BookLive makes it easy for clients to leave a tip for your musicians — and for you to distribute that tip among your performers after the event. The tipping flow is built directly into the Client Portal and your performance’s Musicians tab, so no extra tools or spreadsheets are required.
How Clients Leave a Tip #
After a performance is booked and a client accesses their Client Portal, they’ll find a Tip for Musicians section on their payment page. Clients can:
- Choose a preset percentage — 10%, 15%, or 20% of the total performance fee — or enter a Custom dollar amount (minimum $5).
- Optionally add a personal message in the Add a personal message field.
- Click the button to proceed to checkout and pay the tip via credit card through Stripe.
A processing fee is added at checkout. The tip is separate from the performance balance — it does not reduce the amount owed on the invoice.
Once the tip is paid, it appears in the performance’s payment summary as Tips collected: $X.XX in the Payments tab.
Tracking the Tip on Your End #
To see whether a tip has been collected for a performance:
- Log in at https://booklive.com/login and open the performance.
- Click the Payments tab.
- Look for the Tips collected line in the payment summary. Any paid tips appear here in orange, separate from the invoice balance.
Tip payments are labeled with a TIP badge in the payment list so they’re easy to spot.
Distributing the Tip Among Musicians #
Once tips have been collected, you can pay them out directly to your musicians from the Musicians tab. Musicians must have Stripe Connect accounts set up to receive a direct payout.
- Open the performance and click the Musicians tab.
- Click the Pay Out Tips button near the top of the tab.
- The payout dialog shows:
- Tips Received — total tips collected from the client.
- Already Paid Out — any portion already distributed.
- Available Tips — what’s left to distribute.
- In the Amount to Distribute field, enter the total you want to pay out (defaults to the full available amount).
- BookLive splits the amount evenly among all eligible musicians — those who have Stripe accounts connected. Musicians without Stripe are listed but skipped, and you’ll see a warning noting how many were excluded.
- Click Confirm Payout to send the payments.
Each payout is recorded as a musician payment in the performance and labeled TIP. This keeps your payroll records accurate — tip payouts show up in the Payroll Report separately from regular musician compensation.
Manually Recording a Tip Payment #
If a client tips you outside of BookLive (cash, Venmo, etc.), you can record it manually:
- Go to the Payments tab on the performance.
- Click the menu icon and choose Record Payment.
- Enter the amount and payment method.
- Check the This is a tip payment checkbox.
- Click Save.
Payments marked as tips are excluded from the invoice balance calculation — they won’t incorrectly show the gig as overpaid.
Tips & Notes #
- Clients can modify or cancel a pending tip up until it is paid. Once paid, the tip is locked.
- Only musicians with active Stripe Connect accounts can receive direct tip payouts. Encourage your musicians to connect Stripe under their profile if they want to receive digital tip distributions.
- The playing for tips flag on a performance (set during creation) is used for informational purposes — it doesn’t change how digital tipping works in the Client Portal.
- Tip payouts appear in the Payroll Report and are labeled as tips so you can distinguish them from regular musician pay.
