Members

Together

Members are the people who pay for things and share the costs. Add them once, mark which one is you, and Balanced can split expenses between them.

Members belong to a journal. Add everyone who pays or shares costs, yourself included. Shared expenses explains what Balanced does with them.

Members are separate from the people you share a journal with. A member doesn’t need Balanced or an iCloud account: you can add a friend who just comes along on the trip. And a journal you don’t share can have members too.

Add members

Open the journal and tap ⋯ More at the top, then Add Members.

The sheet is called Members while the journal has none. Once it has members, the same sheet is called Settle Up and also suggests who pays whom: see Settling up.
Add Member opens New Member. Type the person’s name and tap Save (✓). Add everyone this way, one after the other.

Once a journal has members, the overview shows the Members section, and the transaction editor asks who paid and how to split. See Recording shared expenses.

Later, tap Settle up in the Members section of the overview. The list of members in that sheet has Add Member too, and you can tap a member to change their details. ⋯ More → Add Members opens the same sheet.

In a shared journal that has no members yet, a tip called Split Costs points to the ⋯ More menu.

A member’s details

Name: as it appears in lists and balances.
Default ratio: how big this member’s part is when a split goes by ratio. 1 for everyone means equal parts.
This is me: tells Balanced which member you are.
Remove Member removes the member. This only works when they’re settled up.

Change what you need and tap Save (✓). Save works once the member has a name and a default ratio above 0.

Mark yourself

Tap your own member and turn on This is me. Balanced links the member to your iCloud account, so all your devices know which member is you. Then:

new expenses start with you in Paid by,
charts and transaction lists can show your share as well as the group’s.

In a shared journal, everyone marks their own member on their own device. You can mark one member per journal: marking another one moves your mark there. And each member can belong to one person only. If someone else already marked the member, Balanced asks first: Someone else marked this member. Tap This Is Me to move the mark to you.

This is me needs iCloud, with iCloud Sync turned on. Without them, the switch is grayed out, and the hint below it says: Sign in to iCloud and turn on iCloud Sync to mark which member is you. See iCloud sync.

Default ratio

New splits start with everyone in. If all members have the same default ratio, the split starts Equally. If the ratios differ, it starts by Ratio, with each member’s default ratio.

If Anna and Bob share household costs 2 to 1, give Anna 2 and Bob 1. Parts of a whole work too, such as 1.5. You can still change any single split.

The default ratio also decides your part of expenses that aren’t split, when you look at my share.

Remove a member

You can only remove a member who’s settled up: they don’t get anything back and don’t owe anything. Balanced counts planned transactions too, even if their date is still to come.

Otherwise, Balanced shows Settle up first: Bob still gets back or owes money. Record the payments in Settle Up, then remove the member. Record the payments as Settling up describes, then remove them.

If two people add the same member at the same time, the journal has them twice. Remove one of them while it’s settled up.

Where members appear

Members don’t show up in the Accounts section or when you pick an account for a transaction. You choose them where they matter: in Paid by, in the split and in Settle Up. When the editor shows all lines of a transaction (Several…), the account menu lists them under Members.