Time To Get Wise On Bill Splitting
Sharing expenses, depending on those involved, can get extremely awkward.
A group going together for a sunny, wine-fuelled weekend away can readily find their trip losing its shine through embarrassments about whether everyone has stumped up their shard of the house rental or how the curry night was divvied up.
And for students now two months away from a year of sharing a pad with relative strangers, those risks loom large indeed.
Fortunately, as with most challenges today, there is an app for that.
Take a look at Splitwise, free for iOS and Android devices or online at www.splitwise.com
Here you can start a group and invite others to join it. Once established, any of the group can record expenses that are to be shared.
Images of receipts, or explanatory notes, can be associated with each bill.
Also, these can be shared equally or by predetermined percentages.
Adjustments can be overlaid, as in ‘discount for Mary, for agreeing to sleep in the box room.’
For the short holiday situation, Splitwise can provide the final reckoning of who owes what with a minimum of complexity, calculation and argument. For flat shares, details of payments can be added to maintain that accurate ongoing picture.
Splitwise also has a sister App called Plates for splitting a bill after dining out, where the participants prefer to pay their own way.
It works with some smart graphics. Once the number of diners is entered, each sum on the bill is tapped in and dragged across the screen to the diner concerned and updates their running total. Once the whole bill is in, there is an option to add a tip.
