Tip Pooling for Touchbistro POS

Save up to 8 hours per week managing your tip pool with custom contribution and distribution rules, automatic calculations, comprehensive reports, and payroll export options. To collect your tip data with Touchbistro, please continue on to the next section. 

How to Prepare Tip Pooling for Touchbistro POS

To access the Tip Pooling feature using POS integration Contribution, you will require:

• An Actual Sales integration with TouchBistro POS. (If you're not using a supported POS system, learn how to access the Manual Contribution option here.)
• 7punches for time clocking or an Actual Labor integration with TouchBistro POS (since this feature relies on employees' worked hours in order to redistribute tips).
• Have Employee mapping completed. This will ensure that Employees will be assigned the correct tips, based on their hours.
• For tips to be attributed in the tip pool, please ensure that you assign users to orders/sales in your POS system.

Setting up your Tip Pool

Follow these steps to configure your Touchbistro POS tip pool:

1. Log in to the web app as an Admin or Manager/Assistant Manager with permissions.

2. In the left navigation bar select Tip Management > Tip Pooling > + Create Pool.

3. Add the following details about this tip pool: location, the tip pool name (required for creating multiple pools at the same location), and the calculation frequency. Click Next.
   
   
   For more information about "How often are tips calculated?", click here.

   By default, the Calculation Frequency will be set to Daily. Change this by selecting a new option from the dropdown menu:
   Set the date for which your last pay period ended, and we'll use this date to start pooling your tips. The date will automatically default to the last date of the pay period on your Time Clocking page, but you're welcome to adjust it as needed!
   
   Pro Tip! We recommend that you align these dates with how you view pay periods to ensure accurate reporting.
   
   
   

    ⚠️ If you want to create this Tip Pool for a specific Daypart, select Dayparts from the dropdown menu, and choose which Daypart will apply to this tip pool. If enabled, an additional column for Dayparts will be included on the Tip Pool report.
   
   
    

4. Select the option Pull in tips automatically from my POS > click Next.

5. Determine which roles or departments will contribute to the Tip Pool. In other words, who will contribute tips? You'll notice the following two sections: Your mapped roles and Unassigned tips and receipts.

   If you would like to create your Tip Pool with Unassigned-only Contributors, please skip to step 11.

   

6. For Your mapped roles (transactions that are assigned to Employees), you will need to select which Roles and Departments will be your Contributors. Contributors are usually customer-facing employees that gather tips, and gratuities or collect payment during their shifts. Use the dropdown menus below to set your measures and filters:

   • Select your Contributors:
   Contribute by Role

   The team members under the Role can be both 'Contributors' and 'Recipients' (in step 9). This step is to determine how much of the initial tips received will contribute to the Tip Pool to be divided out later across the team.
   
   Example:Servers can contribute 100% of their tips and still receive 50% from that initial 100% that was put into the Tip Pool.

   Contribute by Department

   All roles within the Department will contribute the amount set into the tip pool.
   
   Example: The FOH department contributes 50% of all collected tips to the pool.

   

   • Adjust contribution percentages in the Amount field. These are the % of collected tips/sales that will contribute to the Tip Pool.
   • And, set your contribution type using the Tip-in based on filter:
   Net Sales

   A portion of the employees' Net Sales. When the role is allocating a portion of their net sales into the pool.

   Total Tips

   Any portion of tips made per shift. When the role is contributing a portion, or all, of the tips they made that shift.

   Remaining Tips 

   Once employees contribute to a tip pool, there may still be tips remaining. This contribution type allows those remaining tips to be contributed to the pool a second time.

   ⚠️ Remaining tips can only be contributed once per role.

   ⚠️ Remaining tips is only available for POS Tip Pooling.

   For example:

   A common use of Remaining Tips is when bartenders clock into a shared "Ghost Patio Bar" account when processing receipts. Why? A hectic weekend bar may see the same terminal passed around frequently, between different bartenders; and it would be too time-consuming to update the specific server for each bartender each time.
   
   At the end of the night, tips need to be pooled and distributed as:

   • Ghost Patio Bar contributes 5% of food sales to Support + Bussers.

   • Ghost Patio Bar contributes 100% of the remaining tips equally amongst themselves based on hours worked. 

   To accomplish this, create a new tip pool. While adding your Contributors, be sure to select Tip-in Based On: Remaining Tips.

   In this scenario, Bartenders will contribute 100% of their remaining tips...

   ...and tips will be distributed equally amongst the Bartenders:A final review of the tip pooling details:
   
   

   And by this Tip Pool, the Bartenders now share their remaining tips!

   

   
   

   • Click on + Add Contributor to include more Roles/Departments. You can have as many Contributors as there are Roles under that Location. 
   • Click on the copy icon to duplicate any contributors, including their filters.
   • Click on the trash icon to remove any Roles/Departments from the list of contributors.

7. With Touchbistro POS, you can filter the tips received by Sales Category/Revenue Center/Dining Option (i.e., food, beverage, or uncategorized). This filter determines what amount of tips will go into the Tip Pool before any redistribution calculations.
   For each Contributor, you can set up these filters by clicking on the filter icon  and selecting your filter rules.

   ⚠️ Filtering by Sales Category is only available when Tip-in based on Net Sales is selected, and one or more contribution filters are applied:

   

8. To filter by POS tips/sales that do not have a category, you can select Uncategorized-when measuring by Revenue Center or Sales Category:

   

   Click here to see an example of the Uncategorized filter in action!

   Tippy is a server at a company that pools by net sales and requires sales to be treated differently based on the item sold.
   
   Tippy wraps up a sale with the following items: 1 orange juice, 1 spaghetti, 1 Budweiser, 1 Weekly Special, 1 extra sauce.
   
   In the POS, these items are categorized as follows:

   1. Orange juice: Sales Category =beverage
   2. Spaghetti: Sales Category =food
   3. Budweiser: Sales Category =beer
   4. Weekly special dish: Sales Category = (not yet entered, it’s a brand-new special!)
   5. Extra sauce: Sales Category = (no category)

   For their tip pool, Servers contribute 10% of their net sales on everything except for liquor or beer. To appropriately set this up in 7shifts’ Tip Pooling, the manager would set the Sales Categories like so: If Sales Category = food, beverage, or uncategorized, contribute 10%.
   For Tippy’s specific sale, this would leave out the beer item.

9. For Unassigned tips & receipts, you will also need to enter what percentage of tips will go to the Tip Pool for transactions that are unassigned to any employees.

   

10. Unassigned-only Contribution. To set up a tip pool that includes only unassigned tips—such as those from mobile takeout, delivery orders, or transactions without an assigned employee—use the trash can icon to remove any contributors under Your mapped roles.
    
11. Click Preview your tip pool to use real-time POS data to simulate how your tip pooling rules and filters will distribute tips before it goes live. Here's how it work:
    
    7shifts will pull your POSs' actual labor data from the selected date range to show you how tips will be distributed among the employees who worked that day. Review and edit your tip pool's rules and immediately see the numbers adjust accordingly!
    
    

    ⚠️ By default, the Tips Collected column will automatically include all tip sources (i.e. CC tips, Cash tips). Once you have set your tip sources in the following step, 7shifts will hold those settings as the new default whenever you revisit this tip pool's Live Preview.

    

12. Click Next.
13. Checkmark the fields on your POS that you wish to pull in tip data from. This will be the initial source to calculate the Location's total tips, which will then be divided out between your staff from there. Click Next once you have made your selections.
    ⚠️ These fields may vary depending on the specific setup on your POS. Hover your mouse over the question mark icons for more details about each option.
    
14. Now it's time to assign the receivers. In the dropdown menu, determine how you'd like tips to be redistributed to your team. All distribution methods (equal Distribution, percentage, or points weighting) will reallocate tips based on employees' actual worked hours. Click on the panels below to learn about each distribution type:
    
    
    Equal Distribution

    How Equal Distribution works:
    Each person will receive a portion of the tips based on the hours they worked. Let's say the Tip Pool is $500 and employees worked a total of 25 hours.
    $500 / 25 hours = $20 in tips per hour worked Server A: worked 10 hours and receives $200
    Server B: worked 7 hours and receives $140
    Food Runner: worked 8 hours and receives $160

    Percentage

    How Percentage Distribution works:
    Each role group is entitled to a specific percentage of the Tip Pool. Each person who worked that role will then receive a portion of the tips based on the hours they worked.

    Let's say the tip pool is $1000, Server distribution is set to 60% ($600) and Bartender distribution is set to 40% ($400).

    Server A worked 8 hours and receives $240
    Server B worked 12 hours and receives $360
    Bartender worked 5 hours and receives $400

    Note that since only 1 bartender worked, they will receive $400 regardless of the number of hours they work

    Points Weighting

    How Points Weighted Distribution works:

    Each person will receive a portion of the tips based on the hours they worked weighted by a point multiplier.

    Let's say the Tip Pool is $1200 and employees worked a total of 80 hours.
    Server hours get 2 points and Bartender hours get 1 point.

    All Servers worked 30 hours X 2 = 60 point-hours
    All Bartenders worked 20 hours X 1 = 20 point-hours
    Total point weighted hours are 80, therefore each point-hour is worth $15 in tips ($1200 / 80).

    Server A worked 10 hours for 20 point-hours and receives $300
    Server B worked 20 hours for 40 point-hours and receives $600
    Bartender A worked 15 hours for 15 point-hours and receives $225
    Bartender B worked 5 hours for 5 point-hours and receives $75

15. Select your Receivers > click Next.

    ⚠️ You can have as many receivers as there are Departments and Roles under that Location, regardless if those Roles are already set up as Contributors (in step 6).
    • Click the dropdown and select a Department or specific Role.
    • Click on + Add Receiver to include more Departments or Roles.
    • Click on the trash icon to remove any Departments or Roles from the list of receivers.
    • If you chose to use the Percentage or Points Weighting distribution methods, you will need to enter a percentage or amount of points beside each Department or Role.
    • If using the Percentage distribution, there will be a tally at the bottom to ensure that you are not under or over the 100% total. You will be unable to proceed unless your total is at 100% exactly. 

    

16. Lastly, you will be given an overview of how your Tip Pool will be set up. Go back through any steps to make any changes needed, or click on Save my tip pool to finalize it.

    

17. Success! You've just created a Tip Pool.

    Now you're ready to create more Tips Pools or access any of your Tip Pooling reports.