Shared expenses, who paid and who was in on each, worked down to a short list of payments.
Splitting a bill evenly is easy. The trouble starts when one person paid for the cabin, another for dinner, somebody skipped the wine and there was a tip. This page has a splitter already filled in for that weekend, so you can see the answer it reaches and change any line. It only does arithmetic: nobody's money moves until they send it themselves.
Who it's for
The friend who kept the receipts. Send it to the group a day or two after a trip, a big dinner or a month of house bills, with every expense typed in, so each person only checks their own lines.
For one restaurant check split evenly, the calculator on your phone is quicker. If your group already logs every coffee in an expense app all year, stay there. This is for one event you want settled and finished.
What a good one contains
- The answer before the working. "Linh pays Theo $189.00" comes first. The receipts sit underneath for anyone who wants to argue.
- Who paid and who shared, line by line. Linh took the bus, so she isn't ticked on gas. Split everything evenly and one friend ends up paying for another's canoe.
- The tip on the line it belongs to. Dinner was $164.00 plus 20%. A tip applied to the whole trip would tip the cabin.
- Whole cents, and a rule for the odd one. $43.00 between three leaves a cent over. The sample gives it to whoever paid, and says so.
- The fewest payments. Seven expenses make 17 small debts among four people. Netted off, three payments clear them all, and nobody pays a friend who then pays them back.
- A balance for each person. Paid, share and the difference, above a total row: $1,198.20 paid, $1,198.20 shared, $0.00 left over. That row is how a doubter checks you.
- A line saying no money moves. People half expect a pay button.
Check it against the receipts
Work one person's share out by hand before the link goes out, and compare. Then change an amount and watch the total row. Paid and share should still match to the cent. If the balances ever sum to anything except zero, a cent is being lost, usually because the page divides decimal dollars when it should count cents.
Each friend's edits show on their screen alone, and a reload puts your numbers back. When Emeka spots a mistake, he tells the group. You correct the line in the conversation where you made the page and replace it, keeping the link.
A trip paid partly in euros needs one agreed rate before any of this is fair.
How to send it
With a password. It names your friends and what each one owes. Put the link and the password in the group chat and it stays inside the group.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
