TRONC & Compliance
Next-gen TRONC meets industry-leading compliance.
“Working with Grateful has been a gamechanger. The platform also seamlessly integrates with our epos, rota and payroll platforms which has really streamlined the whole process.”
Gusto
COO @ Gusto Restaurants
“Market leading technology paired with people who know the industry and provide great service. Grateful is exactly the kind of platform we want in our stack, and the people we want to partner with long-term.”
Cherry Equity Partners
Ed Strandring, CEO
“The excellent system, which works really well, and the helpful, friendly staff who provide great support.”
East Coast Concepts
Finance Director @ East Coast Concepts
Comparison
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Your TRONC?
- Automated distribution
- Independent troncmaster
- Real-time team transparency
- HMRC audit-ready reporting
- Tipping Act compliance
- Payroll integration
- Multi-site support
- NIC savings protection
Other TRONC Suppliers
- Manual or spreadsheet-heavy processes
- No true independence
- Payslip-only visibility for staff
- Reports require manual preparation
- Not fully aligned
- Clunky payroll integration
- Difficult to scale across multiple sites
- NIC savings risk exposure
Key features
Designed to reward teams, protect businesses, and eliminate admin.
Automated tip distribution
Set your allocation rules once and the platform applies them automatically across every shift, team member and site.
Independent troncmaster governance
Grateful provides independent troncmaster oversight to ensure the scheme operates in line with HMRC requirements.
Real-time transparency for teams
Employees can see their tronc earnings through the Grateful app including a full breakdown of how distributions are calculated.
Real time integration
Tronc data flows directly into payroll through API integrations with leading providers including Xero, Sage and Fourth.
Gamification
Incentivise excellence across the business through the grateful platform
Multi-site management
Different venues can run different allocation rules while still being managed centrally through one dashboard.
See Grateful in action.
Grateful feature
STASH
Tips keep your team motivated, but day-to-day spending pressure means those earnings rarely build into anything. STASH automatically splits every tip and tronc payment between spending and a high-interest, FSCS-protected savings account.
Workers set their percentage once, then it runs itself. No integration, no admin, no new processes. Just a genuine benefit that helps your people build real security from the money they already earn.
- Effortless saving
- Real financial resilience
- Zero employer admin
Integrations
Partnered with the platforms you trust
We work closely with best-in-class hospitality and people-tech providers to ensure our integrations are reliable, secure, and easy to set up — so you can focus on your teams, not your tech.
Tronc calculator
See how much you could save with a compliant TRONC
*Based on the assumption of 15% employers national insurance
Employer NIC savings per year*
Estimated increase in team take-home pay*
See how much time and risk you could eliminate
This is the question we get asked more than any other. The honest answer: both models work, and either route delivers the same baseline benefits. A compliant tronc, regardless of who runs it, helps you meet the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, share tips and service charges fairly, and retain the National Insurance exemption on tip distributions. In-house tronc, where a senior team member or your accountant acts as troncmaster, can still work for smaller, single-site operations with a stable team and a manager who understands the rules. It is not broken. It is just narrow. For most operators today, outsourcing is the stronger choice for three reasons: Transparency. Grateful gives every team member 100% visibility on what they earn, on what shifts, and how it was calculated, refreshed daily or weekly. The Act now expects you to be able to produce that breakdown on demand, and teams that trust the system stay longer. Automation. By integrating with your EPOS, PMS, rota, HR, and payroll systems, Grateful pulls real shift, role, and sales data and calculates allocations automatically. No spreadsheets, no manual reconciliation, and no human error, which is the single biggest source of compliance failure in tronc schemes. Impartiality. Grateful sits outside your business as an independent troncmaster. That structural independence protects the scheme’s tax status, removes any perception of owner influence, and gives staff a clean external route for any challenge rather than a colleague trying to run service. For any operator running multiple sites, scaling fast, or carrying meaningful tribunal risk under the new rules, outsourced tronc is now the more straightforward, defensible, and scalable option.
As a result of operating a Tronc scheme, all tips collected and allocated/distributed via a Tronc are exempt from NI. This means that when Tronc is operated correctly, and the National Insurance exemptions are met, in line with HMRC’s guidance, the business can save 13.8% on employers’ national insurance, and the team members can save 8% of employees NI, this is subject to change in coming months but there is still a considerable saving to be had for both employees and employers when Tronc is done correctly. This is without even considering the saving on labour costs for Grateful automating Tronc processes.
A Tronc is a special pay arrangement used to distribute tips, gratuities and service charges. A Tronc system is set up to ensure all staff members, including those who may not typically receive tips (such as back-of-house, and non-customer-facing members), get their fair share. Tronc systems are common in a wide range of hospitality businesses such as restaurants, bars, hotels, cafés and more. The agreement also introduces advantageous benefits such as National Insurance exemptions for the business, and the team.
This is very much a subjective question and can only be answered by the people who know the business best. If a business is unsure on how to allocate tips, gratuities and service charges, it is a great idea to put this to a vote and allow the team to have their say in how things are allocated. This not only ensures that you are working towards something that the majority of people think is right/fair, it also gives the team a voice to have their say. Involving the team in initiatives like this can help people feel valued and encourage them to stay within a business. We appreciate that this can be a daunting task for businesses that have multiple locations so get in touch to find out how Grtfl can help streamline that process as well.
Grtfl is a cashless tipping and TRONC platform that works with businesses in the hospitality industry to boost staff earning potential in today’s cashless society and alleviate costs and ‘tip admin’ from the operator. We automatically collect and distribute all your tips and service charges fairly and transparently, with key benefits such as more tips for the team, reduced admin for the operator, full transparency on tip data for the team and business, and faster access to their fair share of tips. We integrate with your EPOS to split off tips at the point of sale or end of the night, where additional service charge and tip income would go off to the Grtfl platform, and F&B revenue would go directly to each venue. This would allow team members to either get 100% of the tip owed to them, and it would be up to them to declare their tips, or we can operate a fully managed and automated TRONC solution. Tips can be split in several ways based on your choosing. Tips would go into the Grtfl platform and be apportioned out how you wish at the end of the shift, or tips would be split at the end of the week. This means that tips coming from the Grtfl platform would not be going through the business, alleviating you from admin and tax contributions. It would give staff access to their tips quicker, weekly or daily, rather than at the end of the month with payroll. This also ensures that all parties have a fair and transparent method of collecting and distributing tips, which helps with staff retention and much more.
Tronc is a common arrangement hospitality businesses use to distribute tips and service charges to staff. With Grateful, you can easily manage Tronc using our powerful tronc management tool, which makes tip distributions straightforward, saves you time, is free to use, and offers full transparency for teams. Moreover, we ensure that you are fully compliant with HMRC regulations.
We love making new friends and are open to integrating with anyone. Our platform can integrate seamlessly with almost all POS systems. If you have any questions about your existing system and how ours can work with it, please contact us.
It depends on which product you’re rolling out. Direct tipping Same day. Once you’ve signed up, we can have your QR codes live and ready to take tips right away. Tronc A standard tronc implementation runs 45 to 60 days from kickoff. We manage the whole project end to end, from the initial kickoff call through to handover to the Tronc Managers who’ll look after you day to day. If you’re already with another tronc provider, we typically run our implementation in parallel with your existing notice period. That gives us up to three months to set up, parallel-run, and test the new scheme before switchover, so there’s no gap in service.
Our Insights
