Honestly I never thought that I'd be reviewing another Tip Calculator, let alone one specifically for the iPad. The thing about Tip Calculators is that usually once you have one that you like, there isn't really much more that you need. My favorite Tip Calculator for the iPhone is BigTipper. I love the UI (User Interface) and it has all the features (I thought) I wanted. Also In the beginning I never thought I would have my iPad out in a restaurant. However, more and more I find myself using it especially if I'm eating alone or during a lunch/dinner meeting. When the check comes and I need to figure out the tip I either do it in my head or I reach for my iPhone. Granted, any calculator can figure out a tip. There's not a lot of math going on there. 
What I like about a dedicated Tip Calculator is the ease of use of doing things like adjusting the percentage, not tipping on the tax and rounding up. Although there are several Tip Calculators on the App Store, many of them miss one or more of these basic requirements or their UI's are horrible. If I'm going to have a Tip Calculator, let alone pay for one, then it has to have EVERYTHING I need. After my last breakfast meeting, I started thinking about getting a Tip Calculator for my iPad. Although BigTipper runs fine on the iPad, I want a native iPad App whenever I can get one. I want one that not only works on the iPad, but looks great on the iPad's large display.
CheckPlease for iPad does what I want and even offers a unique feature
Let's start with my minimum requirements: Great UI!, easily adjustable percentage, the option to not tip on the tax, the ability to round up/down, and it has to be fast and easy to enter the total of the check (some of the early tip calculators defaulted to the alphabetic keyboard-doh!), lastly although I never use it, it should have the option of splitting the bill (people just expect to have that option). CheckPlease for the iPad has all of this of course or it wouldn't be getting a review here. However, it has one thing that I never thought of, but did run into recently. It has the option of adding in a coupon or gift card. Just the other night I was at dinner with some friends and I had a gift card to the restaurant that I wanted to use on the bill. The amount of the bill was more than the gift card, so I was going to have to pay the difference. In this situation the waiter/waitress should still get the full tip amount AND once the coupon/gift card is deducted you want to be able to see the proper totals to fill in for the payment. CheckPlease for iPad allows you to easily add in a coupon or gift card with a single tap. It's a small thing, but it's one that I hadn't seen yet on any other App in this category. Lastly CheckPlease for iPad integrates with PocketMoney. I don't use PocketMoney, so this feature doesn't mean anything to me. What I would like to see though is the ability to keep the history of your transactions right in the App like BigTipper does. Otherwise, I'm completely happy with this App!
You can get CheckPlease for iPad here from the 
CheckPlease for iPad
CheckPlease for iPad is a full featured Tip Calculator. It also has integration with PocketMoney
- Catamount Software
- Get on App Store
- $0.99
All info was collected on 10th August, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
Terry, thanks so much for the feedback on renewing our mobile me account with the discount! As always, you’re a wealth of excellent info!