Card payments come with processing fees, and that includes the tips your guests add on a card. Tip Withholding lets you keep a set percentage of your employees' credit card tips to help cover those fees. The withheld amount stays with the restaurant, and your staff can see exactly how much was withheld on their shift receipts.
Tip Withholding is off by default. Nothing changes for your staff until you turn it on.
Where to find it
Store Portal > Management > Tip Withholding
How to turn on Tip Withholding
Log in to the Store Portal and go to Management > Tip Withholding.
Select Enable house tip withholding.
In Tip Withholding Percentage, enter the percentage of credit card tips you want to reclaim, for example 3. Use a number from 0 to 100, with up to two decimal places.
Click [Save]. You will see Update Successfully!
To stop withholding, select Disable house tip withholding and click [Save].
One percentage applies to your whole store. It cannot be set differently by employee or job.
What is withheld
Withheld: tips paid by credit card (including Apple Pay and Google Pay), and auto-gratuity paid by card that goes to your staff.
Not withheld: tips and auto-gratuity paid by cash, gift card, or a custom payment method, since these have no card processing fee. Auto-gratuity that goes to the house is not affected either.
This applies to all card orders, including orders customers place and pay for at the table.
The withheld amount is calculated order by order and rounded down to the cent, so any fraction of a cent stays with your employee.
When a change takes effect
Each order keeps the percentage that was in place when the order was created. If you change the percentage, the new rate applies only to orders created after you save, and orders already created keep their original rate. This is also true for orders that later go into a tip pool.
Orders created while a POS is offline use the setting in place when that POS is back online.
Where you and your staff see it
On POS receipts:
Shift Review and Employee Productivity show a Tip Withheld line under the credit card tip and auto-gratuity lines, for example Tip Withheld (20.00%) -$6.40. If the percentage changed during the shift, the line shows (Mixed) instead of a single rate.
Z-Report and the Daily / Monthly Report show Tip Withheld in the Server Tipouts section as a positive amount, since it is money the restaurant keeps.
When nothing was withheld, the line is not printed.
In the Store Portal:
Shift Details report: turn on the optional Tip Withheld column from Display Columns. It shows as a negative amount and is included in Total Tips.
Management > Shifts: Total Tips already includes the withheld amount, and the Total Tips breakdown lists Tip Withheld at the end.
Tips Management report (Tip Pooling): turn on the optional Tip Withheld column from Display Columns.
How Tip Withholding Affects Other Workflows
Tip Pooling: tips are withheld first, and only the remaining amount goes into the pool. This lowers what pool members receive.
Payroll: tips paid through payroll are paid after withholding.
Cash payouts at clock out: if you pay non-cash tips out of the cash drawer, the amount an employee receives at clock out is already net of withholding.
Refunds: if a refund reduces the tip or auto-gratuity on an order, the withheld amount for that order goes down using that order's original rate. Refund adjustment may reduce the original withheld amount to $0.00, but it cannot create a negative Tip Withheld amount or offset withholding from another order. Payroll that has already been paid is not reversed.
Past shifts: shifts from before you turned on Tip Withholding are not recalculated. If you turn it off later, amounts already withheld stay in your reports.