Hi @GGreenly. Since you didn’t specify whether you are using a 24-hour pool or a 7-day pool, I’m going to have to give you two answers.
For a 7-day pool (which I use), those tips are distributed amongst the employees who worked anytime that week. That’s the easy one.
For the 24-hour pool (which I used to use), any daily tips — while still in your deposit each day — are not earmarked for anyone and reported in your Labor Cost report under “Untracked Employee” as I recall. When I was using the 24-hour pooling method, I ran into the exact situation as you are. At the end of each day, I recorded the tip amounts received for days where only I worked and just manually distributed them to each employee who worked that week as a “tip bonus” by manually adjusting their tip line in my payroll.
A way to keep track of this more easily would be for you to create a dummy team member that you use to clock in on days when you are alone. Name it something like First Name = Just and Last Name = Me, and be sure that the hourly rate is $0, and that it is tip-enabled. Then you’ll have a record of all tips received when you were alone so that you can see at a glance how much you owe to your employees. Just be very careful NOT to be clocked in with this “dummy employee” when your employee are on the clock, because then it will share in their tips for that day.
It’s not elegant, but it’s really the only thing that works. The situation that you and I have found ourselves in is not all that common, I don’t believe. Also, it’s something of a quandary. Technically, owners/managers are not allowed to take any tips period, as you know. But tips received when only the owner is working are in a gray area in most states which don’t account for that situation. I could have probably pocketed the money, but that didn’t seem right to me, nor is it entirely legal as I read the law. Besides, giving my employees “tip bonuses” made them very happy!
Best,
