The exact rules, and the tip law every pool should know.

The math

1. Tips to share. Cash tips plus card tips. If you enter a card fee, that percentage of the card tips only comes off first (rounded to the nearest cent).
2. Tip-outs. Each tip-out role gets its percentage of the tips to share, or of the sales figure you enter. Inside the role it is shared by hours worked. If nobody worked in that role, its tip-out goes back to the pool and the result says so. Tip-outs that add up to more than the tips are refused.
3. The pool. The rest is shared among the people in pool roles:
   • By hours: in proportion to minutes worked.
   • By role points: everyone who worked gets their role’s points (1 = a normal share).
   • By hours × points: minutes worked times role points.
   • Equal: one share each for everyone who worked.
4. Rounding. Each share is worked out exactly, then cut to whole cents; the cents left over go one at a time to the largest remainders (ties go to the person listed first). The shares always add up to the tips to share, to the cent.
5. Cash and payroll. With “cash tonight”, the whole dollars in the jar are shared in proportion to each person’s total, never more than their own total in whole dollars. The rest of each person’s share is the payroll part. Cash left in the jar stays with the house, which pays it through payroll. The bill count uses $20, $10, $5 and $1 bills.
6. Managers and supervisors. A row ticked “Mgr” gets nothing, and the result names them.

Federal tip rules to know

From the U.S. Department of Labor’s Fact Sheet #15: Tipped Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act:

• An employer may not keep employees’ tips for any purpose, including letting managers or supervisors keep any part of them (FLSA section 3(m)(2)(B), 29 U.S.C. 203(m)(2)(B)). “An employer may not require an employee to give their tips to the employer, a supervisor, or a manager.”
• When an employer takes a tip credit, a mandatory tip pool is “limited to employees in occupations in which they customarily and regularly receive tips”. An employer that pays at least the full minimum wage and takes no tip credit may run a pool “that includes employees who are not employed in an occupation in which employees customarily and regularly receive tips”.
• For tips paid by card, “the employer cannot reduce the amount of tips paid to the employee by any amount greater than the transactional fee”. Leave Pourshare’s card fee at 0 unless your house does this, and never above the real fee.

States can add their own rules on tip credits, minimum wages and pools. In Ohio, see the Ohio Department of Commerce (Wage and Hour). Pourshare is not payroll, tax or legal advice; it does the arithmetic for the rules you enter.