How to track restaurant tips

On Home, pick Hostess, Expo, Server, or Bartender, or a custom role you already added, then clock in. If you already scheduled the shift, Home can offer that scheduled item so you clock in from it and keep the role attached to that plan.

Set a default hourly wage for the role in Roles & Hourly Wages if you want wages on the shift. A workplace can set its own wage for that role. The wage saved on the shift comes from the workplace when one is set, and from your default otherwise. Changing those settings later does not rewrite past shifts. Editing the shift can change the times, the role, the workplace, the tip-out, and the wage stored on that shift.

The app is built around one in-progress shift. Clock out, or add a completed shift, before you start another. That keeps a Saturday double — lunch as Server, dinner as Bartender — as two records with two wages, two tip totals, and two tip-outs.

Each tip is an amount, an optional note, and a timestamp. You can also mark it Cash, Card, or Split. Cash and Card mean the whole tip was that type. Split is one tip divided between cash and card. Leaving it unset is fine. A note can still hold a table number. Notes are for you. They are not a second total. During the shift, Tip Drawer shows the tips entered so far, the running total, and lets you edit or delete one without leaving Home.

Add Tip lets you enter several amounts in one sitting — up to 30 — with quick buttons for $5, $10, and $20. One optional note is saved on every tip in that batch. Gross tips for the shift are the sum of those amounts. Logging a few times during the shift is easier than reconstructing a drawer at home, and the timestamps are what later reports use when they look at individual tips.

If you already left and only remember a night total, Shifts → Add Shift can store a lump “Total Tips” amount. That entry is saved as a single tip with the note “Manual entry total.” Per-tip rows are the better record when you still have them. A night total is still enough for wages, net tips, and $/hour.

Server and Bartender shifts are usually a stream of separate tips plus money you give to coworkers at the end. Log the tips as they land. The tip-out is a later step, one dollar total, after you know what you gave away. A note is enough when you care which ticket or which rail the money came from.

Hostess and Expo shifts often have fewer tip rows, and a larger share of the night can be the hourly wage. Money another role tipped out to you is still a tip you received: log it as a tip amount. It is not a tip-out. Tip-out in TrackMyTips is only money you gave away. Mixing those two up is the mistake that makes take-home look too high or too low.

Pages for each built-in role walk through that pattern with numbers: server, bartender, hostess, and expo.

Tip-out is one optional dollar total for the whole shift. The app does not turn a house percentage into that number, and it does not split the amount across busser, bar, and host. You add those up and enter the dollars. Leave it blank if you have not recorded it. Enter $0 if you explicitly did not tip out. Enter the amount you gave away if you did.

After you clock out as Server or Bartender, the shift list can ask “Did you tip out?” Custom roles can show that prompt too. Hostess and Expo shifts do not get it, and any role can still save a Total Tip-Out on the shift. Blank and $0 are different: blank means you never answered, and $0 means you answered that you kept the gross. Earnings math treats both as subtracting $0 until you enter a real amount. Net tips are gross tips minus the recorded tip-out.

Forgetting the tip-out is the common one. Reports will treat gross tips as take-home until you fill Total Tip-Out in. Clocking in with a $0 wage does the opposite on the wage side until you edit that shift’s wage. Fixing Roles & Hourly Wages, or the workplace wage, changes the next shift you clock. It does not rewrite this one.

A lump “Manual entry total” and a stack of per-tip rows should not both describe the same night. Use one or the other. And if you worked two roles, they are two shifts. One combined total hides which role actually paid.

Clock out on Home when you are done. You can still edit clock times, role, the wage stored on the shift, tips, tip-out, and the workplace. For the week, use Reports → This Week, or Shifts → Calendar and tap a day. A single Saturday is a story. Several clocked shifts with tip-outs filled in are the record.

Next: how TrackMyTips calculates hourly rate, the hourly rate calculator, calendar and shift list.