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[steakpit]

Hello!

I hope someone can help me out.

At the end of the night when our servers close their shift and print out their sales report to figure out how much cash is owed to the house, how much tips to receive etc....our POS (point of sale) system automatically deducts 4% from our server's credit card tips. The reason is because the 4% goes towards the CREDIT CARD PROCESSING FEE.

So I have servers (mostly new servers) who inquire about the 4% b/c they say they rightfully is owed the amount of tip given from the tips. Of course, I understand what my servers mean but its honestly a huge hassle trying to go into the software to change that and honestly the restaurant is a bit slow so getting hit with another payment owed to the credit card companies is a bit of an inconvenience. So can someone tell me if this is illegal?

And if its not illegal-- employers DO take out a certain percentage from employee's tips to cover for the credit card processing fee right? B/c some of my other servers say that they are familiar with this process because their former employers did something similar too..

Please let me know. I have a great employee who keeps on getting upset about this and I dont want to lose this employee. Thank you!!

[CHRIS ELLIS]

What brand of pos do you have. That function should be able to be turned off and on..not a big deal on programming.

wether that is legal or not..I know it is done here in Florida you will need to check your state laws.

The idea behind it is that the percentage being collected by the Credit Card companies is a cost of doing business for you. For each dollar that you batch out every night you are only getting back 96 cents. That being said your REAL actual daily sales will minus that 4% on your Credit Card revenue stream. One way to approach it is for both the server and the company to share that burden..i.e. in your case 2% for each of you.