Tip Out Calculator
Last CallYour split, your roster, your night — worked out to the penny.
Nobody agrees on how tips get split, because there is no standard — there is only what this house decided. So it gets rebuilt in a spreadsheet, or done on a legal pad at one in the morning by somebody who has been on their feet for ten hours.
At close, the tips have to be divided: what comes off the top for the bar, the bussers and the runners, off which sales figure, and whether what is left splits by hours or by points. Every one of those is the house’s own rule. Type them once, the sheet remembers them, and every night after that is four numbers and a roster.
About this tool
Tip Out Calculator: what it solves
Splitting a night’s tips is not one calculation, it is a house’s own set of rules applied in a fixed order. Something may come off the top before anything is divided. Support roles — the bar, the bussers, the runners, the host — are each owed a percentage of a particular sales figure, and which figure is itself a decision. Whatever survives that splits across the pool, weighted by hours in some houses and by points in others. The Tip Out Calculator takes those rules as input rather than assuming any of them, applies them in that order, and prints the arithmetic beside every figure. It counts in whole cents throughout and hands out the leftover pennies by largest remainder, so the shares always add back up to the money that came in — and it says on the page when they do. It refuses to suggest a rate, because that is the one thing the house is actually paid to decide.
A tip-out is a sequence, not a sum
A night’s tips do not get divided in one step. They get divided in an order, and your house settled that order a long time ago — quite possibly before the current manager started.
Something comes off the top first, in most houses. Then the support roles are paid: the bar, the bussers, the runners, the host, each owed a percentage. Then whatever survives that splits across the pool.
Every step in that sequence carries a decision that belongs to you. Not to the trade, not to the software — to this building.
The four decisions that are already made, and why no app can guess them
What comes off the top. Breakage, a comp, a walked check, a house charge. Some places take it before anything is divided and some do not take it at all.
Which sales figure a percentage runs against. This is the one that starts arguments. Three per cent to the bar — three per cent of what? Total sales? Liquor sales only? Net of comps and voids? Two houses can use the same number and pay out amounts that differ by a hundred dollars a night, and both of them are right, because they are answering different questions.
Who counts as support and what each is owed. A runner in one house is a busser in another. Some houses pay the host out of the pool and some pay the host out of the front of the house’s share.
Hours or points. The remaining pool splits across the servers weighted by hours worked in some houses and by a points system in others, where a section, a shift or a year of seniority carries weight that hours alone do not capture.
Those four are why this cannot be a subscription somebody else runs. A platform serving every restaurant has to pick a default for each of them, and the moment it picks, it is wrong for the houses that decided differently — which is most of them.
The penny problem nobody mentions
Say the pool comes to $487.33 and it splits three ways by hours: eight, six and five. The exact shares carry fractions of a cent. Round each one on its own and the three shares no longer add up to $487.33. They come to a cent or two under, or over.
On a legal pad at one in the morning nobody notices. Across a year, somebody does — usually the person who was short.
This sheet counts in whole cents from the first figure to the last and hands the leftover pennies out by largest remainder, which means the cents go to the shares that were cut closest to a whole one. The result adds back to exactly the money that came in, and the page says so rather than leaving you to check.
What it replaces
A legal pad, or the spreadsheet a manager three managers ago built. That spreadsheet still works, mostly. It also has a percentage typed into a cell nobody can find any more, it breaks when somebody inserts a row, and there is exactly one person who understands it.
You type your rules once. The sheet remembers them. Every night after that is four numbers and a roster.
Who it is for
Restaurants, bars and breweries — any house where more than one person’s pay comes out of the same night’s tips, and where the way that money divides was decided here rather than handed down.
What it will not do
It will not suggest a rate. Not for the bar, not for the bussers, not for anybody. There is no standard rate to suggest. There is only what this house decided, and deciding it is the part you are paid for.
It does not know the law where you are, and does not check it. Rules on who may be in a tip pool exist and they are not the same everywhere. This divides money the way you told it to. It is arithmetic, not advice.
It will not quietly produce a number it cannot stand behind. When the tip-outs come to more than the tips came in, it says so and stops rather than handing somebody a negative share. When a roster has an hour that cannot be read, it names the row. Where it cannot work something out, it tells you what shape it cannot handle instead of printing a plausible figure.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. The arithmetic runs in your browser. Close the tab and it is gone.
Yours would be built the same way.
This one runs on made-up data. The version built for your business runs on yours, and you own it outright. Builds start at $1,300. That is a floor, not a quote. What yours costs is agreed before any work begins. The first conversation is free.