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!
43 comments
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Sandeep
commented
I want this on app too
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Lucas Abdalla Gomide
commented
I normally use the app with my contacts. Maybe just integrating with the contacts would help out a lot of other users. Thanks.
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Krishna
commented
How can we add friends without an invitation on a website?
Just for a small trip with a friends, everyone has to install an app. Bad Deal ! You need to find other ways for marketing.You should make some other strategies for people to download an app rather than iniviting friends for spliting a payment. -
Fernando Raposo
commented
Perfect. It is very annoying to be obligated to invite every member of the party to split the cost of a trip, many of whom you may not be close.
This is a deal breaker for the app. You should fix it quickly.
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ashish verma
commented
Most of the time, when we are travelling or splitting a bill within a group, it happens that one or more people do not use the splitwise app. In this case, using the app becomes difficult/useless as the bill cannot be split within everyone. To resolve this issue, I suggest you to give an option to add a dummy person without an email ID so that bill can be split among the people who are not on splitwise. This will increase the usability of app and also motivate existing users of the app to keep using this app. Further, once the bills are settled that dummy person could be deleted or migrated to an email id in case he installs the application.
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Anonymous
commented
Hi, The last reply on this request from Splitwise was in July 2016 and after that nothing! Have you decided to abandon your users in the cold w.r.t. this functionality? How long/complicated would it be if the functionality already exists in the Web version? This means that the limitation is not on DB level but only in the UI.
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Anonymous
commented
I'd like you to add this function on the app. It is indeed very annoying for debt tracking. Make it a 1 dollar function if you want to monetize your app.
I d pay for it, thx. -
Tom D.
commented
I have an event tonight that I'm responsible for determining a complicating pay scheme with 10 people at a dinner. I'd like to use Splitwise to solve this problem without having to force everyone at the event to join. Some of the guests I don't know well. Also, it's my responsibility to reconcile the bills so I don't want everyone at the event to be involved. When I'm at the event I won't be able to use the website. I will use Excel or Google Sheets for this, but I would have loved to use Splitwise.
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Rohit Suratekar
commented
Sometimes you want just information about who owes you (who is not on Split wise) . Currently only way to add this is to invite person. It will be nice if we can able to create some expenses without inviting new person.
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Florian Raffl
commented
I like to add debts (just to remind myself) without linking them with friends. Is this possible?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Silvio A. Denny
commented
Quando de uma viagem uso para repartir a conta. Permitir adicionar uma pessoa sem e-mail e ou telefone.
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Anonymous
commented
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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.
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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)
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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?
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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