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Show HN: IOU – Split shared expenses
- alexxxyz 7y agoVery simple and easy to use. I like that I don't need a login.
- oftenwrong 7y agoI was actually looking for something simple like this for dividing expenses. I suggest adding "Note" field on a "Item" that could be used for an extended description. The current "Description" field seems to be a single line, and is truncated on some of the views - it is really more of a "Title" than "Description".
- preya2k 7y agoI agree. A longer text field for describing expenses would be appreciated.
- janberchtold 7y agoOk thanks I will add this to the backlog of features
- aloisdg 7y agoNice to use. Is it Open Source/Libre? If not, do you plan to do it?
- ckastner 7y agoThis is exactly the functionality I have been looking for, in a minimal implementation. I love it! When creating a participant, why require an email, though, instead of making it optional? I'd wager that most people will use this on mobile, and therefore share this via WhatsApp or some other IM client. Adding an email then becomes a pointless burden.
- janberchtold 7y agoThanks for your feedback! The email is optional when creating a participant. Try it!
- ckastner 7y agoIndeed, thanks. I saw that it was required on the pot creation page, and then assumed it was necessary for adding users, too.
- preya2k 7y agoGreat tool! Love that it works without creating an account. Will keep this in my bookmarks.
- theomega 7y agoAlternative to this is KittySplit. Similar concept, no registration required and web-based. https://www.kittysplit.com/en/ https://www.kittysplit.com/en/
- janberchtold 7y agoYes KittySplit is similar but in my opinion the UI is too confusing to use.
- caspii 7y agoKittysplit founder here. Can you be more specific about what's confusing? Would be great to get some feedback!
- janberchtold 7y agoHey! To be honest Kittysplit is the best tool in terms of simplicity and accessibility...besides IOU ;) I believe the overview page of a kitty could be cleaned up much more. Using it the first time was not at all intuitive for me. We tried to cut it down to the most important features and hope that even my mom would understand to use it. But lets talk more...contact me on iou@iou.ch if you want to!
- caspii 7y agoOK :-D Have you used Kittysplit recently? We updated the overview page 2 months ago. Congrats on your mention on HN. I'll be in touch.
- ohyea 7y agoNot the person who commented earlier but it feels a bit odd to mix the settlement payments and the actual spending transactions in the same list. Not sure if a different view would be useful or whether it is just something I would get used to over time.
- caspii 7y ago
- georgyo 7y agoThis is pretty neat, I always create fairly complicated spreadsheets for trips with friends, however this covers most of the edge case. One is does not though is adding and removing people. IE, you rent a house but you might squeeze two more people in at the last minute. Then you need to edit all previous ledger items to make their split even.
- haydenkshaw 7y agoSplitwise user here. Interface is clear and easy to use with most of the required functionality. Personally I find the per-bill itemised expense part of Splitwise essential, being able to split a receipt into it's items and then charge particular participants for only certain items. Uploading images of receipts to each bill is also essential imo.
- janberchtold 7y agoThanks for your feedback! We will be adding more features soon. The image upload of receipts will be coming soon.
- Yizahi 7y agoIs it an actual problem without solution though, to be "simpler than Splitwise"? And is it actually perceptibly simpler? I find Splitwise rather easy to use and just functional enough to cover all usecases. From the first look this site does about the same stuff, no? The only significant difference I see is app vs website.
- dvgt 7y agoI created an even simpler version of this optimized for mobile usage ("add to homescreen") for personal use a couple of years ago. Never dared to advertise it though. Initially used it to look into fancy front end tech, but quickly resorted to PHP, SQL and a bit of jQuery.
- fragmede 7y agothat's kinda neat. what made yours simpler?
- dvgt 7y agoOn the plus side in addition to "no app", "no login", etc. + Optimized for mobile (really minimal: https://snipboard.io/pQfY8A.jpg https://snipboard.io/pQfY8A.jpg) + No tracking + No web fonts + Simpler input (no wizard) Simplicity comes at a price: It has some things missing I was playing around with as well: - Expenses are always split equally among all - No offline support - Worst of all: No HTTPS
- dalbotex 7y agoGreat work, I like the simplicity! So far I have two issues with your solution: 1. It doesn't accept my email address. Looks like the pattern is way too strict and doesn't allow any new TLDs. 2. The use-case I most often see Splitwise used for is trips abroad with friends. In this situation, expenses are often recorded while no internet connection is available and synced later. I'm not sure if IOU supports this, I haven't tried it.
- janberchtold 7y agoThanks! 1. Can you send an email to iou@iou.ch so I can check you address and fix the bug? 2. We will be building mobile apps as soon as possible with this functionality.
- Freak_NL 7y agoPlease read up on present day email address validation. If you have a regex that is doing more than ^.+@.+$, then you are doing it wrong. Don't validate the address beyond looking for an '@' in the string; just send an email with a confirmation link to see if it actually works.
- janberchtold 7y agoThanks we will change this!
- dalbotex 7y ago100% this! For reference, I didn't try any of the more obscure email address features, such as comments or quotation. My address simply has the form firstname@lastname.email
- eddyg 7y agoI use: ^[^@]+@[^.]+\..+$ for a bit of sanity checking...
- dalbotex 7y ago
- sebubu 7y agoNice how you handle exchange rates. This is way too complicated on Splitwise.
- nobrains 7y agoSome questions: What is a pot? When should I create multiple pots?
- janberchtold 7y agoA pot holds all expenses of a group. You create one pot for a trip with friends and another pot with your roommates. You can (but don't have to) create an account if you want to manage and access many different pots. Or you can just bookmark the url of the pot to access it.
- sancha_ 7y agoFeature wise Splitwise offers more, I also never thought Splitwise to be complicated at all.
- arcturus17 7y agoYea, that premise might be flawed. I've used Splitwise with over two dozen people, some of them newcomers, all of which picked it up instantly. I don't remember missing a feature either...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rohan1024 7y agoI find Splitwise UI not intuitive at all. I currently used acasa. UI wise its great. The one thing I don't like about them is they don't let you export the data from the system.
- rtpg 7y agoYeah plus Splitwise's onboarding curve is pretty perfect. Hard to do better than it I think
- noja 7y agoDoes Splitwise (or any app) support OCRing the receipt to visually split the bill? Edit: I found https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.astepanov.mobile.splitcheck https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.astepanov.... which works offline and does OCR from a photo
- kbyatnal 7y agoThere’s an app called Tab which does a pretty good job of this.
- namanaggarwal 7y agoSplitwise does have a premium feature to read receipts
- juliusbk 7y agoFunny! Made almost the exact same website a while ago: http://moneter.pythonanywhere.com/ http://moneter.pythonanywhere.com/
- udfalkso 7y agoMy goto for this has been shortreckonings.com, I also find splitwise overcomplicated. Will try this one out as well.
- noah_greeen 7y agoI still prefer Splittr (https://splittr.io/ https://splittr.io/) - Works offline - Syncs with friends - No registration needed - All currencies supported - PDF and CSV export - It's FREE to download!
- johnfisher57 7y agoNice work
- eMerzh 7y agoNice... look slick... got some issues trying to add a item... it didn't want that i type in the amount i also like https://github.com/spiral-project/ihatemoney https://github.com/spiral-project/ihatemoney which is opensource and goes with a mobile app.
- janberchtold 7y agoThanks for the link. Did not know this.
- janberchtold 7y agowhat exactly did you try to type in for the amount? or what was the error?
- eMerzh 7y agoNo errors ...didnt type anything funky... Numbers ....
- afarrell 7y agoNiche that you might want to target: splitting grocery delivery. Why? In the UK, it is common for grocers like Tesco, ASDA, or Sainsburys which offer grocery delivery to require a £40 minimum for an order. It is quite hard to hit that minimum with a week's worth of groceries and ordering groceries for longer than a week is less useful because meat & veg expires. Therefore, it would be nice to be able to split a grocery delivery with flatmates or with the flat across the hall. There is a coordination challenge here. It would be nice if I could sign up for an account, my flatmate could sign up for an account, we could link our accounts and then we could add stuff to the same Tesco cart--with a record of who had ordered which groceries and who owes whom when someone hits the "thats enough groceries in the cart. please deliver" button.
- fredley 7y agoIn our office we use a shared takeaway system called Seamless. We each submit our order ahead of a cutoff time, pay, then when it arrives each container is individually named so you know what belongs to each person. Something like this could be really good for shared grocery orders for flat shares, but ideally you'd have buy-in from the grocers, so that the bags are separated and there's no quibbling about who ordered what.
- andrewmunsell 7y agoI always wondered why Instacart never took their Group Carts feature and made it more holistic. Right now, Instacart lets you create shared "Group Carts" for their grocery delivery, which I use with my girlfriend. But, there's no payment splitting, ability for other people in the shared cart to add items after-the-fact, Instacart Express benefit sharing, or any sort of shared order management abilities. If Instacart extended the "Group Carts" feature to actual "Group Orders", this would make situations like mine (and also those who use Instacart with roommates) much more convenient and would be similar to how you describe Seamless
- jancborchardt 7y agoFor small apps like these, sign up is really a pain. That is why a friend and I have been working on a simplified version, which is mostly based on links so you can also easy share a tab: https://grouptabs.net https://grouptabs.net We also try to keep the interface very simple, and it works offline.
- markovbot 7y agoWow, this looks great. Self-hostable but with an easy to use public instance, no app and a decent UI. A few things I would really like to see added seem to already be in discussion, such as an "add to homescreen" option (https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/issues/146 https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/issues/146, https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/pull/143 https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/pull/143) and a delete option (https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/issues/152 https://github.com/xMartin/grouptabs/issues/152). I look forward to playing with!
- alexwennerberg 7y agoVery cool! Without sign up, how do you deal with spam?
- quickthrower2 7y agoI think if signup is a pain, use OAuth.
- m52go 7y agoThis is brilliant! I find Splitwise annoying...need yet another account, need to use an app or clunky web interface, etc. This is perfect. Breath of fresh air. I will use it the next time I need it! Lately I've been using a local app on my phone, which I find more reliable (no need for data or reliance on a website) but of course it doesn't allow for collaboration with others.
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoIt says "create a new pot". What is a pot? Disclaimer: I have not had my morning caffeine yet.
- k5hp 7y agoAnother great app for tracking expenses is Splid [1] – IMO much better than Splitwise, no accounts required, clean and beautiful UI. (I'm not affiliated with this app) [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=splid.teamturtle.com.splid https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=splid.teamturt...
- fheld 7y agoiOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/splid-split-group-bills/id991473495?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/splid-split-group-bills/id99... and the website (no web app ATM): splid.app
- subbu 7y agoI implemented this feature in a shared flat context. The problem gets simplified as the users are all part of a group already and even the settlement happens without exchanging any money. Your share gets added to the monthly rent. Full write-up: https://blog.simplyguest.com/flatmate-expenses.html https://blog.simplyguest.com/flatmate-expenses.html
- cuddlecake 7y agoI used SettleUp for a while, for writing down food expenses (small amounts, frequent, and different amounts per person) It was such a hasslr that I decided to set up a transaction log (person A paid X for Person B for item Y) in Google sheets instead, which automatically tracks debts per combination of persons. It's so much easier since I can parse and note down a receipt within one minute, compared to doing calculations in my head and writing the debts down in an App. Edit: After giving splitwise a quick look, it also doesn't solve my grocery debts problem.
- joshstrange 7y agoI know it's been mentioned but Splitwise is an AMAZING app/webapp. I've used it with friends on vacation (uber rides, hotel/airbnb, dinners, etc), I've used it with roommates (electric bill, rent, etc), and now I use it with my boyfriend (rent, groceries, utilities, furniture, tools, etc). I find it really helps me as I HATE talking about money and asking for it (even when I'm owed it). This way I never feel like I'm paying in more than he is and he doesn't feel like he is paying in more than me. Some months he "pays" his portion of the rent by just buying all the groceries or buying something else we both agreed on getting and it all evens out. Because of this we rarely have to actually settle up but when the balance gets out of wack by like $500 one of us will just venmo the other one and record it in splitwise.
- modo_ 7y agoI've used splitwise a few times for large group activities and really struggled with the UX every time. The most frequent problem happens when people are slow to add their expenses. It's too easy to pay up before everything has been added, which means having to remember to log back in when that last straggler finally adds their items The UI and integration with Venmo feel pretty clunky too
- cuddlecake 7y agoChecking this app out I was immediately frustrated. Just switching between the tabs of a pot always takes like 500ms. The FAB immediately glitches because it's not sticking to the bottom of the screen immediately. Also, clicking on the same tab again also causes annoying friction.
- kickopotomus 7y agoInteresting solution. My coworker created a similar app that aims to reduce debt complexity over time for a group. Ex. 1: Alice owes Bob $10. Bob owes Alice $5. So Alice really just owes Bob $5 Ex. 2: Alice owes Bob $10, Bob owes Charlie $5, and Charlie owes Alice $5. This can also be reduced such that Alice just owes Bob $5. We use it to track who owes who and who is up next to buy lunch. https://github.com/famish99/cuenta https://github.com/famish99/cuenta
- cork 7y agoYour home view is throwing a “No entry is registered for key user_country” on iOS webview, it’s also spitting out a partial stack trace, you might want to consider not showing this to users in production environments, not sure how you do that with Zend but i would think it’s trivial to configure
- esel2k 7y agoIt is a usefull functionality, as I have used splid several times. My two recommendations: Don’t forget the more seniors in terms uf usability. I think the flow should focus on adding expenses quickly on the first screen as you want to do this on the fly. Secondly: as you are from Switzerland I proposed exactly that idea while I was working for post to postfinance to get 50k startcapital, but did not get it. I guess if you come with this UI and say youll build a interface to their payment system (twint 2Dbarcode) you might get some funding. Cheers