---
title: Tips — how they are captured and paid out
slug: tips-capture-and-payout
category: Payments & Billing
url: https://alaga.io/help/article/tips-capture-and-payout
audiences: business_owner, manager, staff
updated: 2026-08-18
source: Alaga Help Center
---

# Tips — how they are captured and paid out
Sidebar: **Checkout**, and **Reports → End of Day** for what you owe.

## The tip is asked for after the payment type

Not before. The customer chooses how they are paying first, and only then is the tip question raised. That ordering is deliberate — asking for a tip before someone has decided how to pay produces awkward moments at the counter and worse tipping.

If you are taking payment on a card reader, the reader itself handles the tip prompt, and the customer answers on the reader rather than on your screen.

## Tipping by card or cash independently of the sale

The tip does not have to follow the payment. "Pay by card, tip in cash" is a real and common combination, and it is supported: the sale can go one way and the tip another.

Recording a cash tip matters even though the money never passes through Alaga. It is the record of what that person is owed, and it keeps the End of Day figures honest.

## Attributing the tip

A tip is recorded against a **specific employee**. For appointment checkouts the eligible people are offered, so the tip lands on whoever actually did the work rather than whoever was on the till.

If your tips are pooled and split, pick your convention and stick to it — you cannot reconstruct the split later from the record if everything was attributed to one person.

Where a sale has no associated staff member, the tip prompt does not appear. A bag of food sold across the counter has nobody to attribute a tip to.

## Finding what you owe

**Reports → End of Day** breaks tips down by employee for that day. That is the figure to hand over at the end of a shift or to carry into payroll.

Card tips arrive as part of the card payment, so the money is in your account before you pay it out. The tip is not routed separately to the employee — you receive it and pass it on.

## Refunding a tip

A tip can be refunded on its own, without touching the sale, from **Payment Settings → Transactions**. That is the right tool when a tip was entered wrongly — a slipped finger turning £5 into £50 — and you do not want to unpick the whole transaction.

## Practical advice

- **Decide your policy before you start.** Whether tips are individual or pooled, and who counts as eligible, are the two questions that cause friction. Answer them once.
- **Record cash tips.** Skipping them means your End of Day never balances against what staff actually take home.
- **Check End of Day before paying out.** Memory and the report disagree more often than you would expect, especially on a busy Saturday.