Add friends without email address or phone number
I know that it might be a user acquisition choice, but it is very annoying to not be able to add someone with just their name (i.e. with no email address or phone, so that they don't receive an invite).
I find that the user experience is affected a lot by this and I am switch back to another app because of this despite how good splitwise is overall.
There are indeed several use cases where I would like to add people without contact details:
- At a specific event, for example a party where I need to enter the names of a lot of people without knowing their email adress
- To track my own personal debts with other people without them knowing or them receiving an invitation.
I did read this article by the way, but I wanted to share the way I think:
http://feedback.splitwise.com/knowledgebase/articles/206028-why-do-i-have-to-add-friends-in-order-to-use-split
Louis M
shared this idea
Thanks for the detailed feedback – it’s always useful to hear, and I’ll pass it on :)
One small feature you may not be aware of: on our website, Splitwise does allow you to add group members without email addresses, which hopefully helps for the “large party” scenario. My apologies that the same feature isn’t available on our mobile apps!
34 comments
-
Florian Raffl
commented
I like to add debts (just to remind myself) without linking them with friends. Is this possible?
-
Guillermo Frontera
commented
Say I want to create a group including some people I don't have in my phone's agenda. And I know thew won't bother installing the app.
It would be useful to add people to a group by just adding their names. They won't be able to add expenses to the group, but someone else will be adding those for them.
-
Tony
commented
Sometimes people don't want to register an account. I can see that I can add them as members through web interface in this case, but it's feels quite weird that I can do all the stuff in the mobile app UI, and for this only operation I have to open a browser, login once again and then add them as members to the group.
-
Francesco Visin
commented
This is honestly a ridiculous constrain that you impose for no reason other than pushing people to use your app.
There are a number of valid reasons against having to register every participant: most of the times I'm offline, usually people are less technologic than I am (they will go back to the good old notepad + pen as soon as it becomes too complicated, and for once I don't see how to disagree), for short trips/vacations it would take more to ask everyone to register than to write on a piece of paper.
One thing that I'd like to stress is that in most cases it is perfectly fine if one person keeps track of the expenses of everybody and computes the totals at the end of the vacation. When there wasn't an app for this, did all your friends keep track of the expenses of everyone else to check on them? If so, you might need to find better friends.
I really like the app from what I've seen so far, but I am uninstalling it on the same day I registered because it is useless with this absurd limitation.
-
Silvio A. Denny
commented
Quando de uma viagem uso para repartir a conta. Permitir adicionar uma pessoa sem e-mail e ou telefone.
-
Anonymous
commented
等你撒HiFi额 qqqq
222 -
Evan Derickson commented
The mobile/website difference seems backwards. If I'm using the web interface, I'm going to be online and more likely to be sat down at my desk, and can more easily look up contact info for people or ask them for it and wait for a response. If I'm using mobile, I'm more likely to be offline, in a hurry, or showing my friends how convenient Splitwise is and why they should get it. Mandatory contact info goes against many of the reasons why I use the mobile app, while it would be acceptable on the web app.
-
Christian
commented
Since it is possible to add expenses in all directions (I owe others or others owe me) it would be great if I can add friends that don't have Splitwise. So I don't need to convince them to use the app. It's just for the calculation and I can show them the calculation before settling up. (Then the'll maybe use Splitwise too)
-
Radek Antoniuk commented
Guys, I have reviewed many IOU apps and Splitwise is the neatest of them. Great job!
But, making it *required* to register/add a friend, completely breaks this app usability.Let's say, that I am organizing a sailing trip, I want to split the costs of this trip by the crew members.
But we don't have internet all the time nor some 'older' users do not want/need any accounts.
So I have a mix of users that "are my friends" and like to see their notifications about payments and I do have the ones that don't.
Effect: I can't use splitwise, because I can't even specify that a certain bill should be split in 4 rather than 3 (because the fourth person is a non-internet-using-grandma).I would gladly pay for a PRO app if this is supported there, is it?
-
Anonymous
commented
Splitwises system of adding persons is restricted, it needs internet access, a email or telephone of the person and its subscription. E.g. "Cost split" allows to add new persons offline and without subscription.
On the go, internet access might be missing. New persons might join the party. Persons might not have a smartphone or E-Mail (e.g. my grandma).
Please make this requirements optional or provide at least a workaround: e.g. application of a ghost person, which somebody can add to a group first and may be turned into a real person later. -
Chetan Shah
commented
I would like to track financial transactions related to friends for my personal tracking. I don't want to force them to get an invitation from Splitwise
-
Anonymous
commented
My reason to ask for this feature is that I want to be able to track my personal debts, and it's practically a note to myself. I don't want the other people involved to get notified about it! And sometimes I don't even want to add people, I want to add a bank account (e.g. personal savings).
-
Amira Agbeke
commented
I can't add my friend because she doesn't have Splitwise. I'm using the mobile app so my contacts are synced by their phone number however when I try to add a contact I have to input their email address (which I don't have). It would be nice/easy if I could invite them via their phone number or just add them and invite them later.
-
Daniel Lambuça
commented
Devia dar para criar uma pessoa virtual para substituir quem não tem Splitwise e não quer ter. Ajudava a organizar melhor as contas.
-
Jada
commented
The option to add people to a bill without adding the, as a friend or their details
For the sake of calculating how much was spent -
Kishan
commented
Currently, it's mandatory to enter the email address for every new friend. Users should be able to keep expense logs without needing to enter email address of friends.
-
*Marissa Dickins
commented
So sometimes I lend money to people who don't have splitwise and would like to record it here but can't because I don't have the right contact details (I.e. Email) to enter it into splitwise. This means I have to find somewhere else to record that I lent money for something when I would prefer to put it in splitwise. Can we please make it so I don't have to enter an email to create a person? This would also be pertinent to those who aren't tech savvy and not using technology so much. Perhaps an option to invite them and then an option to just create a local version would be great (which you could then invite them down the track if they like the idea).
Cheers!
Marissa
-
Sudhik Jain
commented
Sometimes I want to keep myself updated on paying bills which I usually forget. If I can enter a entity like SBI credit card which doesn't have any email id it'll be easy to track for me
-
Bipin Upadhyay
commented
I would sometimes like to just keep track of how much someone owes me, without having to actually add them.
-
Aki
commented
Hi,
I know this is repeated question and I've read through your justification for choosing this process. I am forced to write this to you because there is no better app in the market that helps split bills better.
The only add-on I would like to propose is to create users with their email Id or phone number but not send an immediate notification to that user. Many a times we'd like to make a quick note of the expenses but not notify participants immediately.
Not all people are happy with getting a notification to payback soon after a party. Please let me know of your thoughts as well...Cheers...