thread Tips shared with owner? in Orders, Menu Items, Catalog & Fulfilment

Tips shared with owner?

southernoutlook — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 14:31:24 GMT

As the owner, I'm not one of my Square employees to share tips, but I'm working too and often the customer is giving the tip intended to me personally (as support for my new endeavor, they're a personal friend/family member) but it goes to the hourly teenager clocked in then instead. Can I make myself an employee?

Re: Tips shared with owner?

Gold — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 12:49:36 GMT

HI, a quick Google search says No, you are the business owner.

https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare/what-you-need-to-know-about-tip-pooling

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/7654-get-started-with-tip-pooling-for-team-management

Re: Tips shared with owner?

southernoutlook — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 14:44:33 GMT

Thanks. Any ideas on what to do in this situation though?

Re: Tips shared with owner?

Donnie-M — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 18:03:43 GMT

@southernoutlook If you are doing the work and lets say it is a catering, and you are given a tip by the customer, then you are allowed to keep that money as a tip. What you need to do is make sure you are not pooling tips and you are assigning tips based on the transaction and you cash out the sale. This can be done by using device codes and each person having a log in under the basic team management and recording the sale.

As others have pointed out, as an owner, you have to be very very careful that you do not share in tips that are pooled or designated for employees. But when you are working as an employee and a customer gives you a tip directly, that would be allowed. But if you are using that teenager to help you do the work, then they would be entitled to the tip as tips are always the property of the employee even when collected by the business.

So basically, don't intermingle them at all or your new business endeavor could go belly up. It is just not worth it. You would have to clock in as an employee and be doing employee work to take a share of the tips, but even then that is just full of trouble if there is any question at all if you were acting as a manager.

What you can do is set up a service charge, and a service charge or "automatic gratuity" is not a tip at all and would be allowed to be split how ever the business sees fit.