Tips split fairly, allergens on the label — by the book, every service.
A restaurant lives on a hundred small honesties a day. The card tip the table left has to reach the people who earned it. The dish a guest is allergic to has to carry the truth on its label. Both are now the law — and both are exactly the kind of work a paper rota and a kitchen notebook get quietly wrong. Navigare Hospitality runs the front, the kitchen and the back office on one system, and does the regulated parts properly: a tronc that allocates the tip pool to the penny, a written tipping policy you can actually produce, and pre-packed labels that carry the full ingredient list and the fourteen allergens.
The lawSince 1 October 2024, the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 makes it unlawful to keep or unfairly distribute qualifying tips — they must be passed to staff in full and allocated fairly, on a written policy. And under Natasha's Law, food pre-packed for direct sale (PPDS) must show a full ingredient list with the 14 allergens emphasised. Navigare does both for you.
Tronc to the penny✦Natasha's Law labels✦All-in £129/mo
THE PROBLEM
The tips got split "about right". That's no longer a defence.
Hospitality has run on rough justice and good intentions for decades — the kitty divided by eye on a Sunday, the allergen answer remembered from last week, the label written out by whoever was on. The rules changed underneath it. Two new laws turned "about right" into a liability, and the everyday tools of a busy kitchen are precisely the ones that fail an inspection.
i
Tips split "by eye"
The card-tip pool divided in someone's head at the end of the week, with no record of the method or who got what. Under the Tips Act an aggrieved worker can take you to an employment tribunal — with awards of up to £5,000 on top of repaying what was withheld.
ii
No written tipping policy
The Act requires a written policy on how tips are dealt with, available to staff. Most kitchens have a custom, not a document. When a member of staff — or HMRC — asks to see it, there is nothing on file to produce.
iii
Allergens in a kitchen notebook
The matrix of which dish contains which of the 14 allergens lives in a dog-eared folder that's a recipe change out of date. One stale entry given in good faith to the wrong guest is the headline nobody recovers from.
iv
PPDS labels without the full ingredients
Natasha's Law requires food pre-packed for direct sale — the sandwiches in the chiller, the salads on the counter — to carry the full ingredient list, in descending weight order, with the allergens emphasised. A label with just a name and a price is non-compliant.
v
No troncmaster, no clean PAYE line
If the employer controls and shares the tips, that money runs through PAYE and the NIC treatment turns on whether an independent troncmaster allocates it. With no recorded troncmaster and no per-employee totals, payroll is guesswork and the NIC position is exposed.
vi
The maths never quite balances
Divide an £480 pool three ways by hours worked and you get an awkward £106.666… — so the spreadsheet rounds, the totals stop matching the pool, and the pennies vanish into nobody's pocket. Small, until it's the thing a tribunal pulls on.
HOW NAVIGARE SOLVES IT
One system that does the regulated parts properly — and can show its working.
Built on Odoo Community with our hospitality vertical on top: a tronc engine that allocates the tip pool to the penny under the Tips Act, a versioned and published written tipping policy, a 14-allergen matrix rolled up from ingredients, Natasha's Law PPDS labels with the full ingredient list and QUID — alongside recipes and menu costing, table tickets, and UK VAT-ready accounting. All in the all-in monthly price.
The principle: compliance is not a folder you assemble after the fact — it falls out of doing the day's work in one place. Tips entered as they're taken get allocated by a recorded method against a written policy. Ingredients entered once roll up into allergen flags and onto the label. When a member of staff asks how the tips were split, or an inspector asks to see the allergen information, the answer already exists — dated, attributed and reproducible.
INSIDE THE APP
A tronc that actually does the maths — and stands up to the Tips Act.
This is the screen that turns "we split it about right" into a record you could hand a tribunal. One tip pool, an allocation method, and a split that is correct to the penny — with the remainder placed by a rule, not lost.
app.navigare.space/hospitality/tronc
The tronc engine: one pool, an allocation method, a penny-perfect split per employee — the working a written tipping policy is supposed to evidence.
Pool: £480.00 · method: hours worked (8 / 6 / 4)
Chef · 8 hrs
£213.33
+ remainder
Server · 6 hrs
£160.00
exact
KP · 4 hrs
£106.67
rounded
£213.33 + £160.00 + £106.67 = £480.00. The penny rounding leaves a remainder; Navigare places it on the largest line so the split always reconciles to the pool — nothing is lost, nothing is invented.
1Tronc engine · Tips Act 2023
The qualifying-tip pool is allocated automatically by a chosen method — hours worked, equal, or weighted by role — in line with the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, in force since 1 October 2024.
2Correct to the penny
Each share is computed to the penny, and the rounding remainder is placed on the largest line so every split reconciles exactly back to the pool. No "about right", no vanishing pennies.
3Troncmaster
Every allocation carries a troncmaster field — the person responsible for sharing the tips — so the record shows who allocated, on what basis, and when.
4Tip type
Each entry is tagged by tip type — card, service charge or cash — distinguishing the qualifying tips under the employer's control from the rest, and carrying a taxable marker for payroll.
5Per-employee period totals
The engine rolls each person's allocations into per-employee totals for the period, ready to feed payroll — so the PAYE/NIC line is built from the record, not reconstructed from memory.
6Written tipping policy
The statutory written tipping policy is held as a versioned, publishable document — so the policy the Act requires is on file, dated, and available to staff on demand.
NATASHA'S LAW · PPDS
Allergens roll up from the recipe — and onto the label.
Enter an ingredient once and it does two jobs. The 14-allergen matrix is rolled up automatically from a dish's ingredients, so the front of house answers from a source that's never out of date. And for food pre-packed for direct sale, Navigare prints a Natasha's Law PPDS label with the full ingredient list in descending weight order, QUID percentages where a named ingredient appears, the allergens emphasised, and storage and use-by — and that label is only offered for items flagged as PPDS, so a counter sandwich is labelled and a plated dish is not.
KEY FEATURES
Everything a restaurant runs on, nothing it doesn't.
💷
Tronc & tipping policy
Tronc engine: hours-worked, equal or weighted-role allocation
Penny-perfect split; remainder placed on the largest line
Troncmaster, tip type (card / service charge / cash) and taxable flag
Versioned, publishable written tipping policy — the statutory record
🏷
Allergens & PPDS labels
14-allergen matrix rolled up automatically from ingredients
Natasha's Law PPDS labels with full ingredient list in weight order
QUID percentages and emphasised allergens on the label
Storage and use-by; the label offered only for PPDS items
📖
Recipes & menu
Recipes built from ingredients, with costed yields per dish
Menu engineering — plate cost against price and margin
Ingredient changes flow through to cost and allergen flags
One source for the kitchen, the costing and the label
🧾
Table tickets
Orders captured against tables and turned into tickets
Service charge and tips recorded straight onto the tronc pool
Sales flow through to the day's takings and the accounts
Front of house, kitchen and till reading the same record
🇬🇧
UK accounting & VAT
UK chart of accounts and VAT-ready figures (l10n_uk)
Takings reconcile against the sales recorded on tickets
Tip allocations feed per-employee totals for payroll
One ledger — front, kitchen and back office never re-keyed
👥
Staff & portal
Employees tied to the tronc, the rota and the till
Per-period tip totals each member of staff can see
The written tipping policy published for the team
One login for the people the tips actually belong to
WHO IT'S FOR
Built for the independent operator, not the chain.
◇
Restaurants & bistros
Table service where card tips and a service charge have to reach the team fairly, and every plated dish needs its allergen answer ready. The tronc, the policy and the matrix, in one place.
◇
Cafés & delis with a counter
Sandwiches, salads and bakes made on site and pre-packed for direct sale — exactly the food Natasha's Law puts on the label. Print compliant PPDS labels from the same recipes you cost.
◇
Bars & pubs with a kitchen
A tip kitty shared across bar and kitchen, a service charge on the bill, and a food offer with its own allergens. One tronc, one written policy, one ledger.
◇
Growing teams past "about right"
The point where staff start asking how the tips are worked out and the answer can't be a shrug. A recorded method, a troncmaster and per-person totals that hold up.
"When a chef asked how we split the tips, I opened the screen and showed her."
"We'd always divided the card tips by eye on a Sunday and hoped it was fair. The day the new tips law landed I realised 'fair' wasn't enough — I needed to prove it. On Navigare the pool splits by hours worked to the penny, every line has my name on it as troncmaster, and the policy is a document I can actually show the team. The PPDS labels for the deli counter came out of the same recipes. The compliance stopped being a worry and became a screen I open."
— Pilot operator · independent restaurant & deli · Berkshire
NEW · FOOD SAFETY · CHALLENGE 25
The due-diligence diary, kept as you go.
Food safety stands on records you can produce on the day an inspector asks. Navigare logs fridge and freezer temperatures with an automatic in-range check and the corrective action when one drifts, records HACCP opening and closing checks, and keeps a Challenge 25 register of every alcohol age-check and refusal.
Real screenshot — temperature log with an out-of-range reading and its corrective action, live Navigare tenant.
✦Temperature logs — per fridge, freezer and hot-hold, each reading flagged in- or out-of-range against the unit's limits, with the corrective action recorded.
✦HACCP checks — opening, closing, delivery and probe-calibration checks, dated and signed off.
✦Challenge 25 register — every age verification and refusal logged, with the ID type seen and who served.
✦Age-restricted items — menu lines flagged with their ABV, so the prompt to check is tied to the product.
Hospitality & Restaurant — £129/month, all-in.
Software, hosting, hourly off-site backups, UK accounting and support — included. The tronc engine and written tipping policy, the 14-allergen matrix and Natasha's Law PPDS labels, recipes and menu costing, table tickets and VAT-ready figures: one system that does the regulated parts properly. Fourteen days free, no card. You'll be splitting tips to the penny — and printing a compliant label — the same week.
