Pool Tips and Tipping Out

In this Article:

• Share Tips Using an Employee's Cash Earnings
  • During Payroll
• Tip out Staff using a Percentage of Sales by Sales Category
  • Setup
  • Shift Review
• Pool Tips with Other Employees
  • Tip Pool Calculation
  • Pooled Tip Reports
  • Pool Tips with Online Ordering
• Additional Resources

Share Tips Using an Employee's Cash Earnings  

In some restaurants, servers have the ability to tip out bussers and dishwashers at the end of their shift review using their own cash earnings. To tip out other employees in this manner, the following configuration steps are needed:

Note: Managers need the 3.13 Negative Declared Tips permission enabled for their user account.
 

1. In Toast Web, navigate to Employees > Shift review > Advanced review setup
2. Under the Declare cash tips section, select Tipped employees must declare cash tips for Declare cash tips. Then, select Allow for Negative Cash Tips to allow negative declared tips in shift review with manager approval.
3. Save and publish your changes.
4.  During shift review, the employee will select Declare to declare cash tips.
   
   
    
5. The negative value is entered using the negative sign and the numeric value. Declare the entry.
   
   
    
6. The negative declared cash tip value will appear below Credit/Non-Cash Tips in the employee's Shift Review Report.

Declared cash tip entries can be viewed and changed in Toast Web by navigating to Reports > Labor > Time entry management. After setting the correct date range and location, you can edit the Cash tips decl. field directly on this page. Select the checkmark to save any changes.
 

Example scenario:

• The server/bartender will declare a NEGATIVE total amount in cash tips they will be giving out to co-workers.
• As these co-workers clock out, they will declare the total cash tips they earned and collected from others.
• Bartender Mike has $200 in tips (cash or non-cash) and owes Busser John 10%.
• Bartender Mike declares -$20 in Cash Tips on his shift review and hands the money to John.
• Busser John declares +$20 on his clock out.

Reporting Tips During Payroll

During payroll, the manager looks at the Labor Summary report to determine what to report as tips for both Bartender Mike and Busser John.

Bartender Mike will have $200 Non-Cash Tips and -$20 Declared Cash Tips. Because only one number is reported to payroll overall for tips, the manager will enter a net of $180 for Mike.

Busser John will have $0 in Non-Cash Tips and $20 in Declared Cash Tips so the manager will enter the $20 into payroll.


 

Tip Out Staff Using a Percentage of Sales by Sales Category

In some restaurants, total tip earnings are divided amongst employees using percentages based on job roles. For example, perhaps barbacks are to receive 6% of bar sales as their tips for a shift. If the bar makes $15,000 in sales, barbacks will earn 6% of that, which is $900, to split amongst barbacks working that shift.


 

Setup Percentage-Based Staff Tip-Outs

To set up a tip-out that is based on a percentage of net sales by Sales Category, please follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Employees > Shift Review > Advanced Shift Review Setup.
2. Scroll down to Shift Review Report > Tip Sharing.
3. Select the checkbox next to Tip Sharing.
4. Select Details.
5. Select +Add New.
6. Select your Sales Category from the dropdown menu.
7. Add your desired tip percentage and a description if you'd like. For example, Bar Tip Percentage of Food Sales.
   
    
   
   
8. Repeat as necessary for all required Sales Category Tip Percentages.
9. Don't forget to Save and Publish your changes!

Note: This is calculated based on net sales, not gross sales. 

Tips in Shift Review

The tip-sharing percentages will show up right underneath the new credit card tip audit, or underneath the Total Tips section which is the current default during Shift Review. These percentages are printed on the physical shift review as well. This is simply a calculation and does not remove/add any tips-outs to specific employees.

Toast does not report the amount that is transferred from one job to another or report the tip share amounts per employee on the existing Toast Labor Summary report at this time. If you need to track this, please save your printed shift reviews. 


 

Pool Tips With Other Employees

The Pooling Tips Report gathers all of the credit card tips (non-cash tips) attached to checks for a shift and splits them among servers who were clocked in during the period of time that the checks were open.  The system does not actually pool tips and split them among servers, it simply shows you a recommended way you could split tips among servers.  

Tips are attached to the check open time and are only split among servers who were clocked in at the time the check was opened.  Here are a couple of examples:

Example #1

If server A clocks in at 9:00 AM and takes 2 orders (which means there are 2 open checks), then server B clocks in at 9:31 AM, and server C clocks in at 9:35 AM, only server A will receive tips from the 2 orders opened between 9:00 AM and 9:30 AM. 

Server A clocks out at 11 AM, which means tips on any orders opened between 9:35 AM and 11:00 AM would be split between all three servers since the orders were opened after they clocked in.
 

Example #2

There is a large party in the dining room at noon. Server A opens a check for the party and begins taking drink orders.  Server B clocks in at 12:31 PM to assist with the large party.  Since server B was not clocked in at the time the check was opened, server B will not be included in the tip pool report calculated for that check.  In this case, tips pooling will need to be calculated manually.

Tip Pool Calculation

Once the system determines which servers are eligible for tips (based on open checks and clock-in times), those tips are calculated based on hours worked.  

Note: Tip pool functionality is simply a calculation and does not remove/add any tip outs to specific employees.

To implement this tip option in your restaurant, you need to make sure a few things are enabled.
 

1.  Navigate to Employees > Employee management > Jobs.
2. Next, select a job role you would like to edit. In this case, we chose Server. 

3. For the pooled tips report to show, each job role that collects tips in your restaurant must have a selection that requires cash tips to be entered at closing. 

In this example, all of our job roles are tipped. Non-tipped, salaried employees wouldn't be affected, so you would not want to have this option selected for them. Also, note that pooled tips are calculated through the tips entered on the payment screen and include both cash and non-cash gratuity.


 

Pooled Tip Reports 

The Labor Summary report found in Reports > Labor > Labor summary in Toast Web will show you the Restaurant Summary and Employee Summary with the total tips and gratuities. Make sure to se the appropriate date range using the filter at the top of the page. At this time, we are not able to report more than two weeks at a time, but you are able to look at two week time periods as far back as you've enabled Pooled Tips.

The tip information here is gathered from guest checks and employee shift reviews from closed shift reviews only. In other words, the Tips and Gratuity column values reflect the total amount of tips/gratuities from all closed checks in all closed shift reviews across the chosen time period. The Declared Tips column values reflect the total amount of declared tips in each closed shift review across the chosen time period.

Note: Non-Cash Tips PLUS Gratuity are calculated on the Pooled Tip Report.

Pool Tips with Online Ordering

Note: Toast If you are using Toast Tips Manager to pool and share tips, check out article instead for a detailed breakdown of setting up tip shares for Online Ordering: .

Toast suggests setting up a generic Online Ordering employee to be used specifically for online orders. This will automatically assign this server to all online orders, regardless of who logs into the auto-firing device. This will allow all non-cash tips collected through Online Ordering to be distributed to the employees working the shift. 

For more information on how to create a new employee or Online Ordering check out  and .

It's important to make sure that:

1.  The job associated with the Online Ordering employee is hourly. 

2. Under the Reporting section in the job, make sure Do not include hours and pay under this job in restaurant labor summary reporting is selected. You can also set the permissions as you would like for this role/job here. For example, if you would this job to have access to cash drawers, select 1.7 Cash Drawer Access. 

3. Once the employee is created and linked to the Online Ordering job, go back to the Online Ordering page and select your new employee as the Online Order Server. 

Once the system determines which employees are eligible for tips, those tips are calculated based on hours worked and can be seen in the Pooled Tip Report as detailed . The employee called Online Ordering, Default (in this case) will not show up in the report.  


 

Additional Resources