TL;DR: Your server checkout slip is the end-of-shift summary your POS prints showing your sales, credit card tips, declared cash tips, tip outs, and the cash you owe (or are owed by) the restaurant. Toast calls it a Shift Review, Aloha calls it a Server Checkout, and Micros calls it an Employee Tip Report — but they all answer the same question: how much money did you actually make tonight? If CASH OWED is positive, that's cash you hand to the house (your cash sales minus your card tips). Learn to read every line, because this slip is often the only record of your real tip income.
Why Your Checkout Slip Matters More Than Your Pay Stub
If you wait tables or tend bar, your pay stub only tells part of the story. It shows your hourly wage and whatever tips your employer reports — but it usually does not show the tip outs you paid to bussers, bartenders, and food runners, and it can't capture cash tips you didn't declare through the POS.
Your checkout slip, printed at the end of every shift, is the closest thing you have to a nightly earnings statement. It's the document that tells you:
- How much you sold (and in what categories)
- How much you earned in credit card tips
- What you declared in cash tips
- What you paid out to support staff
- Whether you owe the house cash — or the house owes you
That's your money on that little strip of thermal paper. Here's how to read it.
The Same Slip, Three Different Names
Every major POS system prints some version of this report, but the names differ:
| POS System | What the slip is called | Card tips label |
|---|---|---|
| Toast | Shift Review | Credit Tips |
| Aloha (NCR) | Server Checkout | Non-Cash Tips |
| Micros (Oracle) | Employee Tip Report | Charged Tips |
Toast documents its version in the Shift Review overview. If you've worked at multiple restaurants, you've probably noticed the slips look wildly different even between two restaurants on the same system. That's not your imagination: Aloha, for instance, lets each restaurant fully customize its checkout layout through a configuration file called Checkout.cfg. Your manager (or whoever set up the system years ago) decided what prints and what doesn't.
That means there's no single universal template — but the core lines below show up almost everywhere in some form.
Line by Line: What Each Section Means
Credit / Non-Cash / Charged Tips
This is the total of tips left on credit and debit cards during your shift. Depending on your POS:
- Toast: "Credit Tips"
- Aloha: "Non-Cash Tips"
- Micros: "Charged Tips"
These tips flowed through the restaurant's card processing, so the restaurant owes them to you — typically paid out in cash at the end of the night or added to your paycheck, depending on house policy.
Cash Tips (Declared)
This is the amount of cash tips you told the POS you received. The system can see every card tip automatically, but it only knows about your cash tips if you enter them. This line matters for tax reporting — the IRS expects all tips to be reported, and Publication 531 recommends keeping a daily record of the cash tips you actually receive, whether or not they made it into the POS.
Tip Outs / Tip Sharing
Toast labels this "Tip Outs" or "Tip Sharing." This is money leaving your pocket and going to the bar, bussers, runners, or a house tip pool. Two big things to know:
- Tip outs almost never appear on your pay stub. The checkout slip (plus your own log) may be your only proof of what you actually gave up.
- The structure varies — a percentage of your sales, a percentage of your tips, or a cut of bar sales. We break down the common structures (and which ones hurt most on a slow night) in our tip out rules guide, and you can model your own restaurant's policy with the tip out calculator.
CASH OWED / TOTAL CASH OWED / "Owed to Restaurant"
This is the settlement line — the number everyone hunts for at 11 p.m. On Toast slips it appears as CASH OWED, TOTAL CASH OWED, or "Owed to restaurant."
The logic is simple:
Cash sales − credit card tips = what changes hands
| If the number is… | It means… |
|---|---|
| Positive | You collected more cash from guests than the house owes you in card tips. You hand this amount to the restaurant. |
| Negative | Your card tips exceed the cash you collected. The house pays you the difference. |
If you rang mostly card sales and earned solid card tips, you'll often walk with cash from the house. On a cash-heavy night, you'll be counting out bills to drop.
Sales Summary
Most checkouts break down your net sales, often by category (food, liquor, beer, wine). This section matters more than it looks: if your restaurant tips out on a percentage of sales — total or liquor-only — this is the number your tip out is computed from, not your tips.
Auto Gratuity / Service Charges
Automatic gratuities (like a mandatory 20% on parties of eight or more) and service charges print as a separate line item from tips. They're not the same thing as a voluntary tip — operationally or legally. This distinction became a big deal in 2025: under the new federal tip deduction, voluntary tips can qualify for a tax deduction, but automatic gratuities and mandatory service charges do not. Our No Tax on Tips guide covers exactly what qualifies.
A Worked Example
Here's a simplified night for a server on Toast:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Net sales | $1,400.00 |
| Cash sales | $300.00 |
| Credit Tips | $210.00 |
| Cash Tips (declared) | $40.00 |
| Tip Outs (3% of net sales) | −$42.00 |
| CASH OWED | $90.00 |
Reading it: guests paid $300 in cash, and the house owes this server $210 in card tips. $300 − $210 = $90 CASH OWED — the server drops $90 with the manager. The server's actual take-home for the night is $210 (card tips) + $40 (cash tips) − $42 (tip out) = $208.
Now divide that by hours worked. A $208 night over a 6-hour shift is about $34.67/hour in tips before wages — a number your checkout will never print for you, but one worth knowing. The tip hourly wage calculator does that math instantly.
What Your Checkout Slip Doesn't Tell You
For all its detail, the slip has blind spots:
- Cash tips you didn't declare in the POS — the system only knows what you enter.
- Your effective hourly rate — sales and tips, yes; per-hour earnings, no.
- Trends — one slip can't tell you whether Tuesdays are worth working or whether your tip percentage is slipping.
- Whether tip credit math is working out — federal law lets employers pay tipped workers a cash wage as low as $2.13/hr as long as tips bring you to at least $7.25/hr; if they don't, the employer must make up the difference. State rules vary widely — check the DOL's state-by-state tipped minimum wage table. You can only verify this if you know your real nightly totals.
Build the Habit: Capture Every Checkout
The single best habit a tipped worker can build is recording every shift's numbers — card tips, declared cash, tip outs, hours — somewhere permanent. Thermal paper fades. Slips get lost in aprons and washing machines. And when tax season arrives (or a paycheck looks wrong), your own records are the evidence that protects your money.
TipScan (tipscan.app) is a free tip tracker built for U.S. tipped workers. Snap a photo of your checkout slip — Toast, Aloha, Micros, or anything else — and TipScan reads it and logs your tips, tip outs, and sales automatically. No ads, no cost. This article is general information, not tax or legal advice.