How to split an expense unevenly.
When one person stays more nights or only joins for dinner, splitting everything equally leaves someone paying too much. In the split “Trip to Lisbon”, Laura, Ana and Marcos divide three expenses three different ways.
Three ways to divide an expense.
When you add an expense you choose who paid, who it was for and how it is divided. Each expense keeps its own way, so one split can mix all three.
- Equally, everyone ticked pays the same share.
- If you choose amounts, you type what each person owes. The fields you leave empty share out what is left of the total in equal parts.
- With percentages, each share takes up to two decimals and together they must add up to 100. An empty field also takes its part of the missing percentage, and anyone left at 0% drops out of the expense.
The apartment, by percentages.
Laura pays for the apartment, €312.00. They split it by the nights each one stays, 50% for Laura, 30% for Ana and 20% for Marcos. Splits works out €156.00, €93.60 and €62.40, which add up to exactly €312.00. Had they typed only Laura's 50%, the two empty fields would have taken 25% each.
One amount typed, two fields left empty.
Dinner comes to €86.40, and Ana pays. Marcos only had one dish, so Marcos's field gets €20.00 and the other two stay empty. Splits shares out what is left between them, €33.20 each.
When the parts do not add up.
As you type, the form says how much is left to divide or how far over the total you are, in money or in percentage points. Splits does not save an expense whose parts do not add up to its amount.
The cents that do not divide.
€100.00 between three does not come out in whole cents. Equally, Splits gives €33.34 to the first person on the list and €33.33 to each of the other two, and the sum is €100.00 again. When two cents are left over, they go to the first two. With percentages, each share is rounded down and each cent left over goes to one of the shares that were closest to the next one.
Who pays and who is in the expense.
Whoever pays does not have to share the expense. If Ana buys museum tickets for the other two and does not go, the expense is only for Laura and Marcos, and between them they owe Ana the whole amount. The same goes for a taxi two people took, which is shared between those two only.
How the trip ends up.
Then there is the train, which Marcos pays and divides equally. With the three expenses in, Balances adds up what each person paid and what their share was, and works out who pays whom so nobody owes anything. Marcos pays Laura €64.40 and Ana pays €49.40. When one of those payments is marked as paid, the debt between those two people goes down by that amount.
What the person who paid the apartment sees.
On the split's screen, “My expenses” adds up only your shares, and “You paid” what you paid up front. Laura's shares of the three expenses add up to €198.20 against €312.00 paid up front, so Laura is owed €113.80, the same as the two payments in Balances.
Changing how it was split.
When you open a saved expense, the form comes back the way you divided it, and the expense's detail says which. You can change the amounts or the percentages, or switch to another way, and the balances are recalculated when you save.
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