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Part 5 of 7 · Tip pool splitter series ~5 min read

How a split gets published

There is a line to draw between transparency and publishing everybody’s pay, and it turns out to be drawable: the totals and the rate are enough to check the arithmetic without anybody’s individual share being public.

Key takeaways

  • Each person sees their own share and its full arithmetic.
  • Everybody sees the pool, the total weighted hours, the rate and the remainder.
  • Individual shares are not published, and the totals still make the split checkable.
  • A correction is published as loudly as the original, with what changed.
  • The period archive keeps the rule it was computed under.

Two audiences

How a tip split is published to three audiencesThree boxes across the top outside the AWS account. Each person, who sees their own share. Everybody, who sees the totals and the rate. And Payroll, which receives a figure to pay. Inside the account, three components. The Personal view, showing hours, weight, rate and share. The Period summary, showing the pool, the total weighted hours, the rate and the remainder. And the Export, one line per person. Arrows show each person receiving their own arithmetic, everybody receiving the shared numbers, and payroll receiving the payable figures. A note says the shared numbers make the split checkable without publishing anybody's share.AWS ACCOUNTEach persontheir own shareEverybodythe totals and ratePayrolla figure to payPersonal viewhours, weight,rate, sharePeriod summarypool, weighted hours,rate, remainderExportone line per persontheir arithmeticthe shared numbersthe payablefiguresThe shared numbers make the split checkable without publishing anybody's share.
Fig 1. Who sees what. The middle box is the interesting one: publishing four aggregate numbers makes the whole calculation verifiable without exposing any individual’s earnings.

What one person sees

Your share, week ending 26 July

  • £71.16
  • 27.3 hours × weight 1.0 = 27.3 weighted hours
  • Rate this week: £2.6077 per weighted hour
  • 27.3 × £2.6077 = £71.19, rounded to £71.16 after the rounding step
  • Pool: £830.30 (card £642.30, cash £188.00 declared by Ash at close on the 26th)
  • Total weighted hours across everybody: 318.4
  • Rounding: 2p went to Sam and Kit. Next period starts at Jo.

Seven lines, and every number in them can be checked against the others. The rate times the personal weighted hours gives the share. The pool divided by the total weighted hours gives the rate. Two people comparing notes get the same rate, which is the strongest possible confirmation that the same rule was applied to both of them.

Why individual shares are not published

Publishing everybody’s share publishes everybody’s hours, because the rate is public and the arithmetic is trivial to reverse. Hours are close enough to pay that many people would reasonably object, and in some contracts it is explicitly confidential.

The totals achieve the goal without that. Anybody can verify that the rate is correct, that the pool is what was declared, and that their own share follows. What they cannot do is work out what a colleague earned, which is a line most people are content with.

Corrections

How a corrected tip split is republishedA horizontal row of five boxes. Published: on Monday. Card refund lands: on Wednesday. Period reopened: and recomputed. Republished: marked clearly as a correction. Both kept: with a note of what changed. A note says a quiet correction is indistinguishable from an error nobody admitted to.A CORRECTION IS AS LOUD AS THE ORIGINALPublishedMondayCard refund landsWednesdayPeriod reopenedand recomputedRepublishedmarked as a correctionBoth keptwith what changedA quiet correction is indistinguishable from an error nobody admitted to.
Fig 2. How a correction is handled. Publishing it as prominently as the original is what stops a revised number looking like something that was hoped to go unnoticed.
  • App integration
  • Management
  • Analytics

The correction message says what changed and by how much, in the same place and the same way as the original. “The pool fell by £18.40 because a card payment was refunded on Wednesday. Your share is £69.60, down £1.56.” That sentence takes ten seconds to read and removes any possibility of somebody noticing a discrepancy later and drawing their own conclusion.

The archive

Every period keeps its pool, its rule, its rate, the hours it used, the shares it produced and who declared the cash. Twelve months of that is a complete answer to any question anybody will ever ask about tips, and it is a few kilobytes.

Next: what all of this costs to run.

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