Master Your Shifts: A Manager's Guide to Tip Pools 💸🤝

Managing how tips are collected, pooled, and distributed among your staff shouldn't feel like a high-stakes math test at the end of a long week. With the Tip Pools feature in the NX Portal, you can set up your restaurant's tipping rules once, and NX will handle the precise calculations on every check, shift after shift, handing clean totals straight to your payroll!

Tip pools are configured per venue. If you manage multiple locations, each property maintains its own independent setup.

1. The Core Concept: Pools vs. Tip-Outs 💡

Before building your rules, it helps to understand the two distinct ways money moves in NX:

• A Pool (A Job Shares with Itself): Everyone in a specific job puts their tips into a single pot and splits them based on time worked or equal shares. Example: All servers combine their tips and divide them by total hours worked. Everyone who contributed—including the person who closed the check—takes a share back.

• A Tip-Out (One Job Gives to Another): Money moves from the host job to a completely different supporting role. Example: Servers give 3% of their sales to the bartenders. The contributing employee does not receive any of that money back.

💡 Most restaurants use both! Servers might pool among themselves and tip out the bar staff at the same time. NX allows you to combine both structures in a single pool setup.

Key Terms & Rules to Know

• Gives (Contributor): The job assigned to the check when the tip was collected. This is based on the role the employee was clocked into when they rang the check. If Brandon works as a Bartender on Friday and a Server on Saturday, he counts as a separate job each day.

• Receives (Recipient): The target job receiving the distributed money.

• The Golden Rule: A pool can only pay an employee who was actively on the clock! If no staff members are clocked into the receiving job when a check closes, that specific rule pays nothing, and the tip stays with the employee who earned it.

2. Before You Start Checklist 🏁

To ensure your tip pool calculates properly without errors, verify these three prerequisites before creating your rules:

🗓️ Time Window Tip: If lunch and dinner operate under different tipping rules, create custom time ranges first (e.g., "Tip Pool - AM" from 11:00 to 17:00, and "Tip Pool - PM" from 17:00 to 04:00) under Configuration > Time Ranges. Crossing midnight is fully supported!

3. Creating Your First Pool 🚀

Navigate to Labor > Tip Pools in the NX Portal. You can build a pool using three different methods:

Option A: Start with Nexy AI (Fastest) 🤖

Click Start with Nexy AI and describe your restaurant's arrangement in plain English:

"Servers tip out 3% of sales to bus staff and food runners, and bartenders pool 100% of their tips together."

Nexy reads your active jobs, sales categories, and time windows to draft the entire pool automatically. It won't route money to unstaffed jobs. You'll land in the editor with a purple banner explaining what Nexy generated so you can review every row before clicking Create pool.

Option B: Walk Me Through It (Guided Wizard) 🧙‍♂️

Click New pool (or Walk me through it) to launch a 4-step wizard:

1. Pot: Name the pool, select pot size, set the split method, and apply a time window.

2. Who Gives: Select contributing jobs (unstaffed jobs are flagged so you don't build around them).

3. Who Gets: Check "pools together" or assign custom tip-out targets.

4. Review: Read your rules written out as plain sentences, then click Review in editor.

Option C: Blank Pool (Full Control) 🛠️

Select New pool ▾ → Blank pool to build your rules line by line from scratch.

4. Pool Settings Explained ⚙️

At the top of the editor, customize these baseline parameters:

Pool Name & Type

• Pool Name: Choose a clear descriptive name (e.g., "PM Tip Pool").

• Percentage (Recommended): Each row independently calculates its percentage off every check. This is the setup most venues need.

• Points Pool: One central pot holds the entire tip on a check, divided across roles based on assigned point ratios.

• Track Only: Record-keeping only—NX will not move any physical money. The system displays these pools as Inert so there is no confusion.

Pot Size & Split Method

• One Pot a Day (Standard): Everything across an entire business date pools together.

• One Pot a Daypart: Lunch and dinner pool separately (requires an assigned Time Window).

• One Pot an Order: Every check pools individually, paying only whoever was clocked in when that check closed.

• By Hours Worked: Distributes funds weighted by hours worked during the pot's window. A 6-hour shift receives twice as much as a 3-hour shift.

• Split Evenly: Every eligible employee gets an equal share, regardless of shift length.

5. Setting Up Tipping Rules (Who Tips Out Whom) 🔄

Under the Who tips out whom section, rules are grouped by the giving job and read as plain sentences:

• Tip-Out Rule Example: A Server gives 3% of Tips to Food Runner

• Pooling Rule Example: Every Server pools 100% of Tips and shares it with Server 🔄 pool

Tips vs. Net Sales: The Most Important Choice

Every rule calculates a percentage based on one of two options:

• Tips: A percentage of the total tip dollars collected on the check ("Bartenders give 5% of tips").

• Net Sales: A percentage of sales volume, regardless of what the guest tipped ("Servers tip out 3% of food sales"). This is the standard industry norm.

💡 Not sure which you use? Look at a past payroll report. If every server's tip-out percentage relative to their total tips is identical, you use Tips. If the percentage varies from person to person (e.g., one server was 16% and another was 32%), you use Net Sales.

6. Pre-Payroll Verification Tools 🔍

Never guess whether your tip pool is working. Use these two built-in verification tools in the editor before running payroll:

Reality Check Panel

Located below your rows, this panel scans every job touched by the pool:

• ✅ Green: Held and worked by staff in the last 7 days.

• ⚠️ Amber: Assigned to employees, but no one has clocked into it recently.

• ❌ Red: Unstaffed job. Rows pointing here will never pay out!

Dry Run Simulator

Click the Dry run tab to replay actual historical sales data through your current rules to see exact payout figures.

• Tests unsaved edits without affecting real financial records.

• Displays a clear breakdown of Net per employee (Received, Paid Out, and Net balance).

• If payouts equal $0, NX clarifies if it's due to zero tips collected or a configuration roadblock.

7. Understanding Pool Status Lights 🚦

Every pool on your dashboard displays a status indicator so configuration issues are spotted early:

8. Common Step-by-Step Setups 📋

"Servers tip out a percentage of sales"

1. Add Rule: Server gives 3% of Net Sales to Food Runner, scoped in Food.

2. Add Rule: Server gives 2% of Net Sales to Bartender, scoped in Beer, Liquor, Wine.

"Servers pool together AND tip out the bar"

1. Add Rule: Server pools 100% of Tips with Server (creates the pool).

2. Add Rule: Server gives 5% of Tips to Bartender (creates the tip-out).

Need Help? 🛠️

The tip pool isn't paying out any money to staff.

Check these common culprits in order:

1. Is the pool status showing Inert or Partly Dead?

2. Is the pool accidentally set to Track only mode?

3. Was anyone actively clocked into the receiving job when checks closed?

4. Does the assigned Time Window match the actual shift times?

The calculated amounts keep changing during active service.

This is completely normal! While staff are clocked in during an active split, payouts are marked as provisional based on hours worked so far. Figures officially lock and finalize at close-day.

Where do staff see their tip pool totals?

Managers can review net adjustments on the Tip Report and Payroll Report in the NX Portal. Employees can track their personal tip-out breakdowns directly inside the NX Mobile App!