I work at a restaurant that offers us cash tips from the customers but not credit/debit tips. We get comments a lot from customers that want to leave tips but have no cash asking why we don’t have a system in place to accept them. Also, being able to accept credit card tips would mean more money for us employees that work real hard. However, the owners say we wouldn’t want that system in place as we’d have to begin claiming both cash and credit tips. My thought is that claiming them and paying tax on all our tips isn’t that bad because in the end we’d still be netting more at the end of the day? Is there anyone that works with these types of systems or restaurant managers/owners that have experience with this? I’m trying to open dialogue with our management about it. Thanks!
It’s absolutely 100% worth doing. Our card tips are 10x what the cash tips are. And I’ll be that guy and say cash tips need to be claimed as income anyway so that shouldn’t even be a factor.
Either your owners are just trying to save the paperwork of calculating out the card tips and including it in payroll or they’re worried if people start tipping on card they’ll buy less or something, I don’t know. But I guarantee the staff is missing out on a pretty decent chunk of income.
my wife’s employer wouldn’t do it. but what they would allow is employees to use a tipping app. there are a few of them out there. the customer can scan a QR code. the employees can even have cards with the info to hand to the customers. the owners just didn’t want to be on the hook for taxes, cc fees or chargebacks, and any unemployment.
the reality might be is that customers use that excuse not to tip. which ended up being the case with my wife’s place of work.
I got this once as a customer. Super weird and bordering on scammy. You want me to tap twice for the same transaction? Nah, get your pos sorted out.
Where are you based if in the UK there are terminals that don’t charge any processing fees on tips, if this is an issue for the restaurant and they are happy as long as they don’t get charged processing fees (assuming you’re in the UK) I’ll be happy to help with implementation, just Dm me and I’ll we can arrange a meeting with your management
You could get an employee owned card machine from somewhere like square or sumup that could be placed by the exit or the till for tips. It would need to be clearly labelled as such. They are typically set to take a fixed small amount with an option to upgrade to a higher amount. This can then be managed by employees and split according to shifts etc.
It was a while ago so it might have changed but when my parents owned a restaurant In the uk, anything that went through the till was counted as income and had to have the tax deducted so having the tips separate helped a lot for the staff. They had a tip jar by the till which was great because the customers would often place all their change in the jar. I think the card customer could pay extra on top of what the till wanted and then the change would go into the tip jar as cash.
If the owner wants to help the staff they will.