Here's One Way Restaurants Can Comply With Tip Laws

UniFocus, a provider of workforce management systems for the service industry, offers a solution to the challenges that employees and employers could face due to the U.S. Department of Labor’s newly proposed tip law. Tip Pool, an integrated feature within the Dallas-based organization’s Time & Attendance system, streamlines tip management and distribution, minimizes workload and can reduce labor costs while increasing productivity.

Tip Pool addresses many of the common questions and challenges around sharing tips between workers who commonly are tipped and those who are not. Those include: how much does each employee receive? What's the best way to collect and distribute tips? What can companies do to assure workers that tips are being handled appropriately? And how can employers ensure they are complying with changing laws?

Through automation, Tip Pool enhances the user experience: It reduces the chance of fraud and errors, minimizes the workload required to import data into a system payroll processor, drastically cuts time spent calculating gratuity distribution, and automates qualification of employees to tip pools based on specified, local parameters. It also centralizes payroll data collection, improves employee satisfaction, and drives employee engagement.

As a component of UniFocus’s real-time and interactive Time & Attendance system, Tip Pool provides users with a biometric touchscreen and multilingual interface. It also facilitates employees entering non-credit card tips. And, it allows managers and employees to input data efficiently and accurately from the palm of their hand through the mobile app.