Splittable
Get your shared finances in order
Living with other people can be a challenge, especially when it comes to sharing household expenses or settling up after a night out. Factor in roommates who are night owls or hardly ever home, and it’s easy to see how money causes stress for renters who split bills.
Available as a web app as well as for Android devices, Splittable is a free iPhone app that reduces this potential friction by putting everyone on the same page. Whether it’s rent, utilities, groceries, or other shared expenses, you’ll always know where everyone stands thanks to the All Square Meter, a dashboard that shows at a glance who owes money.
To get started, set up a house, then add the relevant costs and who’s responsible for them. When a new purchase is made, Splittable notifies each roommate with a push notification as a reminder to pay their share. Clearly aimed at college students and young professionals, the basic premise also applies to unwed couples or even spouses living under the same roof who maintain separate bank accounts.
Splittable can’t currently be used to make actual payments – the app simply keeps track of who owes what. But the developers are working on payment integration, first in the UK with an eventual international rollout. We were treated to an advance look at this feature, and it has real potential to make the whole process as easy as PayPal, Venmo, and Square Cash.
For the time being, Splittable users must be content collecting money the old-fashioned way. There are a few improvements we’d like to see, such as the ability to check off costs as they’re paid, rather than waiting until the due date. Also, adding a new cost requires hopping between a few too many screens.
You’ll need to sign up for an account or use a Facebook login to get started, and for now the clean, well designed user interface is free of ads or other intrusions; hopefully that will remain the case down the road. Finally, we were a little put off by the initial setup wizard, which forces you to add a cost or payment before you have a chance to get the hang of things.
the bottom line. Splittable puts an end to keeping tabs on how much roommates owe for shared costs, but you’ll still have to collect payments the old-fashioned way for now.