Users and Settlements

From creating users to track shared spending in a personal tracking, or joining a group so all users can see spending, we provide the easiest and most complete settlement tracker

Managing Users

When you go to your Tracker Settings in the More menu, you'll see an option called Users (More information also in Tracker Settings page for this menu). This page will focus on users and how they work.

  • The first piece is adding/creating users
    • Personal - Add user names for the people you want to simulate for
    • Group - Real users join via the group code (admins have access to the shareable code in Tracker Settings on that group)
  • Utilizing users in the trackers
    • Whether its a real user or a bot user, the functionality works the same - you're able to select them in any entries or have them be participants in a payment
      • Every participant in a payment will split the expense equally (custom splits coming soon)
      • The share of each person's payments show up in current balances (see below for more information on calculations)
    • Removing users
      • Personal - you're able to remove users ONLY when they have no current balances
        • If the "bot" user participated in any entry, they will show as an archived user in tracker settings, so that their name still shows up in all entries
      • Group - Admins can remove users (admins cannot remove other admins, creator can remove anyone) if they have no current balances
        • The user will not have access to the group unless they are "unarchived" by an admin/creator from the group, which will restore the group in the deleted user's home page
        • Name still shows up in all entries 

    Current Balances and Suggested Settlements

    Balances are automatically calculated by all the expenses and payments from the tracker. It ensures fairness by checks and balances, where all users pay/receive their respective amount, whether as an expense or as a payment to another user.

    • Understanding a participant's total expenses (use a filter for the participant to show their total amount of expenses)
      • Any time the user participates in an expense, it is added as part of how much they've "spent", whether that's if they paid for the expense or not
    • Paying for an expense
      • When a user pays for an expense, they are the ones that have paid their "share" of the expense, or more if others participated
        • As an example, if User 1 pays for a $50 expense and both User 1 and User 2 participate and share the expense, both spend $25 each. User 1 has overpaid by $25 as they participated in the expense, whereas User 2 should owe $25 for their share of the expense. In the current balances, User 1 will have a green bar that says "$25 owed", and User 2 will show up red as "$25 owes".
    • Payments to others - when a user sends a payment to another user, it contributes to the balances
      • The suggested settlements provides the simplest way users should pay each other so that all balances will equal 0 and everyone has paid their fair share 
      • (coming soon) a button will appear to the right of each suggested settlement, which signifies that the user's have completely the recommended settlement. When clicked, the users and the amount will be entered in an a payment in the "Payments" tab, and recalculate the respective current balances
      • There will also be links to popular payment apps like Zelle and Venmo, which take the user to the third-party app's log-in screen
    • As this gets more complex with user a range of users participating and for different amounts, the principles remain the same - every user will pay the amount participated in through an expense or a payment to others, ensuring that each user is paid back correctly and that it is fair for all users.