Help centre
Short, plain-English guides to sharing tips fairly with Fairpool and following the Tips Act. New here? Start with Getting started in 10 minutes.
Getting started
- Getting started
Set up your venue, team and tipping policy, then record your first tips.
- Importing your team and hours from a spreadsheet
Add a whole team, or a week of hours, from a CSV file instead of typing them in one by one.
Week to week
- Adding workers and role weights
Add your team, choose fair role weights and keep them the same for everyone in a role.
- Recording tips
Which tips to record, how much to enter and which date to use.
- Recording hours
Log who worked and for how long, so tips are shared fairly.
- Running an allocation and paying staff on time
Share out a period's tips, pay everyone by the pay-by date and mark the allocation as paid.
Your duties under the law
- Your tipping policy
What your written policy must say, how to agree it with staff and when to review it.
- Sharing records with workers
Give workers a private link, and answer a request for their tip records within 4 weeks.
- Agency workers
Agency workers share in tips on the same terms as your own staff.
- Keeping records for 3 years and exporting
What records the law needs, how long to keep them and how to download them.
- Tips Act FAQ
Short answers to the questions venues ask most about the law on tips.
Your account and data
- Data protection for venues
Your responsibilities for workers' personal data, and how to handle their requests.
- Billing, free trial and plans
How the free trial works, how you're charged, and what you can still do if your plan ends.
Words we use
- Qualifying tip
- A tip the law says you must share fairly: card tips, service charges, vouchers, and cash that you pool or share out.
- Allocation
- Sharing out the tips for a set period between the people who worked. Fairpool works out every share.
- Role weight
- A number that says how much an hour in a job counts. 1 is the normal rate; 0.8 means an hour counts for 80% as much.
- Pay-by date
- The last day you can pay tips by law: the end of the month after the month the customer paid.
- Tronc
- A pot of tips shared out among staff. Some are run by an independent person called a troncmaster.
- Agency worker
- Someone who works at your venue but is employed through an agency.
- Controller
- The business that decides how personal data is used. For worker records in Fairpool, that's you.