On a Square shift report, Non-Cash Tips is your card tips. Cash Owed to House or Cash Owed to You only tells you which way the cash moves at close. None of these lines is the total you made. Settle the cash first, then work out your tips from your cash tips, card tips, and tip-outs.
What a Square shift report is
In Square for Restaurants, servers run a shift report before clocking out. Square says it shows your card tips and any cash owed to the house. It also helps your restaurant with hours, tips, and payroll. According to Square's shift report article, the report has five sections:
- Shift Summary: total time worked in the shift
- Tip Details: your tip and cash numbers
- Sales Summary: covers and total dollars collected
- Category Sales and Item Sales: what you sold
Before you can run the report, every outstanding closing task has to be done, such as closing checks and adjusting card tips. Your restaurant decides which tasks are required and whether some lines show at all. Two Square restaurants can give you different-looking reports.
The Tip Details lines
| Line | Square's definition | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Cash Sales | Total cash transactions accepted by the employee | This is the restaurant's money from guests who paid cash. It is not tip money. |
| Non-Cash Tips | Total tips from credit card transactions accepted by the employee | Are all paper-receipt tips entered? If your restaurant pools tips, is this before or after the pool? |
| Cash Owed to You | Credit card tips that are more than the cash this employee accepted | Shows up when your card tips are bigger than your cash sales. You collect this amount. |
| Cash Owed to House | Cash the employee should still have after paying themselves tips | You turn this amount in. |
The definitions come from Square's help article. Square also says the two "Cash Owed" lines are for restaurants that pay card tips out in cash. If your restaurant pays card tips through payroll, Square suggests hiding them. An admin turns them off in Square Dashboard under Device Management → Service settings → Closing procedures. So if those lines are missing from your report, that alone doesn't mean anything is wrong.
A worked example
Illustrative numbers, not from a real report. They assume card tips are paid in cash at close and no other cash adjustments apply.
| Scenario | Cash Sales | Non-Cash Tips | Cash Sales − Non-Cash Tips | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Busy cash night | $310 | $185 | $125 | Cash Owed to House: turn in $125 |
| Mostly card guests | $95 | $185 | −$90 | Cash Owed to You: collect $90 |
In the second row you already hold $95 from cash sales. Collecting another $90 brings you to $185, which matches your card tips. That $90 is part of your $185, not extra income.
Now work out your tips. Say you also had $35 in cash tips and paid out $28 to the bar and bussers. Either way, your tips for the shift are:
$35 cash tips + $185 Non-Cash Tips − $28 tip-outs = $192 before taxes.
If the Shift Summary shows 6 hours, that comes to $32 an hour in tips, plus your base wage. The tip-out calculator splits a tip-out among several people. The tip hourly wage calculator combines your tips, base wage, and hours.
Before you run the report
On the Square POS app, log in with your personal passcode and tap Account. Adjust any tips, close any open checks, and declare cash tips if needed. Then tap Run Shift Report. On a Square Register, Square lists the path as More → Run Shift Report.
Three things that often make the numbers look wrong:
- Unentered card tips. Square's tip settlement article says a payment left open settles automatically after 36 hours with a $0 tip. That includes tips written on printed receipts. Enter them before you close out.
- Sales before clock-in. If you took payments before you clocked in, they can fall outside the report's time frame. Square suggests tapping Edit Report to change it.
- Whose tips they are. By default, a tip goes to the team member who processed the payment. If a coworker ran your card, the tip may show on their report.
Declared cash tips
If your restaurant turns on Declare cash tips, tip-eligible staff can enter their cash tips. They can do it from the shift report flow, or at clock-out on the POS or in the Team app. Square's timecard reporting article says shifts record declared cash tips and transaction-pooled tips. Those are the only two tip types Square can accurately tie to a timecard. With Square Payroll tip importing, declared cash tips can be imported into a pay run.
The number you declare is whatever you typed in. Keep your own cash-tip record so you can check the declared amount against it.
Tip pools and tip-outs
By default, each team member keeps the tips they collect. A restaurant can instead set up a pool in Square Dashboard (Staff → Settings → Tips → Tip allocation). Card tips can be split per transaction, daily, or weekly, either equally or by fixed percentages by role, according to Square's tip-out article. If your restaurant uses a daily or weekly pool, your final share isn't known at the end of your shift. Record it when it's paid, and don't count the same tips twice.
Some restaurants tip out from the cash drawer instead. In that case, the payout goes through Account → Cash Management → Pay In/Out on the POS, labeled with the team member's name and "Tips". Square records it as cash removed from the drawer, separate from cash sales.
Before you save tonight's record
- Compare Non-Cash Tips with your own count of card tips, including any written on paper receipts.
- Write down cash tips received, even if you also declared them.
- Subtract each tip-out once. Check whether a pool or drawer payout already accounts for it.
- Record your hours from the Shift Summary or your timecard.
- Note any pool share that will be paid later.
Use the free tip log template, or record the shift in TipScan. In TipScan, you enter the amounts yourself and check the totals before saving. Keep any photos of your report in your own files.
Related guides
- How to read your server checkout slip
- Toast Shift Review, explained
- Aloha Server Checkout, explained
- Micros Employee Tip Report, explained
- Tip out rules explained
Reviewed against the linked Square Support Center articles on November 3, 2026. Menus, report lines, and plan requirements can change and depend on your restaurant's settings. TipScan is an independent tool and is not affiliated with Block, Inc. or Square.