thread Re: New SHIFTS: Did something change with Tip Distribution? in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

Updates to Square Payroll tip distribution?

dkhtodd — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 22:09:28 GMT

I was looking at the new SHIFTS section this morning and happened upon SHIFTS>Settings>Tip Distribution. I noticed that TIP DIRECTLY (Credit cards tips are attributed to the team member who collected the tip) was selected. This confused me because I don't ever recall setting that or telling the system to only give tips to the person who collected. When we set this up a year ago, tips were set to be pooled.

I continued looking around and noticed under PAYROLL>Settings>Payroll Settings that Enable Tip Importing is selected as is Pool & Split tips. This section makes sense to me and I recall seeing this before. This is how the tips should work.

My question is, which section is correct? If SHIFTS is correct, it seems as if the person who is on the register will receive the credit card tips - but that is not how I expected this to work.

Attaching screenshots for reference.

Please advise.

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: New SHIFTS: Did something change with Tip Distribution?

Re: FEEDBACK: Square for Restaurants

dp757 — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 22:02:01 GMT

This was a great idea for a restaurant (tip pooling by shift), but for my brewery I WANT tip pooling across the pay period to encourage working during non-peak shifts.

Now Square is doing away with that as an option. Why?!?! This is the way I now pay my employees and Square is taking it away so I'm going to have to do it manually... seriously. Square is really starting to frustrate me.

Oct 19 tip pooling changes

thewakezone — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 23:30:19 GMT

Hello. I have messages Square and they instructed me to post here. Does anybody have an issue with Square removing the "tip pooling" by pay period or day functionality from Square Payroll?

For background, we use top pooling for our coffee shops. It helps us spread the team atmosphere, recognizes work closers and openers do when the shop is slower, and helps incentivize slower shifts, which typically would be harder to fill.

here are problems it will cause my team:

1) our pay is wage + tips = real wage. I will have to increase pay for half the staff, but decrease pay for the other half. This will be a huge issue.

2) because we use tip pooling, busy shifts and slower shifts are equally sought after. Prior to this, nobody would work slower shifts and people wouldn't want to close.

these are the two largest issues.

Square could add functionality without removing tip pooling, so it seems unnecessary.

I really hope square reconsiders this move as it has larger ripple effects through the labor market that will negatively impact many square payroll users.

Tip Distribution "Upgrade" Problems

2ndCharter — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 23:55:19 GMT

I assume that everyone using Payroll received the email today announcing the changes in the way tips are distributed as of December 1st. I understand listening to the voice of the customer and rolling out new features that Square believes will improve the customer experience, add flexibility, efficiency etc. What I don't get is why they are completely abandoning the existing method of tip pooling.

Let me explain. Currently, we tip pool all the digital tips. They are evenly distributed by all employees based on the number of hours they worked during a pay period. My entire organization, though small with under 20 employees, has a compensation model built around this process.

Moving forward, Square wants us to either:

1. Distribute tips evenly to all eligible employees who were clocked in during the transaction or

2. Tip directly to the employee that made the sale.

In my organization, everyone works to fulfill customer satisfaction. They are doing things out of sight of the customer and often times, not even during operating hours. This completely blocks those types of staff positions from receiving tips.

For my business, here are some of the problems I foresee with either selection:

1. In this mode, employees will only want to work at peak hours. The fringe hours, that are equally important to us not for the sales directly, but tasks such as fulfillment, prep work, janitorial tasks etc, will be nearly impossible to fill.

2. We will have "cashiers" fighting over who is on the register in this mode. They will camp on the registers and not fulfill the big picture goals of the organization.

In either mode, I am going to have to renegotiate contracts and other agreements with staff because this isn't what we have bindingly agreed to. If Square provides some "work around" whereby I have to do more work manually during payroll, that isn't an improvement, that is a wholesale downgrade to a very important feature that we've been using for over 3 years.

Completely removing the existing method is nearsighted at the least. In an industry that is having a horrible time with staffing, both in retention and recruitment, Square has blindly put us in serious legal jeopardy with our staff.

Re: Oct 19 tip pooling changes

2ndCharter — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 23:58:43 GMT

I didn't see your thread when I posted:

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/General-Discussion/Tip-Distribution-quot-Upgrade-quot-Problems/td-p/312363

We have some of the same issues currently and foresee many of the problems you too are forecasting.

Re: Tip Distribution "Upgrade" Problems

thewakezone — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:40:05 GMT

I agree with your points and I hope Square reconsiders this change.

Re: Tip Distribution "Upgrade" Problems

dsaxena_pdx — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:55:46 GMT

I came on here to basically bring up the same points. I split tips based on hours worked across the pay period as all our employees are cross trained to do every job and this seems the most fair way to do it. I can easily make a spreadsheet to help me do the distribution myself but it's now an extra job I'll have to do vs letting the payroll app just do it - so I'll start looking at other payroll and timesheet options to do this instead. I hope Square will reconsider but my experience from watching these forums for years is that Square doesn't actually listen to customer requests and just kind of does their own things.

Re: Oct 19 tip pooling changes

dsaxena_pdx — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:57:46 GMT

I don't see why they didn't just add more tip options while keeping the existing ones. It's been working fine for years and not broken so it makes no sense for them to take a feature away.

Re: Oct 19 tip pooling changes

Schultzsweets — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 01:45:08 GMT

I dislike this change as a well. We are already short staffed and if no one wants to work daytime because it's less busy, I'll be working lunch alone regularly again. Already overworked owners will be forced to close daytime hours and we can't afford that either. No reason to take the option away. I am calling customer service to voice my complaint as well as replying to the "was this helpful" survey. If they can't offer an option that works for us we will shop for a provider who can support us better

Re: New SHIFTS: Did something change with Tip Distribution?

Donnie-M — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 13:26:00 GMT

@dkhtodd They are kind of two different things. The one for time cards allows you to split tips evenly between everyone who is clocked in when the transaction is processed. I think the shifts view is for people who are not using square payroll. However, I know we have discussed in the beta having the third option to split tips exactly like payroll based on the hours and not just who was clocked in during the transaction.

@nika @kellyj Not sure if this is two different teams since one is with payroll or should be in beta forums.

Donnie-M

Re: New SHIFTS: Did something change with Tip Distribution?

_Violet — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 13:34:16 GMT

Hi @dkhtodd - Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Square Seller Community with your question.

Yesterday afternoon we released tip pooling to all sellers in the US. We’ve also made significant enhancements to the overall product experience, including tip data in employee-facing reports in the Square Team app, a new workday fallback for unattributed tips, and direct integration with Square Payroll.

You can read more about the new Tip Pooling feature and its details here: Get Started with Tip Pooling for Team Management.

I hope this information is helpful but please do let us know if you have any additional questions. Always happy to help! 😊

Re: New SHIFTS: Did something change with Tip Distribution?

dkhtodd — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 13:55:29 GMT

I'm not sure I am completely clear. All I want to make sure of it that my tips are being pooled when I run Square Payroll - and that the tips aren't based on who was working at that time and instead based on total work hours for the payroll as it originally worked.

Updates to Square Payroll Tip Importing

Dulcedo_Coffee — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 15:48:04 GMT

Can I convey how much I do not like the December 2021 change that will take effect with Square Payroll Tip Importing. https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/7662-updates-to-square-payroll-tip-importing

Not that this change may not may sense to some restaurants and cafes, but that we are not given the option to retain the old method of pooling and splitting tips by pay period or workday. Moreover, before executing this plan a tech support document should have been published with a manual workaround for those who need to keep using the old method of tip distribution.

Please know, and I cannot stress enough, how disruptive this proposed change will be to my coffee shop business. Unlike restaurants, my core sales are in the morning and my evening staff does all the supporting work and prep for the next morning's sales. So the per-pay period tip share works well for us and I wish to remain under that system.

Additional consideration is that, as a super-small business owner who is short staffed and having to compete with big box retailers who pay double what I pay, this change limits my ability to compete for staff. My staff are tipped employees, where the customer makes up half of their wages. I can get my staff to work at less desirable shifts because of the proportional tip sharing, without it I would be hard-pressed to pay them more to make up for the loss of proportional tip sharing...or simply blow up my labor cost.

-Oscar

Happy Coffee Shop owner who is not happy about the Square Payroll Tip Sharing change.

Re: Updates to Tip Distribution?

kellyj — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 15:45:44 GMT

@dkhtodd

If you are pooling and splitting tips by pay period, you can also manually enter these when processing payroll. Is this what you were doing previously?

Tip pooling should be turned off if you want it to divide the way you are describing. This is a feature request that are tracking at this point. If you'd like to help us with feedback on this feature are future tests for team management or payroll, we have a dedicated group in our Beta Community for this feedback and would love for you to be involved.

You can ready more about unsupported methods for tip pooling here.

Square Payroll currently supports tip importing by pooling and splitting tips by transaction or paying the tips directly to the team member who collected the tip. If you are pooling and splitting tips through another method, you can also manually enter these when processing payroll. At this time, Square Payroll does not support the following tip importing features or methods:

Deducting credit card processing fees from tips
Pool and split tips by work day
Pool and split tips by pay period
Auto-gratuity with Square for Restaurants
Importing tips for salaried team members that do not use timecards
Contractor tip importing

Re: Updates to Tip Distribution?

lgmbts — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 15:48:45 GMT

I just got off the phone with Square Payroll and can confirm that if you are pooling tips by day and NOT by shift worked during the day, the workaround is a huge problem that adds significant administrative time to the person in charge of payroll. According to the payroll rep I talked with, a spreadsheet needs to be built to manage pool tips manually individually each day. Then, at the end of the pay period, I have to run payroll and then override the tips earned for each individual team member. When asked why the change, the rep said it was to enhance the product. This "enhancement" is anything but for any business that pools/splits tips by day and hours worked, not who was signed in at the time of the transaction.

Re: Updates to Tip Distribution?

weaglesf — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 16:20:08 GMT

I couldn't agree more. Why is REMOVING a feature an "enhancement"?!!! What is wrong with leaving this option that already exists? I have a business that sells vastly different products during the morning and evening shifts at a counter service establishment. It just so happens that the morning shift is higher work intensity at lower average transaction cost, while the evening is lower intensity at significantly higher transaction cost. WHY can't you just enhance the product and not re-make it like you have just done? Is tip pooling by day or pay period illegal or problematic? Does it expose Square Payroll to liability? If not, just leave the feature that already exists!!

Tip Pool Splitting

PrettyFairTyler — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 17:27:07 GMT

We've been using Square Payroll and really liked the option of splitting tips per workday. Certain employees might start tabs but not end them, perform opening, closing, or prep duties that help others make sales, and it seems to be a typical method for many restaurants and bars to use.

Lately we got an email stating this option would be going completely away with two other options being the only available. While I'm sure others like the new options, we'd really like the ability to stay with our current setup and continue our current tip pool. It looks like both options will be available for a few months, so I dont see why it couldn't continue indefinitely.

Re: Updates to Tip Distribution?

Donnie-M — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 18:19:13 GMT

@kellyj before the new feature was added to teams the payroll module only had the option to split tips by hours worked when importing to payroll is what I understood.

With the new feature you only get 2 options...split by team member doing transaction or all team members clocked in during transaction. Both are different, and there is language in the new information guide that contradicts this.

Donnie-m

Re: Updates to Tip Distribution?

Donnie-M — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 18:34:22 GMT

@lgmbts You can get this info from a team member sales report for a pay period (custom dates) and then export the file to a .csv and in excel set up a macro to auto calc and split by hours worked. I can send you a copy of a spreadsheet I use and the macro I use in a PM if you need. It does require the manual entry in your payroll software but it takes 30 seconds to split tips for me in a 2 week period including online unattributed sales.

Re: Updates to Tip Distribution?

dkhtodd — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 19:32:46 GMT

To be clear, Square has changed the way I have been doing tips for a year. Is that what you are saying? You're now say, if I want to continue having tips by pay period - that's been working for a year - I have to do Manual work now?

Please be clear in your response.

I don't care about tips on a single day nor I care who was at the register at that time and collected tips. And with the comments I am reading, no one else cares about it either.