Rocket Tronc

Built for UK hospitality groups that need compliant, auditable tronc workflows across multiple venues — and that want to connect tip data to the full operational picture.

The Challenge

The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 changed the compliance landscape for UK hospitality permanently. Employers must now pass 100% of tips to workers, maintain three years of distribution records, operate a written tipping policy, and respond to worker record requests within four weeks. For groups running multiple venues with dozens or hundreds of tipped staff, manual tronc management is no longer defensible — legally or operationally.

Beyond compliance, hospitality operators needed tronc data to connect with their broader operational systems: labour cost, revenue per cover, POS data, and payroll — so that tip distribution could be understood in the context of business performance, not just processed in isolation.

What We Built

Automated collection and allocation. Rocket Tronc connects directly to POS systems and automatically calculates tip distributions based on configurable rules: hours worked, role weighting, seniority, and venue-level policies. Operators define the rules once; the system applies them consistently across every shift.

HMRC-compliant reporting. Every distribution generates the records required for HMRC compliance and worker transparency — ready for audit without additional preparation. Workers can view their own tronc history in real time through the staff-facing interface.

Payroll system integration. Rocket Tronc integrates with Sona HR, Xero, Fourth, S4Labour, and Lightspeed, ensuring that tronc data flows into payroll without manual reconciliation. For groups already running Rocket OS, tronc data sits alongside labour, revenue, and operational data in a single platform.

ERP connectivity. For Rocket OS customers, Rocket Tronc is part of the integrated operating layer — tronc distributions can be analysed alongside revenue per cover, wage cost percentages, and site-level P&L. This is the data intelligence that manual tronc management makes impossible.

What We Know That Others Don't

UK hospitality payroll is not a simple domain. Tronc qualification rules, the distinction between service charges and discretionary tips, the interaction with National Insurance calculations, the nuances of tronc schemes recognised by HMRC — these are details that trip up generic payroll platforms built without deep hospitality domain knowledge.

We built Rocket Tronc from within the industry, for operators who cannot afford to get it wrong. The compliance framework is not a feature bolted on after launch — it is the foundation the platform was designed around.

The Outcome

Multi-venue hospitality groups using Rocket Tronc have eliminated manual tronc calculations, removed their compliance exposure under the 2023 Act, and — for Rocket OS customers — gained visibility into tip data as part of their overall labour and revenue picture.

For operators who previously managed tronc in spreadsheets, the immediate impact is the removal of hours of monthly admin per site. For those who were running exposure under the new Act, it is peace of mind.