Server/Bartender Tip Logs and End of Night Deposits

[Lorich82]

Hello All,

The restaurant I manage recently acquired new ownership and some of the ways we handle tips and cash taken for the day has changed.  We used to pay out all non cash tips and gratuities on employee payroll cards.  So all cash sales was collected and deposited nightly and all tips were loaded to the tip cards for each employee.  The new ownership has changed to paying the servers out at the end of their shifts.  Their non cash tips and gratuities is deducted from their cash taken so that they keep that cash as full or partial payment for their tips collected.  Often times their tips exceeds the cash that they’ve taken, so in that instance we write them a check for the remainder.  There is a setting in Toast to have cash in drawer and cash in hand tracked separately or to have it all go into server’s cash bank.  I wasn’t completely clear on which one I should be using.  When servers are running their reports they must choose to pay out using cash drawer or not using cash drawer.  I have been having them choose the don’t use cash drawer option, but is this correct?  Even if it’s a bartender that’s using a cash drawer should I have them choose that option or should they be choosing to be paid out of their cash drawer?  To complicate matters further, there is the issue of tipping out.  Most times servers are tipping the support staff out of the money we are writing them the check for, but sometimes they are tipping out cash.  I have a spreadsheet with formulas that calculate what their total tips received are, for claiming purposes, that we send the accountant at the end of each pay period.  This basically takes their total non cash tips and gratuities and adds any tipouts received and/or subtracts any tipouts given, whether it be cash or factored into their final check total.  The main problem I’m running into is determining how best to build a spreadsheet for calculating the actual amounts of the checks we need to write, or cash we need to collect, while factoring in tipouts whether being cash or deducted from their check totals, and ultimately an accurate number we should be expecting the end of night deposit to be.  More often than not it’s a negative number because we are a fairly upscale restaurant and the servers tend to make good tips that typically exceeds the cash sales for the day.  I apologize for this lengthy post but am so grateful for any feedback I can get.  It’s been a bit of a challenge trying to adjust to so many changes all at once, and I am just trying to get my head wrapped around it all and get organized so that everything is checked and balanced and I have the proper tools in place to do so.  Thanks in advance for any insights!