How do you calculate a tip-out?
Tip-out = percent × base. The base is total sales, food sales, bar sales, tips, or a flat dollar amount, and each role can use a different one. Fact Sheet #15 says the FLSA does not limit the percentage in a valid mandatory pool. There is no standard percent on this page.
How do you split a tip pool by hours?
Pool rate = pool ÷ total hours. Each person's share is that rate times their hours. Optional points weight the hours. Leftover cents go to the first rows. A $540 pool across 6, 5, and 4 hours is $36.00 an hour: $216.00, $180.00, and $144.00.
Who can be in a tip pool?
Fact Sheet #15 limits a traditional pool, when the employer takes a tip credit, to people who customarily receive tips, such as servers, bussers, and service bartenders. A pool that includes cooks or dishwashers requires a cash wage of at least $7.25. Managers and supervisors may not receive pool tips. The detail is the tip-pooling guide. Card fees may be deducted only up to the processor's fee. Check a manager or a cook box above to see the matching note. Net tips go into the tipped minimum wage calculator.
What you are dividing
A tip-out is the part of a shift a server turns over to other people who worked the same checks. Houses write that handoff two different ways. One is a percent of sales: 3% of the food and drink you sold, whether the guest tipped well or poorly. The other is a percent of the tips you actually collected. This page does both. The radio at the top picks the base, and the result repeats which base it used.
Type the three percents your workplace uses. Zero is a real entry. If the host is not in the tip-out, leave that box at 0. The busser share, the bartender share, and the host share are each rounded to the cent, then added. Net is the tips you typed minus that sum. It can be negative. A negative net means the percents, on the base you picked, ask for more money than the tips line. That is a signal to recheck the base, not a verdict that the house may collect the difference from your wages.
Here is a filled example, and it is only an example. Sales $100, tips collected $20, busser 3% of sales, bartender 1% of sales, host 0. The busser share is $3.00, the bartender share is $1.00, and the net is $16.00. The same 3% and 1% applied to tips instead of sales would be $0.60 and $0.20, and the net would be $19.20. Open the sales version: /tip-out-calculator/?s=100&i=20&m=sales&bu=3&ba=1&ho=0.
A mixed-base example, also not a standard: sales $1,250, of which food is $900 and bar is $350, and tips are $240. A busser at 2% of food sales is $18.00. A bartender at 5% of bar sales is $17.50. A runner at 10% of tips is $24.00. The tip-out is $59.50 and the server keeps $180.50. Hours example: a $540 pool across 6, 5, and 4 hours is $216.00, $180.00, and $144.00.
Nothing on this page is a required percentage. The tip-pooling guide is where TipSlice walks through who federal law allows in a pool, and it labels its own dollar story as a house policy. If your question is the cash wage under a tip credit, use the hourly wage with tips page and the Department of Labor table it cites. If the guest's bill already has an automatic gratuity, that line is a different problem, and the service-charge checker is the tool for it.
Tip-out FAQ
Does this page set a standard tip-out percent?
No. The busser, bartender, and host percents are the numbers you type. Federal law does not publish one required tip-out percentage. The tip-pooling guide explains who may be in a pool and labels its dollar example as a house policy, not a legal standard.
Should the percent apply to sales or to tips?
Use the base your workplace actually uses. A percent of sales is a share of the food and drink you sold. A percent of tips is a share of the tips you collected. The same 3% is a different dollar amount on those two bases. The result names which base it used.
What if the tip-out is larger than my tips?
The net goes negative and the page says the tip-out is larger than the tips you entered. Check whether the percents were meant to come out of sales or out of tips. This worksheet does not say the house may take that much.