About the Group Expense Settle-Up
A trip ends with a pile of receipts and a group chat asking “so who owes who?” This tool turns the pile into a short list: “Sam pays Alex $42.10”, and nothing else. Log each expense once — who paid, and whether it was for everyone, everyone but the payer, a few people, by shares or by exact amounts — and it works out every person’s net balance and the fewest transfers that bring all of them to zero.
The arithmetic is done in whole cents, never floating-point dollars: when $100 is split three ways the stray penny is assigned by the largest-remainder rule, so every expense adds up exactly and the balances always net to zero. For groups of up to 16 people with money outstanding the payment plan is the proven minimum (it searches for subsets that cancel out among themselves); larger groups use the classic greedy method, which never needs more than one payment fewer than the number of people.
There are no accounts. The whole ledger is compressed into the share link, so the group opens the same numbers and anyone can add the expense they forgot. Your entries never leave the browser except inside the link you choose to send.
Payment handles for one-tap payment links
Add the PayPal.Me username or $Cashtag of anyone who will be receiving money. Each settle-up payment then gets a link that opens their page. Handles travel inside the share link, so only add them if the group is fine seeing them.
Each person’s share of the trip by category, next to what they actually paid out. Categories come from the expense form.
The full ledger, every person’s paid / share / net, and the payment plan on one page. Print it, or choose “Save as PDF” in the print dialog.
How to Use the Group Expense Settle-Up
Add everyone in the group first — including anyone who only ate, never paid. Then log expenses one at a time: a short description, the amount, who paid, and how it splits. Everyone covers the shared groceries; Everyone but payer is for the round one person bought for the others; Choose people handles the three who went kayaking; By shares suits a family of four sharing a cabin with a couple (4 shares and 2 shares); Exact amounts is for an itemised restaurant bill. The payment list at the bottom updates with every entry. When you are done, press Share: the link carries the whole ledger, so the group sees the same numbers and can correct a line rather than argue about it.
Balances First, Payments Second
Every settle-up method starts the same way. For each person, add up what they paid, subtract what their share of everything came to, and you have their net balance. Positive: the group owes them. Negative: they owe the group. Because every cent paid is a cent owed by somebody, the balances always sum to exactly zero — the check under the balances table confirms it on every recalculation.
From there, the only question is routing. Nobody needs to repay the specific person who bought their dinner; money is fungible, so it only matters that each debtor sends out what they owe and each creditor receives what they are owed. That freedom is what lets a trip with forty expenses settle in three or four payments.
Why “n − 1”, and When It Can Be Fewer
The classic greedy rule — the person who owes the most pays the person owed the most, repeat — zeroes at least one balance with every payment, so a group of n people never needs more than n − 1 payments. But it can often do better. If Ana owes $30 and Ben is owed exactly $30, those two can settle with each other and drop out; every such self-cancelling subset saves one payment. Finding the best way to carve a group into those subsets is a partition problem, and the exact version is NP-hard in general.
For realistic groups it is still quick. This tool runs an exact subset search for up to 16 people with money outstanding — about 65,000 subsets — and labels the result a proven minimum. Above that it switches to the greedy method and says so. We tested both against brute force on thousands of random groups before publishing.
The Penny Problem
Split $100.00 three ways and each share is $33.333… — money that does not exist. Apps that round each share independently quietly lose or invent a cent per expense, and over a long trip the balances stop netting to zero. This tool stores every amount as an integer number of cents (or yen, or won — whatever the currency’s smallest unit is) and allocates leftovers with the largest-remainder rule: everyone gets the whole-cent floor of their share, then the leftover cents go to the largest fractional remainders, ties broken in list order. The shares of every expense add up to exactly what was paid.
Settling Across Currencies
- Pick one settlement currency before the trip — usually the one most of the group gets paid in. Converting everything to it once is simpler than settling in three currencies.
- Lock the rate per expense. Pro converts each foreign expense at the reference rate for the day you enter it and stores that rate with the expense, so the ledger does not drift when currencies move afterwards. If your card charged a different rate, type that one in instead.
- Fees are real costs. Foreign-transaction and ATM fees are not in any reference rate. If the person who paid wants them shared, log them as their own expense.
Keeping the Peace
Most settle-up arguments are about entries, not arithmetic — the forgotten taxi, the double-logged groceries. A shared ledger that anyone can open and check resolves those before they start, which is why the link carries the full list rather than just the totals. Settle within a week of getting home, while the receipts are still fresh, and name payments with the trip so everyone can match them on their statement.
Splitting a single restaurant bill with a tip? The Tip Calculator handles that in one step. Planning the next trip’s spending before it happens? Try the Travel Budget Calculator. Browse every Everyday Calculator for more.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you split expenses fairly in a group?
Record every expense with who paid and who it was for, add up each person's share, and compare it with what they actually paid. The difference is their net balance: positive means the group owes them, negative means they owe the group. Settling means moving money from the negative balances to the positive ones until everyone is at zero, which never needs more payments than the number of people minus one.
What is the minimum number of payments needed to settle a group?
At most one fewer than the number of people with a non-zero balance, and fewer whenever a subset of people happens to net to zero among themselves. Finding that true minimum is a partition problem that gets expensive fast, so many apps use a greedy shortcut. This tool computes the proven minimum for up to 16 unsettled people and falls back to the greedy method, still capped at n minus 1 payments, above that.
What happens to the leftover cent when $100 is split three ways?
Something has to absorb it, because $33.33 three times is $99.99. This tool works in whole cents and hands the leftover pennies out by the largest-remainder rule, in the order people are listed, so every expense adds up to exactly what was paid. Across a long trip those pennies spread around rather than piling onto one person.
How do shares differ from exact amounts?
Shares are proportions: a family of three at 3 shares and a single person at 1 share split a cabin 75/25, whatever it costs. Exact amounts are fixed figures, like itemised restaurant orders, and they must add up to the total. Use equal splits for most things, shares for households of different sizes, and exact amounts when the receipt already says who had what.
Can we split costs paid in a foreign currency?
Yes with a Pro account: each expense can be entered in the currency it was paid in and is converted to the group's currency at that day's reference rate, which you can overwrite with the rate on your card statement. The rate is stored with the expense, so the numbers never shift when someone opens the link a week later. Card and ATM fees are not included unless you add them as their own expense.
