Recording tips

The law covers qualifying tips. These are the tips you must share fairly. Record:

• Card and digital tips: tips paid by card, contactless, app or QR code, including through a tipping app or service you arrange.
• Service charges, whether optional or compulsory.
• Cash tips you pool or share out, such as a tip jar or cash handed in at the end of a shift.
• Vouchers or tokens with a fixed cash value.

Cash a customer hands straight to one worker who keeps it isn't covered if you play no part in how it's shared. But if you control or influence how any cash tips handed to workers at that venue are shared (for example, you tell staff to pool them), cash a worker keeps later that week or the following week (Monday to Sunday) is covered too and must be shared fairly. If you're not sure, record it.

1. Open the venue and find Tip intake.
2. Enter the date customers paid the tips.
3. Enter the amount customers paid, in pounds.
4. Choose where it came from: card, cash, service charge or voucher.
5. Add a note if it helps, such as “Saturday service”.
6. Press Record tips.

Most venues record tips once a day or once a week, using the till or card machine report.

Enter what customers actually paid. If a customer tipped £10 by card and the card company kept 20p in fees, enter £10. You can't take card fees, admin fees, breakages or till shortages out of tips.

An optional service charge, which customers can ask you to remove, has no VAT in it. Enter the full amount.

A compulsory service charge includes VAT, and the VAT part goes to HMRC. Enter the amount without the VAT. If you're not sure which kind you have, ask your accountant.

The date matters because it sets the pay-by date: the last day you can legally pay the tips. That's the end of the month after the month the customer paid. A tip left on 23 June must be paid by 31 July.

Don't combine tips from different months in one entry. If you're recording a week that runs from 28 June to 4 July, make two entries: one for the June days and one for the July days.

Delete the wrong entry and record it again. You can only delete tips that haven't been shared out yet. Once tips are part of an allocation, they're a legal record and can't be deleted.

Fairpool keeps a log of every change, including deleted tips, on the Records page.