What is Service Charge?
In hospitality, a meaningful part of what staff take home is not salary — it is a share of a pooled service charge. How that pool is divided is the single most political calculation in the business.
In the typical operation it is a monthly spreadsheet, maintained by one person, whose formula nobody else fully understands, distributing money that staff care about more than almost anything else.
Service Charge — also known as service money — replaces that with a method the business can explain. The weighting is configuration. Each period is a cycle you open, calculate, preview, finalise and close. Run it again and you get the same answer.
Key Features & Benefits
Transparency Is the Product
The amount matters less to staff than whether they believe it was fair — and belief requires a method that can be shown, not a total that must be trusted.
Write the Weighting Down Once
Every operation already has a weighting. The question is whether it exists in a document or in someone's head, and only one of those survives a resignation.
The Cycle Is a Control
Open, calculate, preview, finalise, close. The moment to catch a distribution error is before it is distributed.
Your Maths, Not Ours
Direct and ratio distribution modes, because a product that supports only one method is a product half of hospitality cannot use.
The Remainder, Handled Honestly
Carry-forward of unallocated amounts as a rule. The leftover is small and matters enormously, because an unexplained remainder is where trust is lost.
It Ends in the Payslip
Payroll mapping is part of the module. Any calculation that ends in a spreadsheet somebody retypes has not been automated.
Who Needs Service Charge?
Hotel and F&B operations managers
The person who owns the monthly service charge sheet, and the questions that follow it.
Payroll and finance
Anyone who receives service money figures last and has to take them on trust.
Group HR directors
Where every property does it slightly differently and none of them can be compared.
Owners and general managers
Anyone who would struggle to show the method if the distribution were formally challenged.
Related Products & Resources
Frequently Asked Questions
Does QHRM collect the service charge from our POS?
No. QHRM distributes the pool you tell it about. Collection of the charge from a point-of-sale system is not part of the module.
Is this tip management?
No. This is a pooled service charge distributed by rule. Individual tip tracking is a different thing and is not covered here.
What distribution methods are supported?
Two: direct, which distributes an amount per point, and ratio, which distributes a share of the pool. They are genuinely different mathematics and operations use one or the other.
How are joiners, leavers and part-period staff handled?
As proration rules rather than manual adjustments, so somebody who worked ten shifts and somebody who worked twenty are treated by policy rather than by judgement.
What happens to the leftover?
Unallocated and rounded amounts are handled by a carry-forward rule you configure, so the remainder is systematic rather than discretionary.
Can staff see their own breakdown?
The transparency the module delivers today is the business being able to explain the distribution. Talk to us about employee-facing visibility before assuming it.
A Distribution You Can Show People
Replace the spreadsheet nobody else understands. Start with a free trial or book a demo.
