Free tools · tips
Since October 2024 UK employers must pass on 100% of tips and allocate them fairly, with a written policy behind the method. This works out what a given pool comes to per hour for each group once you have chosen your hours and weightings — which is the part of a tipping policy people actually argue about.
The calculator
Nothing is sent anywhere — the maths runs in your browser and we never see what you type. Every field starts at a deliberately ordinary default rather than a flattering one.
Before you quote the figure at anyone
01
The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 and its statutory Code of Practice require tips to be passed on in full, allocated fairly, paid by the end of the following month, and supported by a written policy and three years of records. A calculator cannot tell you whether your allocation is fair in law — take that to an employment adviser.
02
The Code expects you to be able to explain your weightings against factors like role, hours, performance and customer contact. If you cannot say out loud why back of house is weighted where it is, that is the finding, not the maths.
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How tips are taxed depends on how they are collected and who allocates them — a tronc run by an independent troncmaster is treated differently from an employer-allocated pool. The figures here are the pool before any of that, so do not quote them to the team as take-home.
Questions
Getting a number you don’t recognise from your own accounts is usually worth a conversation rather than another spreadsheet.
Most UK sites allocate on hours worked, sometimes with a weighting per group. Give each group points — hours multiplied by its weighting — divide the pool by the total points to get a value per point, then multiply back out. Whatever split you land on has to be written into a tipping policy you can explain.
Yes. Since 1 October 2024 the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 requires employers to pass on 100% of qualifying tips, service charge and gratuities to workers, allocate them fairly, and pay them no later than the end of the month following the month they were received. Deductions, including card processing fees, are not permitted.
A tronc is an arrangement where tips are pooled and distributed by a nominated person, the troncmaster, rather than by the employer. Where the troncmaster genuinely runs the allocation independently, the payments fall outside National Insurance — which is the reason most multi-site operators run one, though it has to be a real arrangement rather than a label.
Yes, and it is common. The legislation covers all eligible workers at the place of work, not just the people who took the payment, so back of house can be included in the allocation. What matters is that the method is fair, consistent and written down.
By the end of the month following the month in which the tip was paid by the customer. So tips taken in March must reach the team by 30 April at the latest, which rules out holding a pool back over a quarter.
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