How to choose a tip tracker
There are plenty of tip trackers: ServerLife, TipSee, Just the Tips, spreadsheets, and notes apps all have loyal users. Instead of a feature-count war, here are the eight questions that actually separate them, and where Tipfolio stands on each. (Other apps' details change; verify current pricing and features on their own pages.)
| The question | Tipfolio | Typical tip tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Can you get your data out? | CSV and PDF export is free, forever, even if you never pay. | Export is often paywalled, limited, or missing entirely. |
| Can you bring your history in? | CSV import is free and asked about on first launch: bring your spreadsheet or your old tracker’s export, duplicates skipped, start and end times included. | Rare. Most trackers start you from zero, and years of history stay behind. |
| Can you see your month at a glance? | A free calendar with the take-home on every day, a dot per job, and days marked off, next to the list. | Common, but often behind a paid tier or missing the days you didn’t work. |
| Where does your income data live? | On your device and in your own private iCloud, with a backup file you control. No account, no company server. | Usually on the company’s servers, behind a required account. |
| What happens if the app is abandoned? | Your data is already on your device, and the export file is yours. | Server-based apps can take years of shift history down with them. |
| Is the pricing knowable before you start? | $0 core with two jobs, $11.99/year or $19.99 once for Premium, printed on the homepage. | Free-looking apps often reveal the subscription only at a paywall. |
| Does it understand tip-outs? | Rules by percent of sales, percent of tips, or flat amount, applied automatically. | Many track only a single tips number, leaving the tip-out math to you. |
| Does it help with taxes? | State-aware set-aside, the 2025–2028 tips deduction, the monthly report your employer is owed, and a year-end tax packet. | Tax help is rare; usually it stops at a totals screen. |
| Does it check that you were paid correctly? | It figures what each paycheck should come to from your shifts, shows the gap when your stub differs, and measures every week against your state minimum wage, tip credit included. | Some log paychecks. Almost none compare them with the shifts, or ask whether the pay was legal. |
"Typical" describes patterns common across the category, not any single app. The best tracker is the one you'll actually open after every shift. Whichever you pick, pick one that lets you leave with your data.
What about a spreadsheet?
A spreadsheet is genuinely fine: it's private, free, and yours. What it can't do is meet you at 11:40pm with three taps, apply your tip-out rules for you, or tell you your true hourly by weekday without formula work. If a spreadsheet has worked for you for years, keep it. If yours has three half-filled tabs from three separate attempts, that's the problem Tipfolio exists to fix, and you don't lose the history: export the sheet as CSV and Tipfolio imports it, free.
Why Tipfolio is built this way
Tip trackers have a history of being abandoned, of trapping years of shift history behind logins, and of surprise subscriptions. Tipfolio's answers are structural: no account to hold your data hostage, import and export that are free forever, prices printed on the homepage, an optional Face ID lock, and an app that works with no connection at all. Try the free calculators to feel the math first.
Judge it by the eight questions.
Tipfolio was built to answer all eight the right way, and to be the app you actually open after a shift.