Tipping on Parties that are Invoiced--different than in Square Restaurants?

[Etheriacafe]

Hey y'all--I run a cafe thru Square Restaurants, but we have a party room and invoice people for parties. Occasionally, guests tip on those invoices, but I'm wondering if those tips are allocated based on who is clocked in at the time of the payment, like with a regular tip through Restaurants?

This is further complicated by the fact that, as the company owner, I'm the one who is listed as providing the service in Square, but that's both inaccurate (it's not just me providing the service, but there's no other way to set it up) and I don't take tips because I don't get an hourly wage. Are all the tips on invoices being allocated to me, but then just staying in the company bank account because they weren't categorized like a regular tip? TIA!!

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hi @Etheriacafe.  If you have tip pooling enabled and your team members configured correctly, tips that are taken by you are automatically placed in the pool and distributed correctly to team members in the pool.  Those tips are allocated based upon the tip pool settings you have set up.

If you do not have tip pooling enabled, you would need to manually adjust the payroll for the employees who should have received those tips.  And, if this is the case, you are correct that those tips are just sitting in your bank account until you do this.

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hi @Etheriacafe.  If you have tip pooling enabled and your team members configured correctly, tips that are taken by you are automatically placed in the pool and distributed correctly to team members in the pool.  Those tips are allocated based upon the tip pool settings you have set up.

If you do not have tip pooling enabled, you would need to manually adjust the payroll for the employees who should have received those tips.  And, if this is the case, you are correct that those tips are just sitting in your bank account until you do this.

[Etheriacafe]

Awesome, thank you for that. However, does the tip get distributed the day the invoice gets paid--which isn't always the day of the party, and so would potentially short the people working the party? I always assumed that's what the "date of service" button did, but my employees are wondering and I don't really know that answer. 

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Tips are added to the pool on the date of the payment.  .

There’s no perfect way around this, right now.  I can only think of one thing, actually, and that is not to accept tips for the invoice.  In this situation, you’d have to have a $1 transaction after the event for the customer to tip what they wanted.  At least then the tip would be posted on the day of the event, not matter when the invoice is actually paid.  It’s klunky, but it would work.

Also, I assume you understand that if you have other employees who are working but who are not working the party, they are also sharing in the tips from that party.  This is where the current implementation of tip pooling might not work for you.  You only have one pool, currently, and all tipped employees who work during that pool period will share all tips.

[Etheriacafe]

UGH, crud. Okay, thank you so much for your help!

[TheRealChipA]

@Etheriacafe You’re welcome.  Don’t give up hope. I’ve submitted various feature requests, as have others, that when implemented should allow you to do what you want to do.  These include things like being able to have multiple tip pools for a pooling period, allowing tip outs to non-tipped employees, and having the option to include cash tips in pools.  And I know there are more requests than that.  

Obviously, I’m not a Square employee, just a fellow seller.  But I know for a fact we’ve been heard, so I’m expecting/hoping to see an announcement about a tipping enhancement beta soon!  

[Etheriacafe]

One more question (sorry, this just keeps going, but I think it's the last): if we're tipping based on who is clocked in at the time of the transaction, what does that mean for tips paid on invoices paid after we've closed for the day? Are those tips not attributed to anyone? (We're switching to tips being pooled for hours worked for the day, but it wasn't that way at the time.)

And thanks so much for all of that info; really hoping this gets solved soon!!

[TheRealChipA]

If there are no tipped employees clocked in when an invoice is paid, and your tip pools are daily, rather than weekly, then those tips are indeed in limbo/unattributed.  You can see those on your Labor & Tips report in Shifts in your online dashboard.  There is a line for unattributed tips, as I recall.  There are only two ways I can think of to solve this for now:

1. Make yourself a non-tipped employee who is not part of the pool.
2. Use one of your tipped employee’s numbers (who is also in the pool) to create and send invoices.  Then those tips will be logged under that employee but shared with everyone.  That might get complicated as you’d have to know when you send the invoice which employees were going to be assigned to that party.  Tricky…..  Personally, I’d use #1. 

But, if you have a weekly tip pool like I do (I’m an ice cream shop where everyone does everything for everyone), then any tips received are just added to the pool since you have a weekly pool and any employees who worked that week share in it.

[Etheriacafe]

Thank you!!!!! FWIW, since I am sometimes clocked in, but don't pay myself anything ($0/no tips), I just found an invoice that redistributed the tip evenly to the people who worked the day the invoice was paid. I didn't realize it before, but if you go into the invoice, click on View Payment Details, and then scroll to the bottom, it shows how tips were re-/allocated. (But maybe you knew this already, which is how you know all of this to start??)

Thanks again, I really, really appreciate all your help!!!

[TheRealChipA]

You’re welcome again. FYI. I slightly modified my post above. You reminded me why it was somewhat inaccurate and might confuse future visitors to this post. You are entirely correct. Even if you personally close a transaction with tips, as long as a tipped someone is in the pool that day or at that time those employees will be redistributed 100% of the tips since you are not a tipped employee. 

I wish you well. Keep an eye out for announcements about future tip enhancement betas. It sounds like you’d be a great candidate to participate!

[SBU]

Hi @TheRealChipA and @Etheriacafe.  Thank you for this thread!

I have the same issue.  I have an invoice that just paid for a future catering order.  They tipped and now the tips are allocated towards to people who worked on the day of payment, rather to the people who will prepare the catering order.

So, to your knowledge, there is no way to switch the tip allocation?

[TheRealChipA]

@SBU A little more information about your current settings is needed.

1. Do you have a tip pool set up?
2. Are all employees in the tip pool, just some, etc?

Without a tip pool, tip money is credited to the team member who closes a transaction.  With a tip pool, all tips are distributed equally among tip-eligible employees who worked during the pool period that you defined.

[SBU]

Yea i have the tip pool set up the same as @Etheriacafe i think.   Tips are pooled based on who is clocked in at the time.  The invoice was paid after closing hours so it allocated to everyone who was on the clock the day the payment was made.

But i guess the question is there is no way to manually allocate a tip elsewhere or remove a tip from the pool?  We don't use payroll because we have a different payroll provider, but use it for calculating tips and pay/hours.  So I could just tell those employees that their Square Teams tip amount will over-report for this date and manually change it when we pay it out. But thats a bit awkward and could cause issues if someone thinks we are wrongly withholding tips.

[TheRealChipA]

Understood.  Thanks for the clarification.

Currently, this would be a manual process, much as you already described it.  There is no way around that at this time.

I’d usually recommend heading over to the Ideate Board and submitting a feature request to the Team/Shifts folks.  But, honestly, I’m not sure how they could implement what you are trying to do.  As I understand it you want to have the tips for a transaction closed on one day be distributed to the team members clocked in on a different day.  It’s possible, but your employees would still be prone to thinking that you are wrongly withholding tips, too, because they would see a change happen from one day to the next.

I guess my point is that what you are doing is probably the best you can do.  Even if the engineering team came up with an automated solution, employees are still employees and questions will arise when they see their tips decrease unexpectedly from one day to the next.

Sorry I can’t be more help.

[SBU]

Got it thanks.

I guess my request would be to allow tips paid on Invoices to be allocated as the owner sees fit.  Because these are invoices for future dates and may not have anything to do with the staff working at the time.  It could even be a delivery person who is not on Square Shifts at all.

does that make sense?

[TheRealChipA]

It makes sense, for sure.  I could see that being a new setting for tip pools, and as such it is definitely worth submitting a feature request.  If you do that, please come back here and post a link to that so that I can upvote/like it and add any comments I might have to it.

Having said that…… this is getting into a tricky legal area.  Some states (mine for example) does not allow me to have a tip pool for only some tipped employees and direct tipping for others.  It is an all or nothing proposition.  Heck, we were only recently allowed in Kentucky to have tip pools at all!  My point is that this sounds like a question for your attorney to review for you to be sure that you aren’t inadvertently doing something that will cost you a lot of money later on.  Because of things like this, Square moves slowly changing how tip pools work, so I wouldn’t expect any quick changes in this area.