Tip Pools — a guide for managers

Tip Pools is where you tell NX how tips move between your staff. Set it up once and NX does the arithmetic on every check, every shift, and hands the result to payroll.

Where to find it: the NX Portal, with a venue selected. Tip pools are set up per venue, so if you run more than one location each gets its own.

Contents

1. The one idea you need first
2. Before you start
3. Creating your first pool
4. The pool settings
5. The rows — who gives what to whom
6. Tips or sales? The most important choice
7. Checking your work before payroll
8. Reading the status light
9. Common setups, step by step
10. Managing pools day to day
11. Troubleshooting
12. Good to know

1. The one idea you need first

There are two different things people mean by "tip pooling", and NX handles both. Knowing which one you want makes everything else straightforward.

A pool — a job shares with itself

All the servers put their tips together and split them by hours worked.

Everybody doing that job contributes, and everybody doing that job — including the person whose check it was — takes a share back.

A tip-out — one job gives to another

Servers give 3% to the bartenders.

The money leaves for a different job. The server does not get any of it back.

Most restaurants use both. Servers pool among themselves and tip out the bar. NX lets you put both in the same pool, and you'll see how in §9.

Two words you'll see everywhere

• Gives — the job whose check collected the tip. This is the job someone was clocked into when they rang the check, not their usual job. Somebody who works Bartender on Friday and Server on Saturday counts as a different job each day.
• Receives — the job the money goes to.

The rule that surprises people

A pool can only pay somebody who was on the clock.

If nobody is clocked into the receiving job when a check closes, that row pays nothing and the money stays with the person who earned it. That is correct — there was nobody to pay — but it is the number one reason someone says "the tip pool isn't working". NX flags this for you before it costs you anything; see §7.

2. Before you start

Three things need to be right, or your pool will look fine and do nothing.

You'll also want a time window if lunch and dinner pool differently. Set those up under Time Ranges — for example "Tip Pool - AM" 11:00 to 17:00 and "Tip Pool - PM" 17:00 to 04:00.

A window that crosses midnight is completely normal. 17:00 to 04:00 is a PM shift, and NX understands it.

3. Creating your first pool

Open Tip Pools and you'll get three ways in. They all end up in the same editor, so pick whichever suits how you think.

Start with Nexy AI (fastest)

Press Start with Nexy AI and describe your arrangement in your own words:

"Servers tip out about 24% of their sales, mostly to the door and bus staff, and the service bar hands its whole float to whoever is behind the bar."

Nexy reads your actual jobs, sales categories and time windows, and drafts the whole pool. It won't route money to a job nobody works.

Nothing is live. You land in the editor with a purple banner explaining what Nexy chose and flagging anything it wasn't sure about. Review every row, then press Create pool.

Walk me through it (guided)

Press New pool (or Walk me through it on an empty screen) for a four-step wizard:

1. Pot — name it, choose how big one pot is, how it splits, and the time window
2. Who gives — tick the jobs whose checks feed the pool. Unstaffed jobs are listed last and labelled, so you don't accidentally build around one
3. Who gets — for each contributing job, tick "pools together" and/or add tip-outs
4. Review — every row written out as a sentence

Press Review in editor to finish. Again — nothing is saved until you press Create pool.

Blank pool (full control)

Press New pool ▾ → Blank pool and build it row by row.

4. The pool settings

At the top of the editor, under Pool settings.

Pool name

Shows in your pool list and on the Tip report. Name the daypart if you have more than one — "AM Tip Pool", "PM Tip Pool".

Pool type

Track only really does mean nothing happens. If you pick it, your rows are stored but no money ever moves. NX shows the pool as Inert so this can't catch you out.

Pot size

How much business one pot covers.

If you choose One pot a daypart without picking a time window, there's nothing to split the day by, so it behaves as one pot a day. NX tells you rather than pretending.

Split method

How a pot divides between the people receiving it.

• By hours worked — weighted by hours. A 6-hour shift takes twice what a 3-hour shift takes.
• Split evenly — an equal share each, however long they worked.

"By hours worked" means hours in the pot — the whole shift on a daily pot, or the hours inside the window on a daypart pot. It is not the time they were on the floor for that particular check.

Time window

Optional on a daily pot, required on a daypart pot. A shift qualifies if it overlaps the window — somebody who clocks in at 16:30 is in your 17:00 PM pool.

5. The rows — who gives what to whom

This is the heart of it, under Who tips out whom. Rows are grouped by the job that gives, and each row reads as a sentence.

A tip-out looks like:

A Server gives 3 % of Tips to Food Runner

A pool looks like:

Every Server pools 100 % of Tips and shares it with Server 🔄 pool

Change any of the underlined parts by clicking it.

Making a pool instead of a tip-out

Set the receiving job to the same job as the giver. The sentence rewrites itself and a pool badge appears. That's the whole difference.

Percentages

Type them as percentages — enter 3 for 3%. You'll see 3 % in the box.

The group header

Each job's header shows what it gives away in total:

SERVER · 3 rows · gives away 4.5% of tips + 3% of net sales

Tips and sales are shown separately and never added together — they're percentages of different things, so a combined number would be meaningless.

Order matters (sometimes)

When several Tips-based rows come off the same job, they're taken in the order shown. If they add up to more than 100%, the later ones only get what's left. Use the ⌃⌄ arrows to reorder. (Sales-based rows aren't affected — see §6.)

Scoping a row to part of the check

The in … dropdown limits a row to certain sales categories — a bar cut scoped to Beer, Liquor and Wine, a runner cut scoped to Food. Leave it as the whole check if it applies to everything.

Minimum and maximum (rarely needed)

The ⚙ icon opens a per-check floor and cap in dollars. Leave both at $0 unless you specifically want a limit. A dot appears on the icon when a limit is set, so it's never hidden.

If you have limits set from before 30 July 2026, please re-check them. Minimum and maximum were behaving back-to-front before that date, so an old setting may not mean what it says.

Pay the remainder (percentage pools)

Also behind the ⚙ icon:

☑ Pay this row whatever the other rows don't distribute

Normally, a row whose receiving job has nobody clocked in pays nothing and its share is not given back — it stays with whoever rang the check. Tick this on one row and it collects whatever the others couldn't hand out. It has no percentage; its amount is whatever is left.

One row per pool, and percentage pools only — a points pool already divides the whole tip. Worth setting whenever a tip-out points at a job that isn't always covered. Full explanation in Creating a standard percentage pool.

Points (points pools only)

Points are a ratio between jobs, not a percentage. Cooks on 10 points take twice what dish on 5 points takes. The maximum is 10 — if you find yourself typing 50, you're thinking of percentages and probably want a Percentage pool instead.

6. Tips or sales? The most important choice

Every row is a percentage of something, and you pick which per row.

How to tell which one you already use

Look at a payroll export from your old system and work out what each server tipped out as a percentage of their tips.

• Everyone's percentage is identical → you're on Tips.
• They vary — one server 16.6%, another 32.3% → you're on Net sales. A percentage of tips gives everyone the same figure by definition, so variation can only come from sales.

One thing to know about sales-based rows

A sales-based tip-out isn't capped by the individual check. A $100 check tipped $2 owes $3.50 at 3.5%. That's expected: NX balances it across the whole shift, so a generous check covers a stingy one. Somebody's tip-out can reach $0 but it will never go negative — nobody ever pays in.

7. Checking your work before payroll

Two tools, both on the pool editor. Use them. A pool that quietly pays nothing looks identical to one that works.

Reality check

Sits below your rows. Shows every job the pool touches and whether anyone is actually on it:

• ✅ green — held and worked in the last 7 days
• ⚠️ amber — people hold this job, but nobody's clocked into it lately
• ❌ red — nobody holds this job at all. Rows pointing here will never pay out.

Underneath, each contributing job's total give-away.

Dry run

The Dry run tab replays a real day through the real engine and shows what your pool would have paid. It defaults to yesterday.

You get:

• Would move / Tips collected / Share pooled / On the clock at the top
• Net per employee — received, paid out and net. This is the figure payroll adjusts by.
• Who paid whom — totalled across the day
• Jobs this pool touches — with unstaffed jobs in red

The dry run works on unsaved changes, so you can test an edit before committing it. Nothing is saved and no money moves.

If the result is $0, NX explains which kind of zero it is: no tips collected that day (fine), or tips collected and none moved (that's the one to look at).

8. Reading the status light

Every pool in the list carries a status. This exists so a broken pool is obvious before payroll runs.

A pool is Inert when it's set to Track only, has no rows, every row has an error, or no row has people on both ends.

9. Common setups, step by step

"All our servers pool their tips and split by hours"

1. New pool → name it, Percentage, One pot a day, By hours worked
2. Add a row: giver Server, receiver Server, 100 % of Tips
3. It shows the 🔄 pool badge. Done.

"Servers tip out the bar and the runners"

1. Same settings as above
2. Row: Server gives 5 % of Tips to Bartender
3. Row: Server gives 3 % of Tips to Food Runner

"Servers tip out a percentage of their sales"

1. Row: Server gives 3 % of Net sales to Food Runner, scoped in Food
2. Row: Server gives 2 % of Net sales to Bartender, scoped in Beer, Liquor, Wine

Scoping means the bar cut comes off drink sales only and the runner cut off food sales only.

"Our servers pool together AND tip out the bar"

Both in one pool:

1. Row: Server pools 100 % of Tips with Server (the pool)
2. Row: Server gives 5 % of Tips to Bartender (the tip-out)

"The service bar passes everything to whoever's behind the bar"

Service-bar accounts usually sit on their own job, e.g. "Unpaid Bartender":

1. Row: Unpaid Bartender gives 100 % of Tips to Bartender

100% is a perfectly valid setting — that's a pass-through, not a mistake.

"Lunch and dinner pool separately"

This is two pools, not one:

1. Build the AM pool: One pot a daypart, window "Tip Pool - AM"
2. Build the PM pool the same way with the PM window

Check the two windows don't overlap. If they do and the same job contributes to both, that job tips out twice. NX warns you about this.

"Everyone's tips go in one pot and everybody shares it"

A whole house pool, and it's one row:

1. Row: Every job gives 100 % of Tips to Everyone on the clock

Every job and Everyone on the clock sit at the top of the two job dropdowns. They mean "whoever that turns out to be on the day", so the pool doesn't need updating as your jobs and staffing change.

Full walkthroughs

Two step-by-step guides cover the two shapes most houses run:

📖 Creating a standard percentage pool — servers tip out the bar and the runners, servers pool together, tips vs sales, scoping to food or drink. Start here if you're not sure — it's how most restaurants run.

📖 Creating a Whole House tip pool — one pot everybody shares, plus excluding jobs or whole labor groups, overriding what one job puts in, and what points actually mean.

"One shared kitchen pot split by shares"

1. Points pool, By hours worked
2. Row: Server → Cook, 10 pts
3. Row: Server → Dish, 5 pts

Cooks take twice what dish takes, adjusted for hours.

10. Managing pools day to day

Editing an existing pool

Open it, change what you need, press Save. The Save button stays greyed out until there's something to save and nothing blocking.

When changes take effect. Edits apply to new activity from that point. An earlier day is only recalculated if something on that day changes — a corrected punch, a late payment, or close-day — and when it does, it uses your current settings. If you're changing a pool mid-pay-period, run a dry run on a day you've already paid out to see what a recalculation would do.

Duplicating

Use the ⋮ menu on a pool row → Duplicate. Handy for building a PM pool from your AM one — copy it, change the window, adjust the rates.

Deleting

⋮ → Delete. NX confirms first and tells you how many rows go with it.

Errors and warnings

• Red messages block saving. Something is genuinely broken — a missing job, a duplicate row, a percentage over 100%.
• Amber messages don't. They're things worth a second look: a job nobody holds, rows adding up past 100%, a sales rate that looks high. You can save and carry on.

The footer always shows what's outstanding.

11. Troubleshooting

"The tip pool isn't paying anybody"

Work through these in order:

1. Is the pool green? A red or amber status names the problem.
2. Is it set to Track only? Track only never moves money.
3. Was anyone clocked into the receiving job? This is the most common answer by a distance. Check the reality check panel and the On the clock column in the dry run.
4. Does the time window match the shifts? A PM pool won't pay a lunch shift.
5. Is the giving job right? Money comes off the job the check was rung under. If your service bar rings under "Bartender" rather than its own job, it's running the bartender's rows.
6. Run a dry run on a day you know had tips. It will tell you what happened.

"The pool paid out less than the tips collected"

A row couldn't pay somebody, and by default its share is not redistributed — it stays with whoever rang the check. Compare total distributed with tips collected in the dry run; the per-job reality check names the empty job.

If that job is often unfilled, tick pay the remainder on one row so the money reaches somebody instead (§5).

"The amounts keep changing during service"

That's expected. While anybody in a split is still clocked in, their share is based on hours so far, so it moves as the shift goes on. Those figures are marked provisional and settle at close-day.

"Someone got more than someone else on the same job"

With By hours worked, longer shifts take more. That's the setting doing its job. Switch to Split evenly if you want equal shares regardless.

"The percentages don't add up to what I expected"

If several Tips-based rows come off the same job and total more than 100%, the later rows only get what's left. Check the group header total and reorder if needed.

"I set a maximum and it's behaving oddly"

Minimum and maximum were back-to-front before 30 July 2026. Re-enter any limit set before then.

12. Good to know

Cash and card are treated the same. A tip is a tip.

Rounding favors your staff. Each share is rounded up to the nearest cent, so nobody is ever paid a fraction less than the arithmetic says. Over a shift this can mean the pool pays out a few cents more than it took in.

It's self-healing. NX rebuilds a day's tip pooling from scratch every time something changes on it. Fix a wrong setting and the next event on that day repairs it — you don't need to unpick anything.

Where the money shows up.

• Tip report — net adjustment per employee, plus the detail behind it
• Payroll report — Tips Paid Out, Tips Received and Net Tip Pool per employee
• Employees will be able to see their own breakdown in the NX mobile app

Voided tips disappear properly. Void a payment and the allocations it created are withdrawn.

A job can't be in the same pool twice the same way. One row per giving-job/receiving-job pair — put the combined rate on a single row instead.

Getting help

If a pool isn't behaving and the dry run hasn't told you why, send NX support:

• the pool name and your venue
• the business date you're looking at
• what you expected and what happened

The dry run output for that date is the single most useful thing to mention.