Splitwise – Ultimate Shared Expense Tracking Tool
Summary/TL;DR
Splitwise is a free, but feature rich productivity tool used for tracking expenses between multiple people. I have been using it for about a year and it has been a game changer in terms of the way that I track debts between multiple parties.
It is particularly useful…
- For sharing restaurant bills
- For managing holiday expenses involving multiple people
- For managing debt owed between housemates
- If you have a monthly bill you regularly pay for someone
A summary of key features:
- Shows breakdown of balances to both the lender and borrower
- Supports multiple currencies
- Supports groups
- Allows you to breakdown amount owed per person to percentages, shared, adjustments, etc.
They have a dedicated Android and iOS app.
Splitwise – Ultimate Shared Expense Tracking Tool
Splitwise is an online expense tracking website. Use of the website requires free membership. Splitwise has a dedicated Android and iOS app, as well as a range of other “fairness calculators”. I’ve been using it for almost a year and I would say it is one of the most useful and practical productivity tools I have stumbled upon in recent times.
It is particularly useful for the following situations:
- Planning holidays with friends
- Shared expenses between housemates (groceries)
- Paying for restaurant bills
- Paying for ingredients/parties
- Shared alcohol expenses
- A regular expense you pay on someone else’s behalf
Basically, it is useful for any situation that results in you sharing any sort of expenses with others.
It is particularly useful for those who want to pay bills with friends first. Paying for dinners is a great way of earning extra Credit Card points especially if your peers are not points-chasers. Just make sure you don’t get in socially awkward situations if there is more than one person at the dinner who wants the points!
In my opinion, the benefits of this over more traditional means of expense tracking and sharing like Excel spreadsheets and WhatsApp groups are as follows:
- [Benefit to Borrower] It is completely transparent – i.e. you get a sum of how much you owe a person, but you can also see the exact breakdown to understand why you someone what you owe them
- [Benefit to Lender] It gives you a list of people who owe you money, itemised breakdown of each component (dependent on how you/the other party enter the transactions in), and it acts as a reminder to follow up debts.
- It is all saved online, and synchronised with other parties who use Splitwise
My summary of key features of Splitwise are as follows:
- Free
- Supports Multiple Currencies – even for one individual (balance for each currency is maintained separately, i.e. currencies are not converted)
- Supports groups (good for planning holidays with friends)
- Does not require other parties to sign up, unless they wish to view a breakdown of what is owed and how much in total is owed (alternatively, you can always just screeenshot it!)
- Built-in reminders for you to send to those that owe you money
- Ability to export records as spreadsheet
- Ability to add receipts and notes
- Ability to set recurring debts (e.g. monthly phone bill)
- Ability to specify odd amounts of money owed through percentages, shares, reimbursements
- Ability to make payments with PayPal (however, it is quite heavily surcharged)
Personally, I have found this productivity tool to be a game changer in terms of the way that I have managed my expenses with friends. I would highly recommend this tool to anyone who often has to deal with managing expenses between multiple people.
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