Shared expenses

Together

When several people pay for things, Balanced can note who paid, split the cost and work out who owes whom. Here's the idea behind it.

Three friends go out for dinner in Prague. Anna pays €60 for everyone. In a few weeks, nobody remembers who paid what. Balanced keeps track: who paid, who it was for, and what’s left to even out.

It works in any journal, shared or not. You can keep a trip’s expenses on your own, or share the journal so everyone records their own payments.

Members are accounts

Everyone who pays or shares costs is a member of the journal. Balanced gives each member an account of their own: a special Equity account that doesn’t appear in the Accounts section. Businesses do the same with each partner’s capital account: it shows what that partner has put in.

A member is just a name in the journal. They don’t need Balanced or an iCloud account. Members shows how to add them.

Who paid

When Anna pays for dinner out of her own pocket, the money comes from her member account and goes to the Restaurants category:

Dinner in Prague · paid by Anna

Expenses:Restaurants: +60.00
Equity:Anna: −60.00
Balanced: 0.00 ✓

That’s an ordinary transaction. The full €60 lands in Restaurants, because that’s what the group spent.

Who it was for

The split says how the cost is shared: here equally, €20 each for Anna, Bob and Carl. Balanced stores the split with the transaction, not as extra lines. So Restaurants still shows the whole €60, and the split adds who it was for.

Who owes whom

For each member, Balanced compares what they paid with their share:

Anna paid €60, her share is €20: she gets back €40.
Bob paid nothing, his share is €20: he owes €20.
Carl, the same: he owes €20.

The balances add up to zero: what one person is owed, the others owe. (Payments that aren’t split, or that go into a joint account, are the exception: the group owes them to the member who paid.)

Balances count the transactions up to today. A planned expense counts once its date has come.

Try it: take someone out of the dinner and see how the shares, balances and payments change.

Try it · Dinner for three

Anna paid €60

Annagets back €40.00Bobowes €20.00Carlowes €20.00

Bob pays Anna €20.00
Carl pays Anna €20.00

Settling up

To even out, Bob gives Anna €20, in cash or by bank transfer. In Balanced, that’s a transfer between their member accounts:

Bob paid Anna

Equity:Anna: +20.00
Equity:Bob: −20.00
Balanced: 0.00 ✓

Now Bob owes nothing, and Anna still gets back €20, from Carl. Balanced suggests these payments for you: see Settling up.

Households and trips

On a trip, everyone usually pays privately. Record each payment with who paid it, split it, and settle up at the end.
In a household, most bills come from a joint account. Those are “ours” and usually aren’t split at all. You only split what someone paid privately, such as groceries Bob bought with his own card.
To see who put how much into the joint account, record each contribution as a transfer from that member to the joint account (Several… in Paid by), and split the bills you pay from the joint account. A member’s balance then shows whether they’ve put in more or less than their share.

In the budget, what members pay out of their own pockets comes into the group like income. See The group and my share.

Under the hood · for the curious

A member’s balance comes straight from the ledger and the splits:

paid    = −(sum of the lines on the member's account)
share   = the member's part of each split, added up
balance = paid − share

Anna’s account has one line, −60, so she paid 60. Her share is 20, so her balance is +40. When Bob pays her back, her account gets +20: she has now paid 40 in total, and her balance drops to +20.

A payment that isn’t split counts as paid, with no share against it. No single member owes it: the group as a whole owes it to the member who paid, so it stays in their balance.

Every transaction still sums to zero. A version of Balanced without split and settle shows members as ordinary Equity accounts and ignores the splits.