Family/Couples' account
When I was using Billmonk a few years ago, my wife and I started out with separate accounts, but since we share finances, often times we'd be repaying debts for one another (since we have the same friends) and it got confusing. My solution was to just turn my account into "Joe&Jane Smith" and have all our expenses go through one account and removed her account completely.
I'm not sure the ideal implementation for this situation. Perhaps a "family account." Perhaps the ability to add multiple email addresses would work (but unlike a previous feature request, this application would be such that a family could share an account under different members' email addresses). Then if people tried to add the husband or wife as a friend via email address, it'd add the "family account" instead and work accordingly.
Daniel
shared this idea
Splitwise has some basic support for this now, depending on what you’re looking for. We now support multiple email addresses for a single account, so you can more easily share one account with multiple people.
However, we won’t automatically adjust how much you should owe as a “couple”. For example, if “Bob” adds an expense with “Sue and John’s Couple Account”, then the bill will be split 50/50 between those two Splitwise accounts. I can definitely see how it would be useful to automatically make Sue and John pay for 2 shares, but we’re unlikely to add that feature in the near future. For now, you can still work around this by manually using the “Split by shares” option when adding a bill, and assigning 2 shares to the relevant account.
52 comments
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Anonymous
commented
Happy to use the workaround for the time being but it would be really useful to have a couples’ facility. It’s the first time I’ve used Splitwise (for a trip with 2 couples and 2 singles) and it’s the functionality I immmediately noticed as missing.
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Anonymous
commented
Ok... so having just been through this I found a work around
Easiest solution i can think of is run all members of the group as individual accounts during the trip but at the end you can effectively transfer the obligations of the dormant partner to the paying partner by adding an entry where the dormant partner makes a payment to paying partner for the total of all of their payments due to all members.
Can be done either as a payment or a bill entry as the dormant partner paying but the 'split between' name solely being the paying partner.
This leaves the dormant partner as settled and the paying partner now with the net obligations.
You will have to do this for each of any multicurrency balances to transfer each.
Do have 'simplify payments' switched in though.
That worked perfectly for me.
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Anonymous
commented
Easiest solution i can think of is run all members of the group as individual accounts during the trip but at the end have a merge function to combine family/couples into one settlement unit.
This allows for individuals being separately represented for drinks/ meals if not there as a couple but grouped for settlement.
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Sam Simic
commented
We are a group of 9 on holiday (3 couples, 2 singles and a baby). We all have a Splitwise account individually, but it would be great to be able to link accounts within couples to simplify settling up.
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Anil Goyat
commented
hii
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Anonymous
commented
There should be a setting when adding to a groups, when traveling with couples. The programming needs to associate two people in the group as one but still count them as two. Sounds confusing but when you travel with a couple you’ll understand. Seeing as they usually have combined finances. But still need to adjust numbers that they are 2 people when breaking down so it mathematically works out evenly.
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Richard S
commented
Looking for a solution here — many comments & ideas offered in comments.
I’ll re-read for best current work-around.
Upcoming trip with 10 people; 4 couple & two singles. Each couple has one Splitwise user and so does each single. So, 6 accounts.
Looking to Splitwise for clear-to-follow solution or for easiest method w Splitwise as now designed.
Would really like guidance here, not needing to figure it out & explain it to 10 people, some of whom aren’t going to want complex methods.
Please??
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Bruno
commented
When we have a big group, and there are couples within the group that share the same expense, it would be great to join their account balance, so that it would be possible to trqck their expenses and balances.
For example, we are a group of 9 travelling around Indonesia, however sometimes I pay somethings and my wife also pays for others expenses, and it would be great to get that debt join in one account, but still having it divided by two people, because the expenses payed within the group need to be splitted by 9.
Thanks for your attention.
Kind regards
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Renzo
commented
+3
We have a group of 6 people which all have all an account. But as a group we split costs per couple. It is a hassle or impossible to manage this... I really like this option. -
Akshay
commented
Let me start with how awesome Splitwise is!
It would even great if Splitwise has a concept of Partner Account!
Me and my wife have a lot of common group expenses. Everytime they have to add some shared expense they either have to add both of us to the bill or split expense by share and add '2 shares' to one of us.
It would be easier to know about collective debts. Example if me and my wife both owe some money to the same friend, it could be helpful to view it our collective debt without constantly switching between accounts.
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Drew Levitt
commented
I'm trying to settle up with a bunch of friends, some of whom are in partnered couples and some of whom aren't. In order to correctly split shared expenses, it's important to represent each of us as individuals, but if some people are operating as a household with unified finances, it would be good for debts to consider the couple as a shared entity.
For example, I paid for a bunch of stuff on a recent trip and my partner did not. So I am owed money but she "owes" money. In reality, she should not owe money so long as I am owed more than she "owes" - her "debt" should pass through me.
I can think of a couple of ways Splitwise could handle this:
1. For each member of a group, include a field indicating how many "shares" that member has. So one member could represent me and my partner together, with two shares, and another member could represent my single friend, with one share.
2. Somehow enable users to specify which friends are part of their household. -
Anonymous
commented
Yes I want what you owe as a "couple". the problem with combining the people is there are situations where both people of a couple aren't part of an individual expense. Lets say for example on a group trip the wife goes to get drinks with the group but the husband is not there. I still want the flexibility to say who was part of each expense at the individual level I just wan the settlement to get grouped by "couple"
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Anonymous
commented
I go on trips with both single people and married couples. everything in splitwise is at the individual level. This is helpful when entering expenses because only one person in the couple might participate.
However when settling up it would be nice to group 2 people together as a married couple and count them as one. Otherwise you end up with a situation where one person in the couple could be getting money and the 2nd person has to pay. It would be a great feature to net these down.
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Mihai Pintilie
commented
I've recently been on a trip with some friends and some couples. Not everyone wanted to install Splitwise, but every individual contributed equally to the group expenses. Additional info: all couples shared money e.g. one of them paid debts / received money for both of them.
Use case:
- my friend wanted to pay me back for his and his wife's debt to me, while his wife did not have the app installed (so only I saw how much she was supposed to pay me back) -
Lorenzo
commented
Allow simplified debts between couples.
EG every individual user inputs their expenses into the app; then when it comes to balance the debits, assume they together owe one single amount instead of two separate, if they prefer -
Michael Hewitt
commented
This idea should be clarified as just adding a way to join people into an shared account or bill. Like a joint bank account. Each person should be seperate and owe their share but the joined people would automatically settle because their finances are shared. This could work as a family group if you need to include kids as well
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Nikhil Prasad commented
We are two couples, or four people, who go on holiday. We split all the bills individually. But when we come to pay, one person from each couple is responsible.
Is it therefore possible to add people and say that this other person pays for all their bills?
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Dan Voss
commented
Two suggestions:
1) Before people have signed up and joined a group, the group should be able to create a "place-filler" for them to keep the numbers accurate.
2) A "couples" option should be included to simplify calculations of one account paying on behalf of multiple people.
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Chris Combs
commented
My wife and I have joint finance, as do many of our Splitwise-using couple friends. It would be nice to be able to mark another Splitwise user as "joint finance" for the purpose of resolving debts. Treated equivalently within a group. A payment to userA==a payment to userB.
Currently we have to resolve fake debts between each other as "cash payments" and nobody really trusts the Simplify Debts logic to figure this out. I'd love to see this feature added.
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Harald
commented
Een connectie tussen personen met een gezamenlijke rekening zou handig zijn.
A connection between persons with the same bankaccount would be welcome.