Top 10 Workforce Management Software For Remote Teams In 2026

Most guides to workforce management software for remote teams sell visibility: see who is working, track the hours, monitor the output. That is the wrong frame, and in Australia it is a slightly dangerous one.

This guide starts with the two legal changes that actually reshaped remote work here, groups ten platforms by what they genuinely do (two of them are not workforce management systems at all), and checks every rating against Capterra as at July 2026.

Remote Work Did Not Remove Your Duties. It Relocated Them.

Almost every guide to workforce management software for remote teams is about visibility: seeing who is working, tracking hours, monitoring productivity.

That framing is not just unhelpful. In Australia it walks you into two legal problems that no comparison article mentions.

The first is that your obligations followed your employees home. The second is that the software you buy to solve the first problem is, in law, surveillance.

The Right To Disconnect Is Now a Workplace Right

Since 26 August 2024, employees have had a right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact from their employer outside their working hours, unless the refusal is unreasonable.

For small business employers, with fewer than 15 employees, it applied from 26 August 2025.

It extends to work-related contact from third parties such as customers and clients, and every modern award now contains a right-to-disconnect term.

So the question to ask your workforce management software vendor is not “can it send notifications”. It is: can I control when it sends them?

A system that fires task reminders, roster changes and approval requests at whatever hour the sender happens to be awake, across three time zones, is now generating contact that an employee has a legal right to ignore, and a record that they were contacted.

Sentrient runs a free webinar on the right to disconnect if you want the detail.

Monitoring Remote Workers Is Regulated Surveillance

This is the one that catches people out, and the earlier version of this article walked straight into it by recommending geolocation and device-based clocks for remote staff without a word of caution.

Under the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 in New South Wales, an employer carrying out computer or tracking surveillance of an employee must give at least 14 days’ written notice before it starts.

The notice has to say what kind of surveillance it is, how it will be carried out, when it starts, whether it is continuous or intermittent, and whether it is ongoing or for a set period.

Covert surveillance is an offence unless authorised by a magistrate.

And it applies to people working from home. Computer and tracking surveillance is precisely what a time-tracking tool with device monitoring or geolocation does.

• Before you turn a monitoring feature on, establish what your state’s surveillance law requires. The rules differ across jurisdictions and this is not a setting to enable casually.
• Ask what the product actually captures. Keystrokes? Screenshots? Application use? Location? “Time tracking” covers a very wide range.
• Ask whether you can turn it off. Some platforms monitor by default.
• Then ask whether you need it at all. Most remote productivity problems are management problems, and surveillance is a poor substitute for a conversation.

General information only, not legal advice. Surveillance law differs by state and territory. Confirm your obligations with a qualified adviser before enabling any monitoring feature.

The Home Is a Workplace

Work health and safety duties apply wherever the work is carried out, which includes an employee’s home.

Safe Work Australia publishes guidance on managing the risks of working from home, and psychosocial hazards, including isolation, poor support, unclear expectations and unreasonable availability demands, must be identified and controlled like any other risk.

Your record-keeping obligations are also unchanged. Hours worked still need recording.

A remote employee’s record must be as complete as an office employee’s, and it is generally harder to reconstruct.

That is what a workforce management software is actually for in a distributed team. Not watching people.

Evidencing that they were inducted, that they acknowledged the working-from-home policy, that they completed their training, that they could report an incident, and that their hours were recorded.

What Remote Teams Actually Need From the Software

The old checklist for workforce management software was written for people in a building.

Distance changes what matters, and it changes it in ways the feature lists have not caught up with.

• Time and attendance that records rather than watches: An employee tapping a button to start work is a record. Continuous screenshots are surveillance, and surveillance is regulated. Know which you are buying.
• Controllable notification timing: Quiet hours, working-hours awareness, and the ability to hold a message until morning. Since the right to disconnect became a workplace right, this is a compliance feature rather than a courtesy.
• Scheduling that understands time zones: Overlapping-hours views, so meetings are not booked at 6am for someone.
• Performance management without the corridor: Goals, structured check-ins and documented feedback, because none of it will happen by accident when nobody shares a kitchen.
• Employee self-service that is genuinely complete: Payslips, leave, policies, documents, training. A remote employee cannot walk to HR’s desk, so anything not in the portal is a support ticket.
• Onboarding for someone you will never meet: Contract signing, policy acknowledgement, induction and training, all completed and recorded before day one.
• Offboarding as a single action: Access revoked, devices reclaimed, records retained. This is where distributed organisations quietly fail.
• Integrations with where people already are: Slack, Teams, the calendar. A system nobody opens is a system nobody uses.
• Security across devices and networks: Home routers, personal laptops and public wifi. Ask about access control, not just encryption.
• Records that survive the distance: An incident reported from Perth, a policy acknowledged in Auckland, a course completed on a phone. Where does it land, and could you retrieve it in three years?

The Benefits, Beyond the Obvious

• Visibility without surveillance: You know who is on leave, whose training has lapsed and whose review is overdue, without watching anyone’s screen.
• Consistency across locations: One process, one set of policies, one induction, whether someone is in Hobart or Ho Chi Minh City.
• Payroll and attendance stop drifting: Accurate records mean accurate pay, which matters more when nobody is there to notice an error.
• Onboarding stops being a lottery: The new starter’s experience does not depend on which manager remembered what.
• Compliance evidence exists: Your duties followed your employees home. The record is how you show you met them.

How We Chose These 10

• Grouped, not ranked: The ten platforms below fall into four categories that are not competing with each other, and two of them are not workforce management systems at all. Ranking them one to ten would be misleading, so they are grouped by what they do.
• Ratings checked on Capterra in July 2026, with review counts where available.
• Honest about the project tools: monday.com and ClickUp appear on almost every list like this. They are excellent, and they are work management, not workforce management. They do not hold employee records, run payroll or evidence compliance. We say so in their entries.
• Every entry has a watch-out.

The 10 Best Workforce Management Software Platforms for Remote Teams

Australian HR and compliance

1. Sentrient

Sentrient is an Australian workforce management system built around records rather than monitoring.

Onboarding management, policy acknowledgement, compliance training, performance management and incident reporting all write to the same employee file, which is what a remote workforce actually needs: not a way to watch people, but a way to show what they were told, what they agreed to and what they completed.

Key features

• Online onboarding and induction for staff you never meet in person
• Policy acknowledgement with timestamped sign-off, including a working-from-home policy
• Working from home and managing remote teams compliance courses
• Performance and goal tracking without in-person reviews
• Incident reporting from any location
• Audit-ready records management and leave management

Why it leads for Australian remote teams: Remote work does not remove your duties, it relocates them.

The home is a workplace for work health and safety purposes, the right to disconnect is now a workplace right, and your record-keeping obligations are unchanged.

Sentrient’s answer to a distributed team is evidence rather than surveillance: the policy they acknowledged, the training they completed, the incident they reported, all in one place.

More than 1,000 Australian organisations use it and it is rated 4.7 on Capterra.

Best for: Australian remote teams that must evidence policy, training and safety

Watch out for: It does not run payroll, interpret awards or provision devices. If your remote problem is paying people in six countries, Deel or Remote are the right tools and this is not

User rating: 4.7 on Capterra. Pricing from: Custom.

2. Employment Hero

Employment Hero puts HR, native Australian payroll, leave, rostering and performance behind one employee login with strong mobile access, which is exactly what a distributed team needs.

Payslips, policies and leave requests are all reachable from a phone.

Key features

• HR with native Australian payroll
• Employee self-service app
• Onboarding and offboarding
• Leave and attendance
• Performance and goals
• Xero and MYOB integration

Best for: Australian SMEs wanting HR, payroll and remote self-service in one

Watch out for: Better features sit on higher tiers, and reviewers report support can lag around payroll peaks

User rating: 4.4 on Capterra. Pricing from: ~A$10 / employee / mo (minimum 10 users).

3. BambooHR

BambooHR has one of the largest review bases in HR software and the tidiest self-service experience in it, which matters more when nobody can walk to HR’s desk.

Records, leave, onboarding and reporting are clean enough that remote staff use them without being chased.

Key features

• Employee records and self-service
• Onboarding for remote starters
• Time-off management
• Performance management
• Readable reporting
• Slack, Teams and payroll integrations

Best for: Remote teams wanting the cleanest self-service employee record

Watch out for: It does not run Australian payroll or interpret awards, pricing is quote-only, and Australian support usually runs through a reseller

User rating: 4.6 on Capterra. Pricing from: Quote.

Global and distributed employment

4. Deel

Deel is the answer when your remote team is genuinely international.

It handles employer-of-record hiring, contractor payments, local employment compliance and tax across a large number of countries, so you can employ someone in Manila without opening an entity there.

Key features

• Employer-of-record hiring in many countries
• Contractor onboarding and payments
• Local compliance and tax handling
• Contract management and document storage
• Time and attendance
• Integrations with major HR systems

Best for: Hiring and paying people in other countries

Watch out for: Cost rises quickly with international headcount, and it is built around global employment rather than day-to-day Australian HR. Most businesses run it alongside a local platform

User rating: 4.9 on Capterra. Pricing from: Quote (EOR and contractor plans).

5. Remote

Remote is the other serious employer-of-record platform, focused on international hiring, payroll, benefits and local compliance.

If your company was distributed from day one rather than becoming distributed, it is designed for exactly that.

Key features

• International hiring and employer-of-record
• Global payroll and benefits
• Local compliance management
• Onboarding and document storage
• Time tracking

Best for: Fully distributed teams built across many countries

Watch out for: Limited project and task management, and like Deel it is not a substitute for a local Australian HR and compliance platform

User rating: 4.4 on Capterra. Pricing from: Quote.

HR and IT together

6. Rippling

Rippling unifies HR, payroll and IT, which is a genuinely different proposition for a remote team.

A new starter’s record, pay, laptop and application access are provisioned together and revoked together, which solves the offboarding problem nobody talks about: the person who left three months ago and still has access.

Key features

• HR, payroll and IT in one platform
• Device and application provisioning
• Automated onboarding and offboarding
• Global payroll and contractors
• Time tracking
• Central access control

Best for: Remote teams where the laptop is the hard part

Watch out for: Pricing is not transparent, setup is a project, and it is more platform than a small Australian business needs

User rating: 4.9 on Capterra. Pricing from: ~US$8 / user / mo.

Enterprise HCM

7. Workday

Workday is enterprise HCM: workforce planning, analytics, forecasting, payroll and talent at a scale nothing else here reaches.

For a large remote organisation trying to understand capacity across time zones, the analytics are the reason you buy it.

Key features

• Workforce planning and forecasting
• Deep analytics and reporting
• Performance and talent management
• Payroll and HR
• Scheduling and time tools

Best for: Large distributed organisations needing workforce planning

Watch out for: Complex and expensive for anything but a large organisation, and implementation is a multi-month project

User rating: 4.4 on Capterra. Pricing from: Quote.

8. ADP Workforce Now

ADP Workforce Now is built on the largest payroll operation in the world, and reliability is its argument.

Time, attendance, scheduling and compliance reporting are solid, and for a distributed workforce the payroll accuracy matters more than the interface.

Key features

• Time and attendance
• Payroll at scale
• Scheduling
• Compliance reporting
• HR management
• Wide integrations

Best for: Mid-sized and large organisations where payroll accuracy is everything

Watch out for: Reviewers consistently describe the interface as dated, and it is more system than a small remote team needs

User rating: 4.4 on Capterra. Pricing from: Quote.

Work management (not workforce management)

9. monday.com

monday.com is a highly visual work platform that distributed teams pick up quickly: boards, workloads, automations and dashboards that make it obvious who is doing what across time zones.

It is genuinely good, and it is genuinely not a workforce management system.

Key features

• Visual boards and workload views
• Workflow automation
• Time tracking on tasks
• Dashboards
• Wide integrations including Slack and Teams

Best for: Coordinating remote project work, not managing the workforce

Watch out for: It is a work management tool. It does not hold employee records, run payroll, manage leave entitlements or evidence compliance.

Pair it with an HR platform rather than treating it as one

User rating: 4.7 on G2. Pricing from: ~US$9 / seat / mo (3-seat minimum).

10. ClickUp

ClickUp packs tasks, docs, goals and workload views into one highly customisable workspace with an unusually generous free tier, which makes it a common first tool for a distributed startup.

Key features

• Tasks, docs, goals and whiteboards
• Workload and capacity views
• Time tracking
• Automation
• Generous free plan

Best for: Remote teams wanting one flexible workspace on a budget

Watch out for: Same caveat as monday.com: it is work management, not workforce management. Feature density can overwhelm new users

User rating: 4.6 on Capterra. Pricing from: Free tier; paid from ~US$7 / user / mo.

How To Choose Workforce Management Software For Remote Teams

1. Ask about notification timing before anything else

Can you set quiet hours? Can an employee? Does the system respect a working-hours field, or does it fire whenever the trigger occurs?

Since the right to disconnect became a workplace right, this stopped being a preference setting and became a compliance one.

2. Ask exactly what the monitoring features capture

“Time tracking” ranges from an employee tapping a button to continuous screenshots and keystroke logging.

Get a precise answer, then check what your state’s surveillance law requires before you enable any of it. In New South Wales that includes 14 days’ written notice.

3. Ask what happens on the day someone leaves

Remote offboarding is where organisations quietly fail. The laptop is in another city, the accounts are still active, and the records are scattered.

Rippling exists on this list largely because it revokes access and reclaims devices as one action.

4. Do not buy a project tool to solve an HR problem

monday.com and ClickUp will tell you who is doing what. They will not tell you who has acknowledged the current policy, whose training has lapsed, or whether an employee’s hours were recorded.

Those are different questions and they need a different system.

5. Check the record survives the distance

If an employee in Perth reports an incident, acknowledges a policy or completes a course, where does it land, who can see it, and could you retrieve it in three years?

Distance makes records easier to lose and no less legally required.

What It Costs

Published pricing is thin in this category. Rippling starts around US$8 per user a month, Employment Hero around A$10 per employee (minimum 10 users), ClickUp has a free tier with paid plans from about US$7, and monday.com from about US$9 per seat with a three-seat minimum. Sentrient, BambooHR, Deel, Remote, Workday and ADP Workforce Now are quote-only.

Employer-of-record platforms are the exception to any budgeting logic here: their cost scales with international headcount and can dwarf everything else on this page.

Pricing is entry-tier, was checked in July 2026, and changes frequently. Confirm current figures with each vendor.

Where Sentrient Fits

Sentrient is not the answer to every remote problem and its entry above says so.

It does not pay someone in Berlin. It does not ship a laptop to Adelaide and lock it down.

Deel, Remote and Rippling do those things and do them well.

Sentrient’s argument is narrower. When your people are distributed, the things you can no longer do in person are induction, policy sign-off, training and incident reporting, and those are precisely the things you will be asked to evidence.

Doing them properly, in one system, from anywhere, is the half of remote workforce management that actually carries risk.

The Bottom Line

The best workforce management software for remote teams is not the one that shows you the most. It is the one that lets you prove the most and contacts people the least.

Australia has spent two years quietly redrawing the rules for distributed work. The right to disconnect is a workplace right. Monitoring is regulated surveillance with a notice period. The home is a workplace. Buy software that helps you meet those obligations, and be very careful of anything that markets itself on visibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the best workforce management software for remote teams in Australia?

It depends on which remote problem you have. Sentrient leads for Australian teams that need to evidence induction, policy acknowledgement, training and incident reporting across locations. Employment Hero is the strongest if you want HR and Australian payroll with mobile self-service. Deel and Remote are the answer if you employ people in other countries, and Rippling if device and access provisioning is your real pain.

2. Does the right to disconnect affect workforce management software?

Yes, directly. Since 26 August 2024, and 26 August 2025 for small business employers, employees have had a right to refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact outside their working hours unless the refusal is unreasonable. It is a workplace right, which means adverse action for exercising it is a general protections issue. Software that fires notifications, reminders and approval requests at any hour across time zones is generating exactly that contact, so ask whether you can control notification timing.

3. Is it legal to monitor remote employees in Australia?

Monitoring is not prohibited, but it is regulated and the rules differ by state. In New South Wales, the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 requires at least 14 days’ written notice before computer or tracking surveillance begins, the notice must describe what is being monitored and how, and covert surveillance is an offence unless authorised by a magistrate. It applies to people working from home. Establish what your jurisdiction requires before enabling any monitoring feature, and take advice.

4. Do work health and safety duties apply to employees working from home?

Yes. Work health and safety duties apply wherever work is carried out, which includes an employee’s home. Safe Work Australia publishes guidance on managing the risks of working from home, and psychosocial hazards such as isolation, poor support and unclear expectations must be identified and controlled in the same way as any other risk.

5. What is the difference between workforce management and work management software?

Workforce management covers the employment relationship: records, time and attendance, leave, onboarding, performance, training and compliance. Work management covers the tasks: projects, deadlines, workloads and collaboration. monday.com and ClickUp are excellent work management tools and are frequently listed as workforce management software, which they are not. Most remote teams end up needing one of each.

6. How much does workforce management software cost for a remote team?

Rippling starts around US$8 per user a month, Employment Hero around A$10 per employee (minimum 10 users), ClickUp offers a free tier with paid plans from about US$7, and monday.com from about US$9 per seat with a three-seat minimum. Sentrient, BambooHR, Deel, Remote, Workday and ADP Workforce Now are quote-only. Employer-of-record platforms scale with international headcount and can cost far more than anything else here.

7. How do we onboard someone we will never meet?

Digitally and deliberately. The starter needs to receive and sign their contract, acknowledge the workplace policies including the working-from-home policy, complete their induction and compliance training, and have all of that recorded against their employee file. The difference between a good and a bad remote onboarding is not warmth, it is whether the evidence exists afterwards.

8. Can workforce management software track productivity?

Some products offer it, and you should be careful. Beyond the surveillance law question, productivity monitoring measures activity rather than output, and remote teams tend to respond by producing activity. Most remote performance problems are clarity problems, and a documented goal with a scheduled check-in solves more of them than a screenshot ever will.

9. What records do we need to keep for remote employees?

The same records as for anyone else. Fair Work requires employee records to be kept for seven years, in a legible form and in English, covering matters including pay, hours, leave and termination. Distance does not reduce the obligation, and it does make the records easier to lose, which is the practical argument for keeping them in one system rather than across several.

10. Should remote teams use one system or several?

Most use several, and that is fine as long as you know which system holds the record. A common and sensible stack is an HR and compliance platform for the employment relationship, a work management tool for the tasks, and, if you employ overseas, an employer-of-record platform for those people. What causes problems is assuming the project tool is also the HR system.

Sources

• Fair Work Ombudsman: right to disconnect
• Fair Work Commission: what is the right to disconnect
• Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 (NSW)
• Safe Work Australia: working from home
• Safe Work Australia: psychosocial hazards
• Fair Work Ombudsman: record-keeping
• Capterra Australia (vendor ratings and review counts, July 2026)

Related Reading

• A Complete Overview of Workforce Management
• Top 10 Features You Need in Workforce Management Software
• Workforce Management Software for Small and Medium Businesses
• 5 Ways Workforce Management Software Supports Compliance and Risk Management
• The Best Workplace Bullying and Harassment Training Courses in Australia

Disclaimer: This article is general information only and is not legal advice. It summarises the right to disconnect under the Fair Work Act 2009, workplace surveillance obligations under the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 (NSW), work health and safety duties relating to work carried out at home, and Fair Work record-keeping requirements, as at July 2026. Surveillance law differs by state and territory, and these provisions are summarised rather than reproduced. Confirm your obligations with the Fair Work Ombudsman, your work health and safety regulator, or a qualified legal adviser before enabling any employee monitoring feature. Ratings and pricing were checked in July 2026 and should be confirmed with each vendor.