If you’ve ever been in charge of financial planning or tracking for a shared group expense, you know how messy, confusing, and sometimes, downright chaotic it can be.
Whether you’re planning a birthday party or a road trip with friends, simple note-taking apps don’t have to get in the way. Splitwise takes a more organized approach, simplifying the whole experience and making it really easy to know who owes what and how much.
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A straightforward group expense tracker for gangs
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How many friend groups do you know that broke up after relationships soured after a group vacation? I’ve seen it happen time and time again, and have experienced some of it firsthand. In my early 20s, I was often tasked with creating itineraries and budgeting for everyone. There will almost always be one person who is unhappy with the accounts, or says that the expenses don’t match their version of the accounts.
Shared responsibility, accountability and transparency prevent any kind of argument or doubt from taking root. This is why I like Splitwise so much. This leaves zero room for error, everyone involved can make edits to the accounts and access them at any time, and it’s on iOS and Android So there is no compatibility issue either.
Splitwise lets you create a group for each expense, and you can even label it accordingly. Even people who are not on the app can be added to the group via email or phone number. Everyone in the group can see who has paid for each expense, and an automated tally tells everyone how much they owe or owe and who will have to pay for the settlement.
You don’t actually need to upgrade to the paid version of the app
The app has a paid “Pro” version, but the basic “Core” version is more than adequate for the purpose of managing shared expenses. Here are the main features included in the free version of the app:
- Add groups and friends
- Allocate expenses, record debts
- equal or unequal division
- Divide by % or shares
- calculate total balance
- Simplify Loans
- Recurring Charges
- offline mode
- cloud sync
- sum of expenses
- categorize expenses
- 7+ languages
- 100+ currencies
- payment integration
As you can tell, the app offers detailed control over every transaction. Not only can you choose the currency, attach pictures, set the date, or add notes for each expense entered in the app, but the way each expense is divided can also be highly customized. You can also create recurring expenses.
Whether you want to share one or several expenses equally, unequally, by shares, by percentage, or by adjustment, everything is possible within the Splitwise app.
Thanks to the “Simplified Loan” system employed by the app, it doesn’t matter who paid for what, and how each bill was divided. The app does the complex math for you based on how much each person spent and how each expense is to be shared.
A single group can contain multiple currencies, and no one has to scratch their head over conversions because Splitwise even does that for you! This is incredibly useful for international travel. Unfortunately, conversions are a Pro feature, though you can still record expenses in multiple different currencies under one group in the free version of the app.
Frequent international travelers benefit most from the Pro version
The app’s pricing structure isn’t too bad, and you can get a one-month free trial to see if Splitwise Pro is worth your time. It’s worth paying $4.99/month or $39.99/year given the abundance of premium features, including unlimited spending, currency conversion, and more.
Here is the full list of premium features:
- unlimited spending
- transaction import
- Currency Conversion
- receipt scanning
- itemization
- charts and graphs
- expense search
- save default partition
- Completely ad-free experience
- Early access to new features
So far, I have not felt the need to purchase Splitwise Pro. Whether on a weekend trip to Jakarta with friends, watching movies with my siblings, or planning a date night with my partner, the free basic Splitwise has been enough for my needs so far.
Since the number of daily spends is limited to just five right now, I don’t think the day is far when I’ll need to upgrade. However, before investing in Splitwise Pro, I suggest considering free alternatives, as that’s what I plan to do myself when the time comes.
You never know what hidden gem of an app you might find. I may be late to the Splitwise party, but I can recommend some free options that I’ve heard good things about. Consider apps like Aimula, settle up, memogoAnd Chino If you like the idea of ​​Splitwise but not the paywall. Although I haven’t tried these apps yet, the functions are similar, and some of them are even completely free to use.
And if you’d like me to test one or other of these group expense tracking apps, let me know in the comments below.
