Feature Request: Tip pooling for Square Payroll

@VCB - Appreciate the follow up. We'll be sure to pass along your feedback to our product liasion team! 

We do tip pooling over the course of the entire pay period for all tipped employees. We include the cash and credit cards in the disbursement amount. A spreadsheets divides the amount of total tips collected by the amount of hours worked. The payroll service then pays them that amount. Since tips are on the paychecks, there isn't any concern about taxes and proper reporting. We didn't want to try to match up the exact shift worked for the tips collected or then people would only want to work on the days with the best tips. Dividing it out means everyone's efforts helps the entire crew. Non-performers tend to fall to the wayside and not fit the culture.

That does make sense to pool tips and therefore the people working the slower shifts who spend more time doing cleanup/tasks/etc than customer service don't get the short end of the stick, but I've found workers consider any tip received when personally helping a customer to be "their" tips, so everyone just collects their tips at the end of their shift or when someone else takes over. How have your employees reacted to the pooling of tips? I think it's a good idea, but I know it would not be well-received with my morning people who work the busiest shift and therefore get the most tips.

In North Dakota, the rule for how tips are distributed is by having the eligible tipped employees decide collectively on how they want to do it. That decision gets forwarded onto management for implementation. It takes the boss out of the equation, so they can argue amongst themselves.  If you end up with a situation where morning shifts get most of the tips, then what you'd probably end up having to do to keep staff at other times is to pay them Better wages to compensate. We had staff that that thought they should be paid more to work the busy shifts AND get the the tips earned during the busy shifts. When I asked them how they would like being assigned to slower shifts, the conversation quickly stopped. 

The lesson is to verify the law in your state for tips.

Thank you, Dakota!  Lots to think about there.

Our employees like pooling tips.  It's important to remember that during slow times, there is other work being done that contributes to the customer experience.  Prep, cleaning, putting deliveries away, etc.  In our opinion, pooling tips helps promote the teamwork atmosphere throughout the day. 😃

Any word on this? This is exactly what we need to be able to do. Right now we're using a 3rd party payroll service, but would like to switch to Square. 

@EConway - I don't have any updates to share at this time, but I'm happy to pass along the feedback! 

@EConway I pool the tips based on hours worked and enter this amount when I do Square payroll under cash tips paid.  When I do payroll I set aside the cash from the credit card tips to divy up between the employees.  They take their cash tips each shift and thanks to @VCB we are now using Homebase and they can report these tips as they clock out.  That way I'm covered.

We are wanting to add the option of credit card tipping but don't want to pool tips. Could you explain a little more how your shop handles the credit card tips at the end of shifts?