How app works
Sharing expenses is not a new idea. People have always been in a situation where each person pays a portion of a larger expense then put all receipts together to figure who owes who and how much.
Here is an example:
Group of 5 people go for two-day campaign event. One person pays for the car and gas which is shared between everyone. Someone pays for the camp site. What if one person pays for drinks and two people do not drink? That money is shared among the other three who do drink.
They pay for kayaking but each kayak fits at most two people so they need at least three kayaks. There might be three payments for kayaks. Two of them are shared between two people and the one who uses a single kayak, does not share any money with anyone for kayaking.
Now you see how complicated it gets as more receipts added to the event. That’s not all. Imagine you owe someone but you wont see him/her any more. Let’s say you owe your colleagues brother.What if you and your wife and your two teens are in the event? Neither of you owe each other but still you are counted for 4 when expenses are split.
All of these are just about one event. Imagine you are in more than one event and your entire family is with you only in camping. For a picnic event that you and your colleagues is planning, your family does not join you. In this example, your wife and your two teens do not participate in any expenses.
We have an IOS app to do all the hard part you let you enjoy the camping and other fun events.
It starts by adding an Event. You just to enter event’s name, details and participants. Congrats, the event is added. From now on, all you have to do is adding receipts. That does not take time. Just enter amount for the expense, receipt’s description(what is paid for) and the payer and payees. You can optionally take a picture of the receipt. Each receipt you enter, the app updates who owes who and how much. Let’s not mentioned the hard part and call it WOW$ (Who Owes Who and How Much).
People: At any given time, navigate to People tab and tap on a name. You will get the most recent WOW$. We will get back to this. When you tap on a name in the People tab , you might see some numbers. If you see a red with down arrow, this means the name on the top has to pay this person. That’s the WOW$ part. If that person is paid off, you will see a green paid off. On this screen there are couple of things you can do:
- To pay your debt: Swipe any row to reveal two actions. Pay off and amount. If full amount has been already paid, you can just select pay off. This implies the person who owes has paid the other party. If you are worry who pays who, look at the arrow. It tells you who is paying who. Let say you owe someone $15.00 but you gave him $10.00 and you will pay the remaining $5.00 later. In this case, you are not paying the entire debt so select Amount and enter the amount you paid ($10.00 in this case). The system updates and it shows you now owe only $5.00.Remember it was $15.00 when you began.
- A share between any two people can be transferred to third person.To transfer a share. You owe your colleague’s brother but you don’t see him any more or at least not as often as you see his brother. Let say you owe Tom $12.00 and you want transfer this to Tim (Tom’s brother). Now you owe Tim $12.00 more and Tim owes his brother $12.00 on your behalf.
- Tap on the information button to see all receipts that contributed to the number is shown. This includes all receipts that the person, or any of his/her family members are involved and all transferred shares.
I still see my wife and two teens’ name on the list and each of them owe someone and one or more person owe them. I thought you said something about family members. Yes and it shows numbers for your family members because you have not mentioned anything about them being members of your family. Move to Family tab. Tap + button Pick a head in your chosen event and tap on the name to choose members for the selected head.A family is created. From now on, there is absolutely no shares between other people and any member of your family. In fact, the head of a family is responsible for them and everything is now under Head’s name. This family exist only in this event and not other event even if your wife and two teens belong to other events.
You can also add more people to any event. Just navigate to Event tab. Tap on the event to which you are going to app people. Then tap Add people. You can select fro the list of people not in this event to add a completly new person
Receipt: That’s easy. It’s the place to see all receipts. The ones that have “Transferred” in their description are the ones that show a transfer. Start searching for a receipt based on payer’s name, receipt description or even the receipt’s date. It shows all receipts that match what you just typed.
Share: You can tap the share button on various screens to share useful information on that page. This includes Sending all receipts, sending all owing or sending all owing for a specific person. Try to play with share button then you will know how great it is.