From October, you must consult staff before changing your tipping policy and review it every three years — on top of the written policy, fair allocation, and three-year records the Act already demands. Allocate produces all of it. From £5 a month, no payments platform required.
Built with a working operator, not a consultant. Allocate is being designed in partnership with a head chef and restaurant owner of fifteen years — against the policies, payslips, and HMRC correspondence of a venue that has lived the new rules since day one.
Source: Acas guidance on tips & service charges
You can’t withhold service charge or card tips to cover card processing, breakages, or admin. They must reach workers in full.
You need a method — based on hours, role, or both — that you can defend if a worker, a tribunal, or HMRC ever asks.
Available to every worker on request. It explains how tips are collected and distributed. No policy means automatic non-compliance.
Workers can formally request their tipping record once a quarter. You have four weeks to produce it. No records, no defence.
Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, from October 2026 employers will be required to consult workers (or their union representatives) when writing or revising the tips policy, and to review the policy at least every three years. The government’s consultation closed in April 2026; final rules are due imminently. Operators relying on an informal setup will need to formalise it quickly — or risk a tribunal claim with awards up to £5,135 per worker.
Not a payments platform. Not a tronc-master-for-hire. A focused tool that produces the four documents the Act actually asks for — the policy, the allocation, the worker-visible record, the audit trail — alongside your existing accountant and payroll. Custom-branded with your logo and colour so it feels like part of the venue, not another piece of admin software. Below is an illustrative weekly allocation.
Answer a short questionnaire, get a tailored policy document for your venue, roles, and method. Includes the consultation log the new rules will require from October — not a generic PDF you’d be embarrassed to share.
Hours are imported, optional role weightings are applied, and Allocate produces your breakdown — ready for payroll.
Staff log in and see exactly how their share was calculated, period by period. The Act’s transparency duty, satisfied automatically — without the awkward kitchen conversations.
Every allocation, every policy change, every worker request, stored for three years and exportable as a single PDF. Turns a tribunal claim from an existential threat into a paperwork exercise.
Upload your logo and pick a colour. Policy documents, worker-facing records, and exported PDFs all carry your branding — so the paperwork your staff and accountant see looks like part of the restaurant, not a generic dashboard.
UK hospitality churn rate
Hospitality runs at around 52% annual turnover — the highest of any UK industry, and replacing a single front-of-house hire costs £2,500-£5,000. The single most quoted reason workers leave? Suspicion that tips are being skimmed or unfairly allocated. The Act exists because tip opacity was the norm.
When a worker can pull up a screen and see exactly how their share was calculated — the hours, the weighting, the pool — that conversation never has to happen. A written, visible allocation isn’t a compliance box. It’s the cheapest retention spend on the P&L.
Source: CIPD benchmarking employee turnover · 2024
No setup fees. No per-transaction skim. No tying you to a payments platform you don’t need. Monthly, cancel anytime — what an independent operator should be paying for compliance paperwork.
All prices include VAT. Every tier includes every feature. Waitlist sign-ups: free for the first six months.
We’re onboarding a small group of independent UK operators before opening up publicly. Waitlist sign-ups get the first six months free and a direct line to help shape the product.
Waitlist sign-ups get six months free and a direct line to the team. Five quick questions so we can prioritise the right features for venues like yours.