For delivery drivers
A tip log for delivery drivers.
A delivery fee is not a tip, an hour on the app is not an hour of orders, and the number the app shows you is not what you took home. Tipfolio records what actually arrived.
- ✓Tips logged separately from delivery fees and promotions.
- ✓Earnings per hour of actual driving, not per hour logged in.
- ✓Multiple platforms tracked as separate jobs, totalled into one year.
- ✓A dated record for a role where nobody else is keeping one for you.
In short
- ✓Delivery fees are not tips. They are platform revenue passed through, and they are treated differently.
- ✓Track hours actually driving, not hours logged into an app, or your rate is meaningless.
- ✓Many drivers are treated as self-employed — a different tax position, with different records required.
- ✓Vehicle costs are the biggest thing a tip log won't capture. Track mileage separately.
Three numbers the apps blur together
Open any delivery platform's earnings screen and you will see a total. Underneath it are at least three quite different things:
- The tip — what the customer chose to give you.
- The delivery fee or base pay — what the platform pays for the job. Not a tip, and generally treated differently.
- Promotions and bonuses — surge, quest completions, referral money. Different again.
Keeping them apart in your own log is the whole game. Collapse them into one figure and you cannot isolate the tip portion, cannot compare platforms honestly, and cannot tell whether your earnings are coming from customers or from promotions that will end.
Logged-in hours are not worked hours
An eight-hour session with two dead hours waiting in a car park is not an eight-hour shift, and it is not a six-hour one either. Which you count changes your apparent rate by a third, so the only rule that matters is pick one definition and stay with it. Otherwise you cannot compare Tuesday to Friday, let alone one app to another.
Most drivers find hours-on-the-clock (first accept to last drop) the most honest, because the waiting is a real cost of the work.
The thing a tip log cannot tell you. Fuel, maintenance, tyres, insurance and depreciation come out of these numbers, and for a self-employed driver they are usually the difference between a decent rate and a poor one. Tipfolio records what came in. It does not know what your car cost you — so keep a mileage log alongside it and never mistake take-home for profit.
Employee or contractor changes everything
Drivers delivering for a restaurant are often employees, receiving a W-2, with tips reported through payroll. Drivers on platforms are commonly treated as independent contractors, receiving a 1099, responsible for their own estimated taxes and self-employment tax, and able to deduct genuine business expenses.
Those are materially different tax positions, and the records each one needs are different too. If you are not certain which you are, that is worth resolving with a tax professional before you file rather than after.
Multiple apps, one year
Most drivers run more than one platform. Set each one up as its own job so you can compare their real rates against each other, while the annual totals still add up into a single picture for tax and for proving your income.
Compare a week across platforms →
Questions
Are delivery fees the same as tips?
No. A delivery fee is charged by the platform or restaurant and passed through in part or whole; a tip is an amount the customer chose to add for you. They are usually treated differently for tax, and mixing them in your own records makes it impossible to separate them later.
Do I have to report tips from delivery apps?
Yes. Tips are income however they arrive. If you are treated as an independent contractor you will generally receive a 1099 rather than a W-2, and your tax position — including self-employment tax and deductible business expenses — is meaningfully different from an employee's. This is a good area to get professional advice on.
Does the tip deduction apply to delivery drivers?
Eligibility depends on the rules as they apply to your situation and your employment status, and the position for independent contractors is not the same as for employees. The cap of $25,000 and the tax years 2025–2028 are the parameters to check against current guidance. Take advice rather than assuming.
What about mileage and vehicle costs?
For self-employed drivers these are usually the single largest factor in what the work actually pays, and they need their own record — a mileage log, kept contemporaneously. Tipfolio tracks what came in; it does not track what your car cost you, and you should not treat your take-home figure as profit.
Stop reconstructing your year from memory.
Tipfolio turns ten seconds a night into the daily record your deduction is built on. Free to log, forever.
iPhone · No account required · Your earnings never leave the device