalls by channel and hour, and capacity planning shows shortfalls up to 12 months ahead, factoring in growth. The launch post says managing the day as it happens, such as sick calls and volume spikes, is next.

Do you need roster software built for support, or a general rostering tool?

Use a general roster software tool if your main problems are awards, timesheets and payroll; add a support-specific tool when your main problem is matching agents to chat and phone volume. They are not mutually exclusive, and plenty of teams will run payroll through one system and plan coverage in another.

• Pick Deputy, Tanda, RosterElf or Roubler if your support team is small, works mostly business hours, sits alongside shift-based retail or hospitality staff on the same system, or if award interpretation and payroll are the pain.

• Pick a support-focused tool like Workforce Manager if you have 20 or more agents on live chat or phones, multiple channels with different skills, and a team lead spending hours each week reconciling a volume spreadsheet with the roster.

• Look at enterprise WFM (NICE, Verint, Calabrio) if you run a large, regulated contact centre with dedicated workforce analysts. Our workforce management software comparison covers those options fairly.

Rostering is also only half of the staffing question. Before adding headcount to cover forecast volume, it is worth checking how much of that volume an AI agent could resolve; see how to scale support without hiring.

What still needs a human

Software can draft and check a roster, but people still own the judgement calls.

• Award coverage. No tool can tell you with certainty which award or enterprise agreement covers your team. Confirm it with the Fair Work Ombudsman or an adviser, then configure the rules.

• Consultation. Clause 39 requires you to consult employees about roster changes and consider their views, including caring responsibilities. That is a conversation, not a notification.

• Payroll and award interpretation. Workforce Manager plans coverage; it is not a payroll system. Penalty rates, allowances and STP reporting belong in your payroll or general rostering tool.

• Forecast overrides. A forecast only knows history. Someone has to tell it about next month's pricing change or marketing campaign.

• Fairness. Who gets the late shifts, weekends and public holidays affects retention. Review the pattern, not just the coverage.

If you run a support team of 20 or more agents on chat or phones, you can start a 30-day free trial and build your first volume-driven roster from your own history.