Why you should treat tips the same as any other transaction

Tipping is in the news after a Japanese restaurant in New York announced it had banned gratuities in line with the custom in Japan, stating unequivocally that Sushi Yasuda’s staff are fully compensated by their salary and tips are not accepted.

The media latched on to story with the BBC’s website revealing the tipping economy in America is estimated to be worth £25bn, twice the budget of NASA. And has an anecdotal tale about a female ditching her date because he was a tight tipper.

The same article recalled the famous scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs when Mr Pink (Steve Buscemi) speaks for many when he questions why it is customary to tip some professions and not others.

Our interest in tips is purely practical

Without question tipping can be a very emotive topic but the merits or otherwise of tipping are for better and wiser brains than me to debate – my interest is purely practical when tipping gets in the way of the effectiveness of an EPOS solution.

A typical example is a situation in a restaurant where there are negative variances with less cash in the till than sales recorded by the system.

For inexperienced EPOS providers, the response could be to throw allegations around like confetti at a wedding, thinking the shortfall is down to light fingers dipping in the cash drawer.

Explore all the reasons for variances

At GS our approach is more systematic and involves exploring ALL the reasons why variances might have occurred.

We have seen exactly that scenario described above several times when clients question the validity of their weekly business sheet because it is not balancing.

Our investigations reveal why.

Clients were giving their staff tips taken from customers’ credit and debit cards from the till without recording the payments so the cash in their systems could never balance.

Treat tips the same as any other transactions

The solution is to ensure that all tips are treated exactly the same as any other cash transaction or stock movement and are entered into the system.

This is the only way to ensure your businesses’ transactions, purchases and stock movements are transparent, trackable and traceable.

Always record what goes on in your business – whether it’s tips, complimentary staff coffees or food returned to the kitchen.

I don’t Mr Pink or anyone else for that matter would be questioning the merits of that advice!