Tip pool splitter

How it works

1. 1 Put in the card and cash tips for the day, the week or two weeks. Keep back the card fee on credit card tips if you do.
2. 2 Add who worked and their hours, or bring them in from your staff schedule. Split a week day by day when tips swing a lot.
3. 3 Choose how your team shares: by hours, hours times points for each role, the same for everyone, or a set share for the kitchen first.
4. 4 Every share comes out to the cent and fills its own layer of the jar. Print a slip for each person that shows the math, envelope labels with the bills to count out, a payout sheet to sign and a tip policy for the wall.

Free, with no account. Names, hours and amounts stay on this page and are never sent to us. Remember is off until you turn it on, and even then it keeps only how you split and your team's names and roles, never hours or money.

Good to know

Can owners and managers share in the pool?

In Ontario, managers and supervisors generally can. An owner, partner, director or shareholder can only if they regularly do, to a substantial degree, the same work as the staff who share it. When one does, the business has to post its tip policy in at least one clearly visible place and keep a copy for three years after it stops being used. Mark owners in the team list and the tool leaves them out until you confirm they do the same work.

What can come off the tips?

Only the card fee on tips paid by credit card: your processor's percent of those tips, or 1.5% if that's more. Nothing for debit or any other kind of processing fee, and nothing for spills, breakage, losses or damage. A service charge that customers would reasonably expect to go to staff counts as a tip too.

When and how do tips have to be paid?

There's no set deadline, but within a reasonable time. They're paid in cash, by cheque or by direct deposit, which includes Interac e-Transfer, to an account in the person's own name that they choose. Cash and cheques are handed over at the workplace, or somewhere the person has agreed to in writing.

Do tips go through payroll?

It depends on who controls them. When the business sets the split or handles the money, the CRA calls them controlled tips: they're paid through payroll with tax, CPP and EI taken off, and go on the T4. When staff pool and split tips among themselves, they're direct tips, with no deductions. Ask your bookkeeper which yours are (verify).

Does it handle tip-outs?

Yes. If servers tip out a share of their tips or sales to the kitchen, bussers or the bar, choose the kitchen share and set the percent, of tips or of sales. If you only pool what's tipped out, put that in as the tips and list the people it's shared among.

Why do the envelopes round?

Canada has no pennies, so cash comes in nickels. Round to the nickel or the dollar, and what's rounded off either goes with the person's pay, so the share stays exact, or stays in the jar for next time. Count the jar bill by bill and it tells you what to swap at the till so every envelope comes out right.

Guidance, not legal advice. Rules change, so check Ontario's guide to tips and how the CRA treats tips.