Processing Paychecks with Ease: The Payroll Report 💵📋

Running a restaurant means balancing early morning prep shifts, busy dinner rushes, and everything in between. When the pay period ends, the Payroll Report is here to answer one crucial question: "What do we owe each employee this pay period, broken down by hours worked, overtime, and tips?"

This report consolidates all your front-of-house and back-of-house time card data into a single, clean payroll summary. It lays out regular hours, multiple overtime tiers, tip types, and overall wages exactly the way your accounting or payroll team needs it to process accurate paychecks. 🎯

📊 The Four Layers of Your Payroll Data

Depending on how deeply you want to audit your data, the Payroll Report can generate up to four distinct layers of detail. Every section shares a matching structure but rolls the numbers up differently:

1. Totals by Job 🧑‍🍳

This section aggregates all hours and pay across every single employee who worked a specific role during the pay period. It is perfect for seeing which positions cost you the most in labor.

2. Totals by Employee 👥

This layer provides a single row per team member, combining all their hours and total earnings across every shift they clocked into. This is the primary section your payroll provider needs to cut paychecks!

3. Totals by Employee / Job 🔄

Does your staff wear multiple hats? If a team member works as a Host on Tuesday but a Server on Friday, this section separates their hours and pay rates by the specific role worked so their blended earnings stay perfectly accurate.

4. Employee Detail (The Deep Dive) 🔍

This is your master time card ledger. It shows a line-by-line record of every single individual clock-in and clock-out pair per employee. If someone worked multiple jobs, it will even display a helpful "By Job" subtotal right above their grand total.

📖 Column Definitions: What the Numbers Mean

To prevent screen clutter, the NX Portal automatically hides columns that aren't actively being used by your venue (like unused overtime tiers or tip rules). Here is what the core columns track:

Regular Time: Total hours worked at the employee's standard base pay rate.
Daily Overtime: Hours worked beyond your daily overtime threshold (typically any time past 8 hours in a single shift).
Daily Double Overtime: Hours worked past your daily double-time threshold (typically any time past 12 hours in a single shift).
Weekly Overtime: Accumulated hours that exceed your weekly overtime threshold (typically any hours past 40 in a single week).
Pay Rate: The hourly wage for that job. (Note: In summary views, this represents an average across time cards).
Total Pay: Total gross wages earned—combining regular time plus all overtime tiers.
Card Tips: Credit card tips collected on the POS during the period.
Tips Retained: Tips or service charges kept by the house.
Declared Tips: Cash tips manually declared by the employee when clocking out.
Tips Paid Out: Tips distributed directly out to the employee.
Gratuities: Automatic gratuity amounts tied specifically to that employee's checks.
Tipped Sales: The total amount of tippable sales generated by this staff member.
% of Tipped Sales: A calculated minimum tip declaration baseline, based on your venue's target percentage rules.

🛠️ Strategic Ways to Use This Data

Streamline Payroll Day: Pull up the Totals by Employee section at the end of the pay cycle. You can hand this directly to your payroll processor to ensure seamless wage delivery.
Keep Overtime in Check: Scan the Daily OT and Weekly OT columns. If you notice the same employees constantly triggering overtime costs, it might be time to optimize your weekly staff scheduling.
Stay Tip Compliant: Use Declared Tips and % of Tipped Sales to quickly flag any team members whose declared cash tips drop below your venue's minimum reporting percentage—helping you stay fully compliant with IRS tip allocation guidelines.
Audit Multi-Job Shifts: Use the itemized detail layers to verify that cross-trained employees are being paid their correct, higher rate for specialized shifts like bartending versus standard floor serving.

🎛️ Custom Filters and View Options

Filters Available

Labor Groups: Limit your report to look at specific sections of your staff (e.g., viewing Front of House only).
Jobs: Narrow your view down to specific job titles (like auditing only your Hosts).

Toggling Sections

You can customize the layout of your export by including or excluding any of the four major layers independently using these back-office section toggles:

Totals by Job (JOB_TOTALS)
Totals by Employee (EMPLOYEE_TOTALS)
Totals by Employee / Job (EMPLOYEE_JOB_TOTALS)
Employee Detail (EMPLOYEE_DETAIL)

Need Help? 💡

Why is an employee's tip total showing as zero when I know they worked?

Tips are tied to the active user profile that opens the check at the POS terminal. If a server was using a generic login or forgot to log into their own account, the credit card tips won't link to their personal payroll line. Ensure your staff always logs in using their unique user credentials before ringing up orders!

An employee forgot to clock out, and their "Regular Time" looks massive.

If an employee leaves without clocking out, the system will keep tracking time until they are manually clocked out. Navigate to your back-office time card management screen, adjust the clock-out timestamp to the correct hour, and refresh this report to fix the calculations.