Write it down at once, not on the last day

The main mistake is «we will count later». A week on, half the receipts are lost and the amounts are remembered roughly. An expense is best written down when it is paid: it takes a minute.

tabhug gives the trip a room. Each person can add a receipt from their own phone, and everyone sees the updated result at once.

Not everyone takes part in everything

Lodging and the car are usually shared by all. But a tour four of seven went on, or a suitcase for two, belongs only to those it concerns.

• Shared (lodging, car rental, fuel) — evenly between everyone.
• Partial (tickets, a rental, a separate dinner) — between those who took part.
• Personal but paid by someone else («get me a coffee») — one person’s.

That is why a spreadsheet that «adds it all up and divides by seven» is almost always unfair.

Several currencies and the bank’s fee

Abroad, some receipts are in the local currency, some in euros, and you want to settle in one. What is needed is the rate of the day of the purchase, not «today’s».

tabhug takes the official rate for the receipt’s date and lets you add the bank’s fee when a card was used in another currency. Every debt comes down to the room’s currency.

Settling up: fewer transfers

If everyone repaid everyone for every receipt, there would be dozens of transfers. It is enough to bring it all down to each person’s balance: what they paid and what they consumed.

From there, two ways are handy. «Fewest transfers» — the smallest number of payments for the whole group. «Cashier» — everyone sends to one person, who settles with the rest: one transfer each. Amounts can be rounded so nobody sends cents.

So that everyone trusts the result

A count is trusted when it can be checked. In the room everyone sees every receipt, their share in each, and the history of changes: who changed what, and when. A mistake can be undone.

A doubtful receipt can be sent to particular people to check. And at the end everything can be exported as a table (CSV).