Toast Tips Manager Onboarding Wizard

In this Article:

• Toast Tips Manager Onboarding Wizard
• Tips Manager Key Terms
• Step 1: Choose How Tips Are Grouped Before Being Distributed
• Step 2: Choose How Tips Are Collected
• Step 3: Choose How Tips Shares Are Distributed
• Step 4: Review Your Policy

Toast Tips Manager Onboarding Wizard

The Toast Tips Manager onboarding wizard is available to restaurants who have purchased the Tips Manager module, but have not yet saved a tip rule on the tip pooling page. While using the wizard, you'll see common questions, helpful tips, and your progress through the wizard on the right side of the page. Additionally, there are links that can add more details to the step you're on.

If you save a tip rule, either on the tip pooling page or by completing and saving the wizard, you are no longer eligible to use the tool, so take your time with understanding each step and how it affects the tip rule you create here. If you need additional help or would like to follow along as you complete the wizard, refer to Get Started With Toast Tips Manager.

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Tips Manager Key Terms

This guide will reference a couple terms that may seem similar or may be defined differently in other places, so let's quickly define the terms as they are used at Toast:

• Tip sharing: When a tipped job distributes some of their tips to jobs that are not typically tipped. For example, a server might tip out (the act of tip sharing) a food runner 2% of their food sales.
• Tip pooling: When a job collects a portion (100% in many cases) of their tips into one pool and redistributes them either proportionally or based on hours worked. For instance, the bartenders of a restaurant may pool their tips at the end of a shift and then redistribute them based on how many hours each bartender worked.

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Step 1: Choose How Tips Are Grouped Before Being Distributed

1. Access the Toast Tips Manager wizard by navigating to Reports > Labor > Tip management and either selecting Get started in the pop-up or Visit policy onboarding in the banner at the top.
   
    
   
   
2. Read the intro screen and select Get Started.
3. On step 1, you'll select a tip pool interval. This setting applies to your entire policy (i.e. every tip rules you create). In short:
   1. The Full workday interval ensures that all applicable employees (tips, sales figures, and time entries) who worked in a single business day are included in the tip pool.
   2. The Service Period (shift) interval separates employees and their tips based on what shifts or day-part they worked. The shifts are based on the services and hours configured in the Hours/Services page.
   3. The Order interval allows recipients to receive tips based on who is clocked in when a check is opened. In other words, the check must be opened while an employee is clocked in for the employee to be a part of the tip rule set. When pooling by Order, orders with cash tips cannot be included because they are reconciled with the restaurant when running shift reviews, not on each order.
4. See the FAQ on the right side of the page. Select Next when you're ready.

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Step 2: Choose How Tips Are Collected

The first step of creating any tip rule is to enter where the tips are coming from. Toast Tips Manager uses employee jobs to collect and distribute tips rather than specific employees, so you'll select a job that directly collects tips from guests. These jobs are known as contributors and are often server, bartender, and counter jobs, but can realistically include any job marked as Tipped? in Toast Web.

Once you pick one or more jobs to contribute to this tip rule, you'll enter in the percentage of their tips to be contributed. Next, you'll select whether you pool by tips or sales for this specific rule. In other words, will the job you picked contribute a percentage of their sales or their tips? For instance, a server job might contribute 5% of their total food sales or 100% of their total tips received from guests, depending on if this rule is for tip sharing or tip pooling.

Lastly, select the source(s) of the tips/sales that the percentage(s) will come from.

• If you picked Sales, you'll see all your sales categories listed here.
• If you picked Tips, you'll see the four sources of tips and gratuity: cash tips, non-cash tips, cash gratuity, and non-cash gratuity.

In the example above, Servers and Bartenders are both contributing 20% of their total cash tips and non-cash tips earned in the full workday (this was selected in step 1; see the upper-right corner of the image). Select Next to continue.

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Step 3: Choose How Tip Shares Are Distributed

In the last step, we chose where the tips came from. Now we will choose where those tips go. Begin by selecting another job; these jobs are known as recipients. This might be the same job(s) you selected in the second step (common in tip pooling) or might be a different job(s), possibly even ones that aren't marked as Tipped? in Toast Web (common in tip sharing).

Once you select a job, you'll be asked if you'd like to calculate tip shares based on points or percentages. This can be a tricky concept to understand, but points is the default and is the recommended method for nearly all tip policies seen at Toast. If you want to learn lots more about points vs. percentages, visit Points and Percentages With Toast Tips Manager.

• Points: Points split tips based on shares assigned to each recipient job and can optionally take "hours worked" into account, giving you flexibility when schedules vary. A main difference between the two is when a recipient job is not present on a day, points will still assign all tips to recipient jobs while percentages will return tips to contributor jobs.
• Percentages: Percentages assign a fixed portion of the tip pool to each recipient job, which can then be split evenly or by hours among the employees clocked into that role. If you use percentages, the sum of all percentage boxes must equal 100% to ensure no tips meant for contribution to the pool are left to the contributing job(s).

Lastly, you have the option of how tip shares are distributed

• Equally: This does not take "hours worked" into account and jobs with equal points or percentages will receive the same amount.
• Proportionally based on hours worked: This takes "hours worked" into account, so employees who worked more hours will receive a larger portion.

In the continued example above, we're still using Servers and Bartenders who both contribute 20% of their total cash tips and non-cash tips earned in the full workday (this was all set in steps 1 and 2 and can be seen in the upper-right corner). In step 3, we have chosen that Bussers and Food Runners will receive 1 point each and shares will be distributed proportionally by hours worked. Select Next to advance.

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Step 4: Review Your Policy

On the final review step, you can see each selection you've made for this rule. Select the edit pencil to return to a step and update this rule. Otherwise, select Create rule to add this to your Tip pooling policy page. You can still edit this rule once you select Create rule. Once you exit the wizard, it will no longer be available at this location.

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This content is for informational purposes and is not intended as legal, tax, HR, or any other professional advice. Please contact an attorney or other professional for advice.