What We Do
Every payout,traceable to a shift.
Payroll systems run payroll. None of them join gratuities sitting in your booking system to punches sitting in your time system, which is exactly where tip disputes come from. So the question lands on a manager's desk every cycle and the honest answer is that nobody can check it. We build the join, then the audit that shows whether the split was right in the first place.
The problem
Your payroll systemnever sees the tip.
Gratuities are captured by the booking or point of sale system, attached to an appointment. Hours are captured by the timekeeping system, attached to a punch. Payroll runs off the second one and receives the first as a total someone typed in.
Nothing in that chain can answer why one person got less than another on the same shift. So the question goes to a manager, the manager goes to a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet was built by whoever had the patience. Every cycle, in every location.
The join is not conceptually hard. It is just work nobody owns: match each gratuity to the shifts that were actually clocked at that location in that window, apply the policy, and show the arithmetic.
What we build
The math, and a way to show it.
Pool allocation, traceable
Every gratuity matched to the eligible shifts it should be split across, by location and punch window. A manager can open any payout and walk backward to the appointments behind it.
Policy scenarios, side by side
Change who is eligible, or how the split weights, and see what every role would have earned last quarter under the new rule. Policy conversations stop being hypothetical.
Commission and incentive attribution
Sales and membership incentives paid against confirmed shifts rather than a name typed on a form, so credit lands with whoever was actually working.
A variance report that names the cause
When the total does not tie out, the report says which part is clock-in compliance, which part is a location mapped wrong, and which part is genuinely unallocated. Not one number labeled variance.
What usually turns up
A redistribution problem,not a missing money problem.
Once the join exists you can audit it, and the audit usually finds two things at once. Some money was collected and never made it out. More of it went to the wrong people, because job codes that policy says are ineligible have been quietly receiving a share for years.
Neither is theft and nobody has been careless. It is what happens when the rule lives in a policy document and the calculation lives in a spreadsheet, and the two were last compared a long time ago.
The point of the audit is not the recovery. It is that the next time somebody asks, the answer takes a minute instead of an afternoon.
What changed
What it changed.
A five-figure correction, found
On a seven-figure annual gratuity pool we found money collected and never distributed, plus a larger sum in the wrong pockets. Every payout now traces to a clocked shift, so managers can answer the question at the front desk.
Reconciles to zero
The allocation balances to the cent on its own numbers, so a gap is never a mystery. It names the system that disagrees, and someone goes and fixes that instead of relitigating the split.
94% to 99% matched
Commission pays against confirmed shifts, and nearly every sale in the year ties to the person who was working. Payroll corrections stopped being a monthly ritual.
What else
This one rarely shows up alone.
How long did the last tip question take to answer?
If it was more than a minute, there is probably a join missing.