How to Add a Tip Option to Your Invoices in Australia

How to add a tip option to your invoices in Australia

To add a tip option to an invoice in Australia, you put a short, optional line in the notes or footer of the invoice that links to a personal tip page, so a client who wants to say thanks can pay a tip by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay after they settle the bill. The tip stays separate from the invoice total, the client chooses the amount, and nobody is charged anything they did not opt into.

That last part matters. Australians do not expect a tip to be built into a bill, and a "gratuity" that appears as a line item will get you a terse email, not a thank-you. An optional link is different. It gives the client who wanted to give you an extra $20 anyway a way to actually do it, now that hardly anyone keeps cash in the house.

This guide is written for sole traders and small operators who invoice for their work: cleaners, gardeners, removalists, dog groomers, mobile mechanics, handymen, tutors, caterers and anyone else who sends a bill rather than working a counter. If you are new to the idea, start with how a personal tip page works for individual workers, then come back here for the invoice detail.

Last updated: September 2026.

Key takeaways

• A tip option on an invoice is an optional link, not a charge. Put one sentence in the invoice notes or footer that links to your tip page, and leave the invoice total exactly as it was.
• Never add a "gratuity" line to the amount owing. A mandatory service charge is part of the price for GST purposes and it reads as a surcharge to Australian clients. A voluntary link is the version people respond to.
• Setup takes a few minutes. Create a tip page, copy the link or QR code, paste it into your invoice template once, and it appears on every invoice from then on.
• With PocketTip the tipper pays the fees and you keep 100% of the tip. The tip giver sees a 3.5% service fee plus 1.75% + $0.30 payment processing at checkout before they confirm.
• Tips on personal tip pages skew larger than counter tips. Across 137 completed tips on personal-category PocketTip pages, the median is $10, but about one in six tips is $50 or more, compared with roughly one in eleven across all Australian tips on the platform.

On this page

• What does a tip option on an invoice look like?
• How to add a tip link to an invoice step by step
• What should the tip line on your invoice say?
• Gratuity line vs optional tip link: which is right for Australian invoices?
• What happens to the money once a client tips?
• Do sole traders pay tax or GST on tips from invoices?
• Tips for cleaners and tradies: which jobs actually get tipped?
• Mistakes to avoid when you add a tip option to invoices
• Frequently asked questions
• Final tips

What does a tip option on an invoice look like? {#what-it-is}

A tip option on an invoice is a one-line, opt-in prompt that sits outside the amount owing and links to a page where the client can leave a tip by card or phone wallet. It is not a line item, not a surcharge and not a percentage added to the total.

In practice it takes one of three forms:

The link goes to your QR-code tip page. That is a personal web page with your name, a short message and preset tip amounts, and the client pays with Apple Pay, Google Pay or a card without installing anything. On PocketTip the same page and the same link work whether the client scans a code on paper or taps a link in an email.

Two terms you will see in this guide. Tap-to-pay or contactless payment is the card-or-phone payment the client makes on your tip page. The payout cycle is the schedule on which collected tips are transferred from the payment processor to your Australian bank account. Both are covered in the money section below.

How to add a tip link to an invoice step by step {#steps}

Adding a tip link to your invoices is a one-time change to your template: create a tip page, copy the link, paste it into the notes field, and every future invoice carries it. Here is the sequence in full.

1. Create your tip page. Sign up, choose the personal category, add your first name or trading name, and write a one-line welcome message. Setting up a PocketTip page takes a few minutes, and the most common question workers ask us is how fast tips reach their bank, which comes down to the payout cycle rather than the tip itself.
2. Link your Australian bank account. Tips are paid out to a normal bank account. CommBank, Westpac, NAB, ANZ, Bendigo, ING and Macquarie accounts all work, as do the smaller banks and credit unions that accept standard BSB transfers. You need to be 18 or over to hold a page.
3. Set your preset amounts. Presets are the buttons a client taps instead of typing a number. For invoice tips, $10, $20 and $50 suit the job sizes most sole traders bill for, with an "other amount" option underneath.
4. Copy your link and download your QR code. Both live in your dashboard. The link is the one you paste into text; the QR image is the one you drop onto a printed invoice or a PDF template.
5. Paste it into your invoice template. Every invoicing tool has a notes, terms or footer field that repeats on each invoice. Put one sentence there with the link. If your software offers a clickable "payment link" field, you can use that too, but keep it clearly labelled as a tip, not as the way to pay the invoice.
6. Send a test invoice to yourself. Check the link opens your page on a phone, the QR code scans from the PDF, and the invoice total has not changed.

That is the whole job. You do not need a new invoicing system, a card terminal or a merchant account, and there is nothing for your client to download. Free to start. No contracts. Fee detail is on the PocketTip pricing page.

Ready to try it? Set up your page first, then paste the link into your invoice template.

What should the tip line on your invoice say? {#wording}

The best tip line on an invoice is short, grateful and clearly optional: one sentence that thanks the client, says a tip is welcome but never expected, and gives the link. Lead with the thank-you, not the ask.

PocketTip's own data backs the gratitude-first approach. Of the 269 tip pages on the platform, 162 have a welcome message, and pages with a message are about three times as likely to have received at least one tip (50% versus 16% of pages without one). That is a correlation, not proof that the message causes the tip, but it is a strong hint that a warm line beats a bare link. The messages that work are short, with a median of 16 words, and most of them say "thank" while only one in five says "tip".

Some lines you can lift straight into your notes field:

Keep the invoice total, due date and bank details above the tip line, so the line reads as a postscript rather than part of the bill. If you want more wording options, our guide to tip page message ideas has examples for different trades and tones.

Gratuity line vs optional tip link: which is right for Australian invoices? {#gratuity-line}

For Australian invoices, an optional tip link beats a gratuity line every time: a gratuity line on an invoice becomes part of the price, so it carries GST if you are registered, it changes the amount your client owes, and it reads as a surcharge rather than a thank-you. Here is how the options compare.

The phrase "gratuity line on invoice" comes up in searches because American invoicing software includes one by default. In Australia it is worth remembering that tipping is optional everywhere and rare in most trades, and the Reserve Bank's 2025 Consumer Payments Survey puts cash at roughly 15% of payments by number, so the old habit of leaving a $20 note on the bench is fading anyway. The optional link solves the second problem without creating the first.

If you run a team and want an agreed service charge on catering or event invoices, that is a pricing decision, not a tip. Set it as a normal line item, charge GST on it if you are registered, and keep it out of your tip page entirely.

What happens to the money once a client tips? {#money-flow}

When a client tips through the link on your invoice, they pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay on your tip page, the payment processor collects the money, and it is paid out to your Australian bank account on the weekly payout cycle. You see every tip in your dashboard with the date and amount.

The fee structure is the same on every PocketTip tip. The recipient keeps 100% of the tip amount. The tip giver pays a 3.5% PocketTip service fee plus 1.75% + $0.30 payment processing, and both are shown at checkout before they confirm. On a $10 tip, you receive $10.00 and the client pays $10.82. On a $20 tip, you receive $20.00 and the client pays $21.35. Every one of the 605 completed Australian tips in PocketTip's records to date carries exactly those fee rates, so there are no surprise tiers.

Payouts run weekly with no minimum. The first payout after you set up typically lands 7 to 10 days after your first tip, because the payment processor completes its checks on a new account, and after that you are on the regular cycle. Completed payouts in PocketTip's records, 233 of them to 89 accounts so far, have arrived in workers' banks within a day of being sent. Our guide to tip payout times in Australia walks through the timing in detail, including what weekends and public holidays do to it.

A note on amounts, because invoice tips behave differently from counter tips. Across all 605 completed Australian tips on PocketTip (98 pages), the median tip is $10, 88% are $20 or under, and 81% are exactly $5, $10 or $20. On personal-category pages, the kind a sole trader uses, the median is still $10, but 16% of tips are $50 or more against 9% overall. Someone tipping after a $400 clean or a full-day move thinks in bigger numbers than someone tipping a barista, which is why the $50 preset earns its place.

Do sole traders pay tax or GST on tips from invoices? {#tax}

Yes to income tax: tips you receive as a sole trader are assessable income and go on your tax return. GST depends on your registration and on whether the tip is genuinely voluntary, so check with a registered tax agent. This section is general information, not financial advice.

The income side is simple. The Australian Taxation Office treats tips and gratuities as income you must declare, whether they arrive as cash, through a card terminal or through a tip page. A tip page helps here because every tip is timestamped in your dashboard, which is far easier at tax time than a shoebox of notes. Our guide to declaring tips and GST in Australia covers the reporting side.

The GST side has a wrinkle for sole traders. The ATO's published position on restaurant tips is that a genuine, voluntary tip passed on to the staff who did the work is not consideration for the supply, so no GST applies to it. The flip side is that a tip the business keeps as its own takings can be treated as part of the price. As a sole trader you are both the business and the worker, so how a voluntary tip received through a separate link sits against your GST turnover is a question for your accountant, particularly if you are near the $75,000 registration threshold. If you are not registered for GST, GST does not enter into it at all.

Whatever your accountant advises, keeping the tip out of the invoice total makes the record-keeping cleaner. The invoice shows the taxable sale; the tip page shows the voluntary payments. If you invoice under an ABN, nothing about that changes when you add a tip link, and you do not need an ABN to hold a personal tip page in the first place.

Tips for cleaners and tradies: which jobs actually get tipped? {#cleaners-tradies}

Tips for cleaners and tradies in Australia cluster around jobs with a personal, visible result: end-of-lease and deep cleans, moves, garden makeovers, pet grooming and anything done in someone's home over several hours. Routine trade call-outs and B2B work rarely attract tips, link or no link.

That fits what Australians say when asked. Tipping a tradie is uncommon and nobody expects it, but clients do reach for a thank-you when someone has gone well beyond the quote, stayed late or fixed the thing three other people could not. Our guide on whether you tip tradies in Australia goes into the etiquette from the client's side, which is useful reading before you decide how prominent to make the line.

For cleaners the case is stronger. Regular domestic cleaning, Airbnb turnovers and bond cleans are personal services, the client often is not home to hand over cash, and the invoice or the job-done message is the one moment they are thinking about the work. A tip link there catches the thank-you that would otherwise never happen. There is a full walkthrough in our post on cashless tipping for cleaners in Australia.

Timing helps too. Just over half of all completed Australian tips on PocketTip land on a Saturday or Sunday, with Saturday alone accounting for about a third. If you send invoices at the end of a job rather than in a Monday batch, the tip line lands while the client is still looking at a clean house or a finished fence.

One disclosure on the data in this guide: PocketTip's user base is skewed towards buskers, who account for roughly two-thirds of completed tips, so the platform-wide figures are not a survey of tradie clients. The personal-page figures are the closer match for sole traders, and we have quoted them separately for that reason.

Mistakes to avoid when you add a tip option to invoices {#mistakes}

The mistakes that undo an invoice tip link are all about placement and tone: making the tip look mandatory, burying it, or mixing it up with the payment instructions. Watch for these.

• Adding it as a line item. Even at $0, a "Gratuity" row in the invoice body makes clients think they are being charged. Keep it in notes or the footer.
• Putting the tip link above the bank details. The client's first question is how to pay the invoice. Answer that first, then offer the tip.
• Suggesting a percentage. "10% is customary" is not true in Australia, and clients know it. Let the preset buttons on your page do the suggesting.
• Using a bare URL with no message. A link on its own reads as a demand. One warm sentence changes it into a thank-you.
• Forgetting the phone test. Send yourself the invoice and open it on a phone. If the QR code is too small to scan from the PDF, make it bigger.
• Mentioning it in person before the invoice. Asking for a tip face to face is what makes tipping awkward. The invoice line lets the client decide privately, which is the whole appeal.
• Ignoring it in your records. Tips are income. Match your dashboard against your bank statement each quarter, the same way you reconcile invoice payments.

Frequently asked questions {#faqs}

Q: Can I add a tip option to an invoice in Australia?

A: Yes. There is nothing stopping a sole trader or small business from inviting an optional tip on an invoice, as long as it is genuinely optional and not added to the amount owing. The clean way to do it is a single line in the invoice notes or footer that links to a personal tip page, or a small QR code in the corner of a printed invoice. The client pays the invoice as normal, then chooses whether to tip and how much. You can see how the whole flow works in our overview of cashless tipping in Australia.

Q: How do I accept tips as a sole trader without a card terminal?

A: Use a QR-code tip page instead of hardware. You create the page once, and it gives you a link and a QR code that accept card, Apple Pay and Google Pay in the client's phone browser. There is no terminal to buy, no app for the client to download and no merchant account to open. Tips are paid out to your normal Australian bank account on a weekly cycle. Paste the link into your invoices, your job-done text messages and your email signature and you have covered every point where a client might want to say thanks.

Q: Does adding a tip link change my invoice total or my GST?

A: No, provided you keep the tip out of the invoice itself. The invoice total and its GST are unchanged, because the tip is a separate voluntary payment made on a different page after the invoice is paid. Whether a voluntary tip you keep counts towards your GST turnover as a sole trader is a question for your accountant, and it only matters if you are registered or close to the $75,000 threshold. Income tax is simpler: tips are assessable income and belong on your return regardless.

Q: Where on the invoice should the tip link go?

A: In the notes, terms or footer field, below the payment details. That field repeats on every invoice your software generates, so you set it once. Put your bank details, due date and total above it so the client never confuses "how to pay" with "how to tip". On a printed invoice, a QR code in the bottom corner with one sentence beside it works well, and the same QR code can go on a job-completion card or a fridge magnet if you clean for regulars.

Q: What should the wording say so it does not feel pushy?

A: Thank the client first, say tips are appreciated but never expected, then give the link. Something like "Thanks for having me in your home. Tips are never expected but always appreciated: [link]" is enough. Avoid percentages, avoid "gratuity", and avoid anything that sounds like a condition of the job. On PocketTip, pages with a short welcome message are about three times as likely to have received a tip as pages without one, so the same gratitude-first rule applies on the page itself.

Q: How much do clients usually tip on an invoice?

A: Nobody can promise you a number, but PocketTip's own records give a feel for it. Across all completed Australian tips the median is $10 and most sit at $5, $10 or $20. On personal-category pages, which is where a sole trader's page lives, the median is also $10 but around one in six tips is $50 or more. Bigger jobs draw bigger thank-yous. Setting presets of $10, $20 and $50 with an "other" option covers that spread without steering anyone.

Q: What does it cost me to accept tips this way?

A: With PocketTip, nothing. The recipient keeps 100% of the tip amount. The tip giver pays a 3.5% PocketTip service fee plus 1.75% + $0.30 payment processing, and they see both at checkout before confirming. On a $20 tip the client pays $21.35 and you receive $20.00. It is free to start with no contracts, and the full breakdown is on the pricing page linked earlier in this guide.

Q: Can my crew share tips from one invoice link?

A: Yes. If you run a small removalist, cleaning or landscaping crew, you can set up a team tip page instead of a personal one, so one link on the invoice collects tips for the whole crew. How you split the pool is up to you, and Fair Work rules on handling tips apply if your crew are employees rather than contractors. For a solo operator the personal page is the simpler choice.

Final tips {#final}

The best way to add a tip option to your invoices is the quietest one: a single grateful line and a link, below the payment details, that lets the client decide in private. Leave the invoice total alone, skip the gratuity line, and let the tip page handle the amount.

Three things to get right. Write the line as a thank-you, because gratitude-first pages get tipped far more often than bare links. Send the invoice when the job is fresh, ideally the same day, since most tips land while the result is still in front of the client. And keep your records straight: the invoice covers the taxable sale, the tip page dashboard covers the voluntary extras, and both belong in your end-of-year tally.

Start collecting the thank-yous your invoices were missing. Create your tip page - free to start, no contracts, and your clients just tap and tip.