If your hotel distributes tips periodically, you can use Planniac to record them and give you an easy report to follow.
Any activity or task on Planniac can have a tip added. You can apply a payment method to show how that tip was paid, just like you can with any other activity or task.
There are basically two ways to do this. We'll explain the step by step of each.
First option: Add a tip to an activity (like a Tour or Spa activity)
Second option: Create a tip using Tasks
First, add Tip as product in Cloudbeds
You'll set up a product in Cloudbeds called "Tip" or "Gratuity" or whatever you choose to call it.
Item type should be services
Choose whether to require notes
Make it a zero price item (Planniac will override this with the amount you enter on Planniac)
Do not apply tax or fee (unless it's required by law in your location)
Adding a tip to an activity
If you want to record a tip given by a guest to a person or team that's directly related to one activity, you can simply add that while posting the payment method.
Open the activity
Go to "Cost and Payment"
Click the dark grey "Edit" button
Enter the amount of the tip in "Other (per group)"
Enter a note in the "reason" field (like "Tip" or "Tip for Sally")
Save it, and/or apply the payment type like you usually would, such as a Room Charge to the Cloudbeds folio, cash, or credit card.
Important! You shouldn't record a tip with a complimentary payment type like "complimentary" or "included in package" or "billed as upsell". If the activity has a payment type like that, simply create a second activity task for the tip itself, and indicate a payment method on that.
Adding a tip as a task
Let's say a guest who is checking out wants to add a tip to their bill for a single person, department, or the entire staff. This can be done using Tasks.
First, set up tips in Resources
(You'll only need to set this up once. After that, a Planniac user can create a task record with a tip.)
Create a new task template called "Staff Tips" or "Tips Received!". We recommend using the general "Task" activity type to do this.
You can use parent activity or not, depending on your setup preferences and how many different resources you want to include. (Remember that employees can be selected if you include them as Team Members in Admin Settings).
There's no need to add any price to the task, but we recommend that you do not select "Zero Price" in this case.
Now you're ready to record a guest tip using Tasks
Select "Other Task" from the Planniac Add "+" menu
Select your tip task from the Activity menu
Select the resource the tip should be distributed to
Select the status (we recommend "Done")
Go to "Cost & Payment and in the "Other (per group) field put the amount of the tip
Now you can see the task on the Planns screen. Here we show three tip tasks, two that have been marked as paid with cash, and one that has not been marked as paid.
Apply a payment method as usual and if you are billing it as a room charge, you'll be able to match it up to the Cloudbeds item
Now you can see the third tip task has been done as a room charge, so the tip will appear in the Cloudbeds folio
Run a report to see the tips you've recorded
Use Planniac's export tool to download a spreadsheet. You'll see all the tips, who they are for, and the payment method applied. If you're a spreadsheet whiz you could create your own macros to manage your tip distributions.
Note: Cloudbeds also has good reports and you could run a sales report that would show tips. However that won't have as much detail about the activity and the resources. The other drawback would be not seeing tips that were recorded as cash or other payment methods that you might choose to use.
Changes to activities and tasks are logged in the history
If a not-so-scrupulous employee tries modifying tip entries to benefit themselves, you'll have a good chance of discovering it! Just look at the history on the right side of the activity page.