Was that shift worth it? How to work out what an hour actually paid
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The figure that tells you whether a shift was worth it is what you took home for each hour you worked: your tips, plus your hourly pay, minus anything you tipped out, divided by the hours. A big total on its own does not answer the question, because it does not say how long you stood there for it. Work out the hourly figure for every shift, and compare shifts with each other only once you have several of the same kind.
The formula
What an hour paid = (tips + hourly pay − tip-out) ÷ hours worked
- Tips means cash and card together, everything you were given on the shift.
- Hourly pay is your wage for that shift: the hourly rate times the hours. If your job pays no wage on top of tips, it is zero.
- Tip-out is what you handed to the bar, the bussers or a pool. It left the same night, so it is not part of what you took home.
- Hours are the hours you actually worked, from clock-in to clock-out.
Example: a dinner shift with $180 in tips, over 6 hours, at $5 an hour in wages, tipping out $15. Take-home is $180 + $30 − $15 = $195. Divided by 6 hours, that shift paid $32.50 an hour.
Only the last number in that example is the one to compare between shifts. The take-home tells you what the night was worth; the hourly figure tells you what your time was worth in it.
Why a big night is not always a good hour
The biggest total of the week is often just the longest shift. A double brings in more than a short rush partly because it is longer, and it can still be the worse use of your time.
Example: a 10-hour double brings in $260 in tips and $50 in wages, with $20 tipped out: $290, or $29 an hour. A 4-hour dinner rush brings in $130 in tips and $20 in wages, with $10 tipped out: $140, or $35 an hour. The double paid more. The rush paid better.
That difference is what you would want to know before picking up another double, or before giving up a short shift you assumed was not worth the drive.
Why one night proves very little
Any single shift can be unusual. A big party, a slow night in bad weather, a regular who tips big: one of those can make a shift look like the best or the worst you have, and it may never happen the same way again.
A pattern needs several shifts of the same kind before it means anything. One great Saturday is a good night. Several Saturdays that all beat your Tuesdays is something you can plan around. The more shifts behind a comparison, and the less they jump around from one to the next, the more you can trust it.
Compare against your own history, never anybody else's
The comparisons that are useful are the ones inside your own record:
- Day against day: your Fridays against your Tuesdays.
- Workplace against workplace, if you work at more than one place.
- Shift against shift: lunch against dinner, an open against a close.
Each of those only works with your own numbers. Somebody else's hourly figure comes from a different city, a different place, different hours and different customers, so it cannot tell you which of your shifts to take. Your own past can.
This is also why the hours matter so much in the record. A shift you did not write the hours down for still counts toward what you earned, but it cannot tell you what an hour was worth.
What TipMefy works out for you
TipMefy does this arithmetic every time you save a shift. It shows what the shift earned and what that came to per hour, and the earned figure is the one above: your tips, minus tip-out, plus your hourly pay when you have entered a wage for that workplace.
It asks for the hours before it saves a shift, because every per-hour figure depends on them. A shift without hours is left out of the hourly figures rather than guessed at.
When it tells you how tonight compared, it compares it with your own past shifts on the same day of the week (per hour where it can), and only once you have at least three of them. It will not call anything your best until it has at least three shifts behind it, and when it points out a pattern it says how many shifts it rests on and how confident it is. Below that, it says nothing rather than guess.