HR Software for Hotels and Restaurants 2026
HR software for hospitality: tipped employee payroll, tip pooling, high turnover onboarding, seasonal staffing, and POS system integration.
Is it right for you?
- Tipped employee wage calculations with tip credit compliance
- Tip pooling or tip sharing calculation support
- Fast onboarding for high-turnover staff
- Integration with your POS system (Toast, Square, Lightspeed)
- Seasonal hiring and offboarding without excessive per-employee fees
- Schedule management for front-of-house and back-of-house
Tipped employee payroll complexity
Restaurants have payroll complexity most industries don't: federal tip credit (paying tipped employees $2.13/hour if tips bring them to minimum wage), tip pooling rules that vary by state, FICA tip credit calculations on employer tax returns, and IRS Form 8027 for large food and beverage establishments.
Tip pooling laws changed in 2018 with the FLSA amendment. Some states have additional restrictions. Any restaurant doing tip pools needs software that handles the current federal rules and tracks state-specific variations.
POS-integrated payroll options
Toast Payroll is designed for restaurant groups using Toast POS. Hours, tips, and tip pools flow from Toast POS into Toast Payroll automatically. For a restaurant doing $2M+ in revenue with a complex tip structure, this integration removes hours of manual data work each pay period.
Square Payroll works similarly for Square POS users. Smaller and cheaper than Toast Payroll but the tip handling is solid.
If you use a different POS (Lightspeed, Aloha, Micros), the integration options narrow considerably. You may end up exporting tip reports and importing to ADP or Gusto manually.
Hotels and larger hospitality groups
Hotels add scheduling complexity: front desk, housekeeping, food and beverage, maintenance, and management all on different schedules and pay structures. ADP Workforce Now and Paylocity handle multi-department scheduling at this scale.
Rippling is increasingly used by hospitality management groups that operate multiple properties. The IT provisioning feature helps when properties share system access but employees are property-specific.
BambooHR does not handle tipped employee payroll well. It is an HRIS, not a payroll-first tool, and hospitality payroll is too complex for BambooHR's payroll module.
See also: employee scheduling software, HR software for nonprofits.
Frequently asked questions
What is the federal tipped minimum wage in 2026? The federal cash wage for tipped employees remains $2.13/hour, with employers allowed a tip credit of up to $5.12/hour toward the $7.25 federal minimum wage. If an employee's tips plus the $2.13 cash wage do not add up to at least $7.25 in a pay period, the employer must make up the difference that same period [DOL, 2026].
Can back-of-house staff legally be included in a tip pool? It depends on whether the employer takes a tip credit. If the employer pays the full minimum wage without a tip credit, cooks and dishwashers can be included in the tip pool. If the employer takes a tip credit, the pool must be limited to employees who customarily and regularly receive tips, such as servers and bussers [DOL, 2025].
Can a manager or supervisor take a share of the tip pool? No. The Department of Labor reaffirmed in January 2025 that employees who meet the FLSA's executive duties test, meaning they qualify as managers or supervisors, cannot receive tips from a mandatory tip pool, even if they occasionally perform tipped work themselves.
What is the "dual jobs" rule and why does it matter for payroll? The dual jobs rule, restored by the DOL in December 2024, says an employer can only claim the tip credit for the portion of a job in which the employee customarily and regularly receives at least $30/month in tips. A server who also spends significant time on non-tipped side work (like deep cleaning) may need to be paid full minimum wage for that time, which payroll software needs to track separately from tipped hours.
Does IRS Form 8027 apply to every restaurant? No, only to large food and beverage establishments, generally those with more than 10 employees on a typical business day where tipping is customary. Form 8027 reports total sales and tips and is used by the IRS to check whether reported tip income looks reasonable relative to sales.