Aloha: Declaring cash tips

[AngrySpider]

Hey everyone,

One of our stores wants to designate a cash drawer for a particular section of the restaurant, where all the servers in that section will use for sales and for all cash tips. I know the credit card tips are easily tracked, but the manager wants the cash tips entered too, and all monies to placed in the drawer until they can be spit at the end of the shift.

I was kind of unsure exactly how this would work, but did see a flag under the job codes labled Store Collects Employee Tips. Like many things in Aloha, this sounded straight forward enough. I suspected that checking this would result in something like the system prompting the server for a tip amount after closing a cash transaction. However, after enabling this feature, and clocking in to check it out, I didn't notice anything different.

Can anyone recommend an effective way to do this? The version is Table Service 5.3.12.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Spider

 

[AngrySpider]

I should mention, I am familiar with the Declared Tips procedure at checkout, but I the manager wants something that tracks it along the way, as opposed to enter an total amount at the end of the night.

 

[ezcrane]

Store Collectes Tips is when the employer keeps all non-cash tips (credit cards tips, house accounts tips and all auto-gratuities including cash) and then pays the employee the tips on their paycheck. The employee checkout now shows the cash owed as the amount of cash sales they had for the day. To my knowledge, there is no way for Aloha to track cash tips on a per check basis.

 

[AngrySpider]

Thanks for at least clearing that part up. Yeah, it's definitely a tough one. The reasoning for it almost silly, too. The manager explained to me that the servers tips go a long way to providing a good junk of the supports staff's salary by way of tip outs (i.e. tipping of bussers, chefs, etc). Ok, nothing new here. Well, he wants to make SURE that these people get the tips coming to them and that the servers aren't able to under report their cash tips, thus having to tip less. His concern is then the support staff won't make money, and will go work somewhere else. So his way of making sure they reported of their true income was by designating a drawer where all money would go, including tips.

After thinking about it for a minute, I asked him, "So after this is implemented, what's to stop me, as a server, from simply taking my cash to the register and under reporting my tip?" To which he replied "Nothing." So in essence, it's really no different from them entering their cash tips at the end of the night in total, since you're still relying on the servers to be honest.
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Customers can be pretty dense sometimes.

 

[DTSMAN]

At Japenese steakhouses we use catagories for the tip outs, there is a catagory for liqour, sushi, food, and hibachi. Then this reports on the checkout and the server is forced to tip out a percentage to each person, kitchen to busser, sushi to sushi chef, liqour to bartender, and hibachi to the hibachi chef. It usually isn't a high percentage.

Yea, yea, yea. I know it is against the law to force this, but I'm not the one doing it and many restaurants do it this way. If a server says they didn't make good tips to tip the usual percentage, then as a manager, they go in and see what the average CC tip percentage is and can assume that the cash tips are probably in line with that.

Utilizing tip outs is a pain in the a** and causes confusion when people try to break it out on the reports. We don't encourage it.

Bo

I'm a man,, I can change,, If I have too,, I guess. (Red Green)

http://www.redgreen.com/

 

[AngrySpider]

So essenitally what your saying, Bo, is that they simply use the sales categories at the end of the night to determine who should get what, by breaking out a calandar and tipping each group based on the amount?

You hit the nail on the head. This is a Japanese steakhouse. The manager is afraid that if these guys don't make money, they'll jump ship for $10 more a night tossing vegetables in the air with a kitchen utensil someplace else. Thus, he wants to make sure the majority of the their salaries are coming from tips (i.e. the servers profits), as opposed to having to keep them happy by paying out of his pocket. That's really what this whole thing boils down to.

I agree, taking the average of the credit card tips (which obviously are reported), seems to be a simple solution. As there does not to seem to be an easy solution or a way to track cash tips in Aloha, I may just tell him to set a Tip Threshold that only let's them claim a minimum percentage of their total sales at the end of the night, and be done with it. Nonetheless, if anyone can think of additional suggestions, I am still listening.