Payments2 min read
Why tips should never touch your revenue
Keeping tips completely separate from takings sounds like an accounting detail, but it shapes how quickly staff get paid, how much they receive, and how much they trust the process.
Co-founder and Chief Product and Technology Officer
When we speak to lodge owners about tipping, the conversation almost always starts with guests and ends with the books, because that's where most of the pain actually sits. A card tip that lands in the same account as accommodation and bar sales has to be picked back out, reconciled, paid through to staff, and explained, and every one of those steps is a place where money slows down or leaks away.
The hidden cost of mixing tips with takings
Most businesses don't set out to hold on to their staff's tips, and I think that's worth saying plainly, since the problem is usually the plumbing rather than the people. Tips collected through the till get mixed into revenue, can end up being treated as business income, and often sit in a bank account for weeks while someone finds the time to work out who's owed what, which leaves staff waiting on money they've already earned and rarely able to see how it was worked out.
How SafariTip keeps them apart
We designed SafariTip so tips never go near a property's revenue in the first place. Guests pay through a licensed, regulated, PCI-compliant payment provider rather than the property's own card machine, and tips are settled to the business's verified bank account every week with a full breakdown of who received what.
That breakdown is the part that makes the biggest difference day to day. Owners can see every tip and settlement in one place, finance teams get a clean record they can export, and there's no end-of-month scramble to reconstruct who was tipped on which day.
Fees that don't come out of the tip
We made an early decision that the cost of processing a tip shouldn't be taken from the tip itself. The guest sees a small service fee at checkout that covers card processing and platform costs, which keeps SafariTip free for the business and means 100% of the tip goes to the team.
Trust is the real product
A tipping system only works if everyone involved believes in it, from the guest wondering whether their money will reach the guide, to the housekeeper wondering whether the team pool was split fairly. Getting the money flow right is less glamorous than designing a nice screen, but it's the foundation everything else sits on, and it's the part of SafariTip we'll keep sweating the hardest.
More insights
Roadmap2 min read
What's next: skills and training in the Staff app
Great service earns great tips, so the next step for SafariTip is helping teams build the skills behind it, with training that lives right in the Staff app.
Fabio Longano
Co-founder and Chief Product and Technology Officer
Payments2 min read
How we keep guest payments and data safe
Guests are trusting a QR code with their card details, which is exactly why security sits at the foundation of how SafariTip is built.
Fabio Longano
Co-founder and Chief Product and Technology Officer
Product2 min read
Fair shares: the thinking behind team tips and staff scheduling
Splitting a tip sounds simple until a guest wants to thank 'the whole kitchen' and half of it was on leave that week, which is why fairness had to be designed into SafariTip rather than bolted on.
Fabio Longano
Co-founder and Chief Product and Technology Officer
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