Tip distribution is part of the tour compensation feature. If you're new to tour compensation, read the Introduction to Tour Compensation article first.
Overview
What is Tip Distribution?
Tip distribution automatically calculates the tips earned on a tour and adds them to the tour's compensation when the tour is completed.
Tips are sent by booking integration partners and stored on individual bookings. Without tip distribution, tips remain at the booking level and are not included in tour payout data. With tip distribution enabled, MotionTools consolidates the relevant tips onto the tour automatically.
Tip distribution is opt-in and configured per Tour Service. It is disabled by default.
How Tips are calculated
When a tour is completed, MotionTools evaluates each booking dispatched on the tour. A booking's tip is added to the tour only when all of the following are true:
The booking has at least one completed drop-off stop.
All of the booking's drop-offs are in a terminal state (completed, failed, or cancelled).
All completed drop-offs were performed on this tour.
If a booking's drop-offs were split across multiple tours, its tip is not awarded to any tour.
Examples:
Examples:
A single booking with one drop-off, fully completed on Tour 1 → the driver receives the full tip on Tour 1.
Two bookings on the same tour, both with drop-offs fully completed on that tour → the driver receives tips from both bookings.
A booking with one drop-off completed on Tour 1 and another on Tour 2 → no tip is awarded to either tour.
A booking with no drop-offs (pickup only) → no tip is awarded.
Redelivery attempts: If a drop-off fails and a new drop-off is created on the same booking and dispatched to the same tour, the tip is awarded when the reattempt is completed successfully.
Tip calculation is idempotent. Re-running calculation on an already-completed tour produces the same result.
Enable Tip Distribution on a Tour Service
Once enabled, tips are calculated for all tours completed on this Tour Service going forward. Review the distribution rules above before enabling so that drivers and operators have aligned expectations.
To enable tip distribution:
Go to Settings → Tour Services.
Open the Tour Service you want to configure.
Open the Tips section and change the Tips distribution strategy to Completed drop-offs on tour
Click Save.
Currency Validation on Bookings
When a tip is set on a booking, the tip currency must match the booking's applicable currency. The applicable currency is the service area's local currency, falling back to the tenant's base currency if the service area has none set.
Bookings with a mismatched tip currency are rejected at creation time with an error response.
Rejecting mismatched currencies at booking creation prevents issues from surfacing later during tour completion, when they are harder to resolve.
Handling Currency Mismatches
Even with booking-level validation in place, a mismatch can occur at the tour level. This happens when bookings from different service areas with different currencies are dispatched onto the same tour (a cross-service-area merge).
If MotionTools detects a currency mismatch among the bookings on a tour, or between the booking tips and the tour's compensation currency:
Tips are not calculated for that tour.
An email notification is sent to all tenant-level admins.
The notification includes a link to the affected tour so you can review its details. Each tour produces at most one notification email per completion, even if multiple mismatches are detected.
What Drivers See
After a tour is completed, drivers can see the tip amount in the Past Tours screen of the driver app. Open a past tour to view the full compensation breakdown, including base earnings, bonuses, and tips.
The Tips label must be enabled in Driver Experience settings for the tip total to appear on the tour list view. Learn more in the Customize Tour and Stop labels in the Driver App article.