Splitwise isn’t new, but I’ve used it so often this year for joint activities and travel with friends that it stands out as one of the most useful apps on my phone.
The concept is simple: whenever someone pays for something that’s shared, you record it on Splitwise and select who was involved. The app keeps track of who owes whom.
If this sounds unnecessary, wait until you’re on a trip with five people and one person pays for dinner, another covers e-hailing and someone else buys groceries. Nobody can remember who owes what.
I’ve also used Splitwise where trips involved multiple currencies, which saved me from making a mental spreadsheet of everyone’s expenses — an admin nightmare.
You can create groups for trips, households, friends or anything where money is shared. Expenses can be split equally or unequally, including by percentage or shares; the app keeps a running balance.
The varying split option is great if someone brings their child along and pays a reduced rate for an activity. Using that option allows you to add two shares for the parent (paying less for the child) and one for everyone else.
Splitwise has a nifty “simplify debts” feature that restructures balances to reduce the number of payments needed, without altering final amounts owed by each person. For example, if A owes B R50 and B owes C R50, Splitwise will tell A to pay C the R50 directly. It’s a small thing, but when there are lots of expenses between a group, it makes settling up less tedious.
The app supports more than 100 currencies, though there’s a difference between recording expenses in different currencies and converting them. Free users can record expenses in different currencies, but the balances remain separate. Currency conversion is a premium feature.
And this is my biggest gripe with Splitwise. The free version has become more restrictive over the years, and you’re now limited to four entries a day. The ad-free Pro version removes the limit and adds features including receipt scanning, itemisation, expense search, charts, graphs and currency conversion.
Having limits can be annoying if you’re adding several expenses in one sitting. The workaround is for others in the group to add some of the expenses or simply remember to record the total as you pay a bill. In my experience, the latter is the better approach because nobody wants to reconstruct a weekend’s spending from memory.
Splitwise is simple and effective without the unnecessary bells and whistles. It does one job really well: keeping track of shared expenses without requiring everyone to remember who paid for what.
Despite years of using it, I still haven’t found a better alternative, which says a lot about an app that doesn’t try to do too much. Just remember to log expenses as they happen.
The basic version is free on Android or iOS. Splitwise Pro is R66.66 a month.
Cool factor: 5/5
Usability: 3.5/5
Value for money: 5/5
