If you’ve ever dealt with financial planning or tracking expenses for a shared group, you know how confusing, confusing, and sometimes downright chaotic it can be.
Whether it’s a birthday party you’re planning or a trip with friends, simple note-taking apps just don’t cut it. Splitwise takes a more organized approach, simplifying the whole experience and making it really easy to find out who owes whom and how much.
Article continues below
A simple group expense tracker for the group
Image 1 of 2
How many groups of friends do you know that ruined relationships after a group vacation? I’ve seen this happen many times, and I’ve had several initial meetings myself. In my early 20s, I was often tasked with creating trip itineraries and budgeting for everyone. There would almost always be one person who was unhappy with the accounts or said the expenses didn’t match their version of the account.
Shared responsibility, accountability and transparency prevent any disputes or doubts from taking root. This is why I love Splitwise so much. It leaves zero room for error, anyone involved can edit and access accounts at any time, and it’s active iOS and Android so there is no compatibility issue.
Splitwise lets you create a group for each group expense and you can label it accordingly. Even people who are not in the app can be added to the group by email or phone number. Everyone in the group can see who paid each expense, and an automatic calculation tells everyone how much they owe or owe and who owes whom.
There is really no need to upgrade to the paid version of the app
There is a paid “pro” version of the app, but the basic “basic” version is enough to manage shared expenses. The main features included in the free version of the program are:
- Add groups and friends
- Share expenses, record debts
- Equal or unequal divisions
- Divide into % or shares
- Calculate the total balances
- Simplify debts
- Recurring expenses
- Offline mode
- Cloud sync
- Total cost
- Categorize expenses
- 7+ languages
- 100+ currencies
- Payment integrations
As you can see, the software offers detailed control over every transaction. Not only can you choose a currency, add images, set a date, or add notes for every expense posted in the app, but the way each expense is broken down is highly customizable. You can even create a recurring expense.
Whether you want to split single or multiple expenses equally, unequally, with shares, percentages or adjustments, everything is possible with the Splitwise app.
Thanks to the “debt simplification” system used by the app, it doesn’t matter who pays for what and how each bill is divided. The app does the complicated math for you based on how much each person spends and how each expense will be shared.
A single group can have multiple currencies and no one has to worry about conversions because Splitwise does it for you too! This is quite useful for international travel. Unfortunately, conversion is a professional feature, although you can still record expenses in several different currencies under one group in the free version of the application.
Frequent international travelers benefit the most from the pro version
The app’s pricing structure isn’t too bad, and you can get a free one-month trial to see if Splitwise Pro is worth your time. Pay $4.99/month or $39.99/year, unlimited spending, currency conversion and more. It’s worth it considering the wealth of premium features it unlocks, including.
Here is the full list of premium features:
- Unlimited spending
- Transaction import
- Currency conversion
- Scanning the receipt
- Materialization
- Charts and graphs
- Cost search
- Remember the default partitions
- A completely ad-free experience
- Early access to new features
So far I haven’t felt the need to buy Splitwise Pro. Whether it’s a weekend trip to Jakarta with friends, going to the cinema 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 currently limited to five, I don’t think the day is far when I’ll have to upgrade. However, before investing in Splitwise Pro, I suggest looking at free alternatives, as I plan to do so 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 a few free alternatives that I’ve heard good things about. Check out programs like AiMoola, Settle in, MemoGoand Cino If you like the idea of Splitwise but not the paywall. I haven’t tried these apps yet, the features are similar and some of them are completely free.
Let me know in the comments below if you’d like me to test out any of these or other group expense tracking apps.
