Tips and Tip Management

You can add tips to invoices, set a default tip on a customer profile, split tips among team members, and make sure every tip is captured before you close payroll.

Who Can Access This

Role	Access Level
Administrator	Full access (add, edit, allocate)
Office, Sales, HR Admin, Payroll Admin	Set a customer's default tip on their profile. No access to tips on invoices or job cards.

Adding, editing, and allocating tips on invoices is part of Invoicing, which is limited to Administrators.

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Some tip features may need to be turned on for your company. Only an Administrator or Group Administrator can change them. If you aren't one, ask someone in your office who is.

Where Tips Appear

Tips show up in several places throughout MaidCentral Pulse:

Location	What You Can Do
Invoice Detail panel	Add a tip using quick percentages or a custom amount
Invoicing workspace (Card view)	See tip amounts on job cards, and edit them when rate editing is on
Batch Invoicing	Prorate tips and exclude trainees when creating grouped invoices
Customer profile	Set a recurring default tip for every service
Payroll Close wizard	Find and create pay records for missing tips
Tickets Kanban board	Review and act on tickets created for tip changes and skipped tip distributions

Adding a Tip from the Invoice Detail Panel

This is the most common way to add or change a tip on an individual invoice.

1. Open the invoice from the Invoicing workspace or a customer record.
2. Below the invoice totals, click Add Tip. (If the invoice already has a tip, click Edit next to it instead, or Remove to clear it.)
3. Choose a quick percentage or type a dollar amount:
   • 15%, 20%, or 25% — Fills in that percentage of the invoice subtotal. These buttons only appear when the invoice subtotal is known.
   • Or type any dollar amount in the Custom amount box.
4. Click Save to apply the tip.

The tip appears as a line item on the invoice and the total updates immediately. The activity timeline records when the tip was added or changed and by whom.

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You can add a tip to any invoice that is not read-only and is linked to a job, even a paid one. Tips After Invoiced only matters once the job's payroll period has closed. If it is off, saving fails with an error that tipping is not allowed after the pay period has closed.

Customer Portal Tips

When the Customer Tip setting is on, customers can tip in the customer portal, either when paying an invoice or from the active-job page, dashboard and job scorecard. These settings follow the matching tip settings in MaidCentral V2, and Customer Tip is off unless your company turned on customer tips there. It may need to be turned on for your company.

On the payment screen, the tip option appears only when Tips After Invoiced is on and the invoice has a balance due and no tip yet. An invoice counts as processed as soon as it is created, so without Tips After Invoiced customers can't tip when paying. The tip is charged together with the invoice balance.

The 15%, 20% and 25% tip buttons appear only when Tip Percentage Buttons is on. Customers can always type their own amount.

Why can't my customer leave a tip in the portal?

Pulse offers and accepts a portal tip only when all of these are true:

• Customer Tip is on for your company.
• The customer's billing terms are Credit Card. On the job scorecard, active-job page and dashboard, ACH billing terms also qualify. Customers on invoice billing terms can't tip in the portal.
• To tip when paying an invoice, Tips After Invoiced is on. The job scorecard, active-job page and dashboard don't need it.

Pulse refuses a portal tip that doesn't meet these rules, even if the customer reaches it another way. It also refuses a portal tip if the job's payroll period has closed and Tips After Invoiced is off.

Editing Tips on Job Cards

In Office > Invoicing, Card view shows the tip as a row on each job card. If rate editing is on for your company, edit the Tip row and enter the new amount. The invoice total updates.

Setting a Default Tip on a Customer Profile

Some customers leave the same tip every time. You can save this as a recurring tip so it is automatically applied to their services.

1. Open the customer's detail page.
2. Click Edit to open the Edit Customer drawer.
3. In the billing section, find the Recurring Tip field.
4. Enter the default tip amount (for example, $20.00).
5. Click Save.

This amount fills in automatically on any job for this customer that has no tip of its own. It only applies when a job's tip has never been touched — as soon as a job has an explicit tip amount, that amount wins instead.

To skip the recurring tip on one job, enter $0.00 as that job's tip. This overrides the recurring tip for that job only and leaves the customer's saved amount alone.

Tip Proration

When a team of technicians works on a job, tips can be split among them based on how many hours each person worked. This is called tip proration.

How Proration Works

• Prorate tips enabled — Each technician's share of the tip is calculated based on their hours worked on the job. Someone who worked 4 hours gets twice as much as someone who worked 2 hours.
• Prorate tips disabled — Tips are split equally among all team members, regardless of hours worked.

Excluding Trainees

If your company uses trainees, you can choose to exclude them from tip calculations. When the "Exclude Trainees" setting is enabled, trainee hours are not counted when splitting tips. This means the full tip goes to experienced technicians only.

Where proration applies

Proration settings apply when you click Process N Jobs on the daily Invoicing workspace, and in the Create Invoice dialog in Batch Invoicing, which has Prorate tips and Exclude trainees from tips checkboxes. They do not apply when you add a tip from the invoice detail panel.

How a tip reaches technician pay

When you save a tip, Pulse splits it among the technicians on the job and creates a tip pay record for each one. Where that record lands depends on payroll:

Payroll for the job's date	What Pulse does
Still open	Creates a tip pay record in that pay period, named Tip - followed by the home name and job date. If you change the tip later, the same record updates.
Already closed	Leaves the closed week alone. Adds a new tip after closed payroll pay record for the amount of the change, dated the day you saved the tip. If payroll is already closed through that day, the record is dated the first day after the last closed pay period instead, so it is always paid in an open pay period. The record's note starts with "Post-Close Tip". Pulse also adds a note to the customer's profile. This needs Tips After Invoiced to be on.

When you invoice a job whose payroll is already closed and its tip was never paid, Pulse pays the tip when it creates the invoice: a tip after closed payroll pay record dated the day you create the invoice (or the first day after the last closed pay period). This happens even if Tips After Invoiced is off, and no note is added to the customer's profile. Re-invoicing a job never changes a closed week.

The same rules apply to a tip you enter in the daily Invoicing workspace, which Pulse saves as soon as you enter it. If Tips After Invoiced is off and payroll for the job's date is closed, the tip is not saved and you see "Tipping is not allowed after the pay period has closed". If you then process the job with the new tip (for example with Process N Jobs), Pulse refuses it again and does not create that job's invoice. A tip you leave unchanged never causes this error.

Example: a customer tips $30 on Monday's job, but you closed that payroll week on Tuesday. On Wednesday you save the tip. The technicians' $30 shows up as a tip after closed payroll in the current pay period, not in last week's closed payroll.

Tips and QuickBooks Online

If your company uses QuickBooks Online and the job's invoice is already in QuickBooks, Pulse adds the tip to the QuickBooks invoice too. Until QuickBooks confirms, the invoice shows Pending QuickBooks sync next to Tax and the total says (before tax). Wait for the tax amount to appear before you charge the customer. If the first attempt fails, Pulse tries again on its own. If it still hasn't cleared after a while, see How to Contact MaidCentral Support.

Tip Tickets on the Kanban Board

When a tip is changed on an invoice, or when a job is skipped during automatic tip distribution, Pulse creates a ticket so your team can review it. These tickets are created open and assigned to your branch's default bucket, so they show up on the Tickets Kanban board alongside your other work — they no longer need to be searched for separately.

Each ticket note says who made the change and what the tip changed from and to.

Missing Tips in Payroll

The Payroll Close wizard has a Missing Tips step that flags jobs with a tip but no tip pay record, so no tip is missed when you close a period.

1. Go to Payroll and click Close Period.
2. At the Missing Tips step, review the table. Each row shows the employee, job date, customer and calculated tip.
3. Check the jobs you want, then click Create Selected.

The tip pay records appear in the employee's payroll for the period. Jobs that already have tip records can't be selected again.

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The Missing Tips step only appears if Tip Validation is on. An Administrator or Group Administrator can turn it on. If that isn't you, ask someone in your office who is.

Feature Settings for Tips

Tips involve several feature settings. Only an Administrator or Group Administrator can turn them on or off:

Setting	What It Controls
Invoice Tips	The main switch for Customer Tip, Tips After Invoiced, Tip Percentage Buttons, Prorate Tips and Exclude Trainees: when it is off, those are off too. Editing a tip in the office (job details, and the Invoicing workspace's Card and Table views) does not depend on it: anyone whose role can update invoices can edit a tip, as in MaidCentral V2.
Customer Tip	Allow customers on credit card billing terms to leave tips in the customer portal (when paying an invoice, and from the active-job page, dashboard, and scorecard, where ACH billing terms also qualify)
Tips After Invoiced	Allow tips to be saved after the job's payroll period has closed, let customers add a tip when paying an invoice in the portal, and show the Tips After Invoicing panel in the Invoicing workspace sidebar
Tip Percentage Buttons	Show the 15%, 20% and 25% tip buttons in the customer portal. Customers can always type their own amount.
Prorate Tips	Split tips based on hours worked instead of equal split
Exclude Trainees	Omit trainee hours from tip proration calculations
Tip Allocation	Automatically distribute tips to employee pay records
Tip Validation	Flag unrecorded tips during the payroll close wizard

If you can't change a setting, ask someone in your office who is an Administrator or Group Administrator.

Tips and Best Practices

• Add tips before charging an invoice so the full amount is collected in one transaction.
• Use the recurring tip field for customers who always tip the same amount.
• Review the Missing Tips step at payroll close so no tip is missed.
• If your company prorates tips, check timesheet hours before processing invoices. Splits depend on them.

Troubleshooting

What You See	Solution
Add Tip section does not appear on invoice	The invoice may be read-only — voided and written-off invoices are read-only, and a "Read-Only Invoice" banner appears at the top. The invoice may not be linked to a job, or your role may not have permission to update invoices. Ask an Administrator or Group Administrator in your office to check.
Error saying tipping is not allowed after the pay period has closed	The payroll period for this job is already closed and the "Tips After Invoiced" setting is off. An Administrator or Group Administrator in your office can turn it on.
Tip field is not editable on job cards	Your role may not have the tip allocation permission. Ask an Administrator or Group Administrator in your office.
Prorate tips checkbox missing in batch invoicing	The "Prorate Tips" feature is not enabled for your company.
Missing Tips step not showing in payroll wizard	Tip Validation is off. An Administrator or Group Administrator in your office can turn it on.
Tip amount is $0 after proration	Check that the employees on the job have recorded timesheet hours. Proration requires hours data.
The tip I added is missing from a closed payroll week	Tips saved after payroll closes are not added to the closed week. Look for a tip-after-closed-payroll record (its note starts with "Post-Close Tip") in the next open pay period.
Invoice shows Pending QuickBooks sync after adding a tip	Pulse is waiting for QuickBooks to confirm the new total. Refresh in a few minutes before charging. If it stays, see How to Contact MaidCentral Support.
Customer's recurring tip is not applied	Verify the recurring tip amount is set on the customer's Edit Customer drawer, and check whether the job already has its own explicit tip (including $0) — an explicit per-job tip always takes precedence over the recurring amount.

Related Articles

• Invoice Detail and Management — Add tips from the invoice detail panel
• Creating Invoices — Bulk processing with tip amounts in the action queue
• Batch Invoicing — Prorate and exclude trainee options in grouped invoices
• Edit Customer Drawer — Set recurring tip on customer profile
• Payroll Workspace — Missing tips step in the close period wizard
• Tickets Kanban Board — Where tip-change tickets appear for your team to review