Splitting by hours
Each share is the pool times that person's hours, divided by everyone's hours. In the example above, $620.00 over 15.5 hours comes to $40.00 an hour: Ana's 6 hours get $240.00, Marcus's 5.5 get $220.00 and Dee's 4 get $160.00.
An hours split pays for time on the floor and nothing else. That suits a pool where everyone does roughly the same job. It gets argued about as soon as a server and a busser share the same rate per hour.
Splitting by points
A point system gives each role a weight. Say servers get 10 points and bussers 5. With points × hours, Ana has 60 point-hours, Marcus 55 and Dee 20, out of 135. That makes a point-hour worth about $4.59, and the shares $275.56, $252.59 and $91.85.
Points without hours treat a short shift like a full one. Split the same pool on points alone and Dee gets $124.00 for 4 hours, against $91.85 when hours count. If shift lengths vary in your house, multiply by hours.
Splitting by role
Some houses fix each role's slice first and split it evenly inside the role. With 70% to servers, 20% to the bar and 10% to bussers, a $1,200.00 pool gives four servers $210.00 each, two bartenders $120.00 each and three bussers $40.00 each.
The catch: a role's slice doesn't shrink when fewer people work it. If only one busser comes in, that busser takes the whole 10%, $120.00 on the same night. Decide ahead of time whether that's what your house wants.
Where the extra cent goes
$100.00 doesn't split three ways into whole cents. Cut every share to $33.33 and a cent stays in the pool. This calculator gives each leftover cent to the share that lost most to rounding (the first row when they tie), so the shares add up to the pool exactly and none is more than a cent from its exact value. Those rows are marked +1¢.
Who can share a tip pool
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, an employer may not keep any part of employees' tips, and that includes managers and supervisors (29 U.S.C. § 203(m)(2)(B); the Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #15). State rules on who may join a pool differ, so check your state labor department before setting one up.
Every amount on this page comes from the same calculation code as the TipCup app, run in your browser. Nothing you type leaves this page.