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.
29 comments
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George
commented
They'd still be separate people so you can divide things between more people, but it could add debts and balances for you to settle up as a couple
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Jen
commented
I just used this for the first time tonight and because I was in a group of 7, with my husband and I being the only joint account holders it was really confusing at first. I agree with the below comments, if when settling up you can select users with a joint account it and have it just prioritize how you settle up it would be great! Myself and one other guy ended up owing money at the end. The app had me pay my husband and one other person, but the other guy that owed money only paid my husband. If two people are on a joint account and could note it and then I would have been "paying" my husband and the other guy could have made the two payments.
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Anonymous
commented
Both my husband and I will make and add expenses separately, but would like to pay as a single entity. If use could choose at end to settle up as "just me" or "more than one person", splitwise could then further combine things for outgoing payments AND for others' incoming payments.
This would allow "guy stuff" to still be split among just the guys and "family stuff" to be split among all attendees, for example, but all paid at the end together.
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Patrick Szalapski
commented
There is an easy way to implement this: I could simply mark myself as "joint" with another user. Then I would never owe them debts, nor they me, but otherwise Splitwise would work the same as it does now. For example, If I split a $100 charge among my wife and two others, I would be owed $25 from each of the others but not from my wife.
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Leo Barnes
commented
In mobile I can easily track payments for someone else by simply adding a payment for that person. It would be great if I could also directly pay for that person with Venmo like I can for myself. Me and my wife frequently settle up for each other since we have shared economy, but then have to make the actual payments separately since that doesn't happen automatically when you do it for someone else.
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Aaron
commented
I agree with Hugo Vacher that the easy solution to this would be to have separate accounts for each person, but debts and payments to each are aggregated. I don't mind having separate accounts for my wife and me, but I don't want it to split out what I need to pay/receive from what she does, or we spend the whole time multiplying things. Combining things only at the finance/debt calculation stage solves the unequal shares point properly, as the bill can be shared as normal by the five people who attended, even if that translates at the debt-payment stage to 2/5 for each couple and 1/5 for the fifth person.
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Michael
commented
Grouping when simplifying debt's would be awesome because I can use a person for everyone in the group but Easley pay for my entire family (wife and kids). Then saving a default share in a group would help to make the kids cheaper on expenses.
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Anonymous
commented
This idea is geared for couples who share finances, such as a shared bank account, so that either person in that couple can see and take care of both their own and their spouse's expenses. But retaining the easy ability to split the amount of the bill evenly among the individuals in the couple and maintaining separate accounts.
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Nicole M
commented
I just want to add that the grouping people for settling up, as suggested by Bernard below, would be great for us. My husband and I have a roommate and we split a lot of expenses in thirds, where he and I are responsible for 2/3 and she for 1/3. Because of this, it seems we need to keep the accounts separate so we're not constantly having to manually split the transactions equally. However, it would be great to group us together at the settle-up period to simplify the settling up. Thanks!
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Anonymous
commented
Desperately needs the feature to link couples accounts when reconciling. Fine to treat them as a single person, but annoying when 1 person is owed a lot and the other then has to pay. This could be a feature of 'simplified debts' as mostly couples will reconcile together not as one payer.
Thanks!
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Anonymous
commented
It would be great to have a feature for one couple or family to be able to enter expenses together. After a weekend with friends, splitwise says I owe my husband money. That seems dumb.
However, we still need to be counted as two shares of each expense. Another user reported combining a couple's account into one, but won't that mean that they're only paying 1/2 their share?
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Renan
commented
I have a suggestion for the simplification prioritization algorithm.
Imagine the couples AB, CD, and EF.
A, C, and E buy groceries for a reunion.When applied the current simplification, Spliwise will suggest something like B pays C, D pays E, and F pays A for a debt simplification.
It would be much easier - in real life - to settle up a debt like B->A, D->C, and F->E, but right now there is no way to tell Splitwise about that organization.
My suggestion is that persons on a group can have tags added to them. Like "couple1". So you could do this:
A "couple1", B "couple1", C "couple2", D "couple2", E "bf", and F "bf".
With that, Splitwise would try to simplify the debts within the microgroups (defined by the arbitrary tags) first. One tag per person would be sufficient for most cases.
If you guys like to be challenged, this could go deeper. A family gathering group could be organized like this. Ex:
A couple1 fatherside cityA
B couple1 cityB
C couple2 fatherside cityB
D couple2 cityB
E bf motherside cityA
F bf fatherside motherside cityA
G fatherside
H fatherside
I fatherside
JSplitwise would clusterize the expenses and try to simplify debts within the implicits microgroups.
So [couple1, couple2, bf, fathersize], then [cityB, motherside] then [cityA], then the non-taggeds ("J"). -
Matthew Hewitt
commented
on a trip where sometimes both parts of a couple are at a meal, but sometimes just one. when it comes time to settle up it would be nice if my wife and i and the other couples could be treated as one - paying together.
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Dan Owen
commented
+1
It's just a basic feature you would expect -
Dipesh Dugar Mitthalal
commented
I am organizing a trip for family members and equally split all expenses.
Then a person X pays me for Y , In this case Y owes should be settled instead of X -
Sagar
commented
It would be great if instead of applying multiple weights you could add an option for people "paying together." I have a trip with 3 couples and we added all 6 people so everyone could add expenses for what they paid for, but that just adds additional payments when we're ready to settle up. It would be awesome if you could identify someone you're paying with as a factor in settling up to simplify debts.
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Jeff Chien
commented
I desire the ability to keep individual accounts (i.e. one for myself, one for my wife) so that friends can easily assign itemized shares to each of us. Make it so that when settling up you can combine multiple people as one entity for showing debt to or money owed from others. I suppose you'd have to specify which member of the entity is to be paid.
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Natasha
commented
We recently used Splitwise on a trip and whilst it was a fantastic way to keep track of expenses in a group of 9, the same thing kept coming up. This was that it would be really useful to be able to pair up people in a group who are couples so that 2/9 of the expenses can be assigned to them as a couple rather than 1/9 per individual, or assigning multiple email addresses to one account - v useful if they have a joint account. This would avoid the situation where the final (simplified) settling up means one half of a couple paying the other half $300 (out of the same account!), as has happened with us!
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Jacob MacDonald
commented
With large group it is pretty common to have couples who share bank accounts, and end up "repaying" each other. This doesn't really matter but it could simplify things if you could make groups of people just for repayment purposes.
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Alex
commented
I recently went on holiday with a group of friends, some people in couples and some not. At the end of the trip I had to manually combine the balances of some people (e.g. me and my fiance). It would be good to have the option to combine people together to prevent this extra step.