Use this split expenses calculator to record who paid, choose who shares each expense, and find the payments that settle everyone’s balance.
Work out who pays whom
List everyone who shares the costs, including people who paid nothing. Add each expense with its payer and full amount. A blank Shared by field means the whole group; a name list restricts that expense to those people. The calculator divides each expense equally within its selected group, totals each person’s share, then compares that share with what they paid. Enter amounts in US dollars with at most two decimal places. Names match without regard to case, but use the same spelling throughout. The payment list is a reimbursement plan; it does not send money or save an account.
Equal division within the selected people is an input agreement. A payer can cover a cost without being one of its participants.
Include tax, tip and other charges in the amount. Do not record a suggested reimbursement as another original expense.
A shared-expense settlement example
List Alex, Sam, Jo. Alex paid 90.00 and Sam paid 30.00, both shared by everyone. Jo paid nothing. Total entered expenses are 120.00, so each person’s allocated share is 40.00. Alex’s balance is 50.00, Sam’s is -10.00 and Jo’s is -40.00. Positive receives money; negative pays money. The plan uses 2 payments: Jo pays Alex 40.00; Sam pays Alex 10.00.
In the subgroup preset, Alex paid 60.00 for everyone and Sam paid 30.00 shared only by Sam and Jo. Total expenses are 90.00. Allocated shares are 20.00 for Alex and 35.00 each for Sam and Jo. The plan is Jo pays Alex 35.00; Sam pays Alex 5.00.
People who paid nothing and costs shared by a subgroup
A person does not disappear from the split because they paid nothing. Keep them in the group and in the expenses they agreed to share. Their paid amount stays zero, while their allocated shares create a negative balance to reimburse.
For a subgroup cost, enter only its participants in Shared by. Leave it blank only when everyone shares that expense. The payer remains credited for the full amount even if they are not one of its participants. Unknown or duplicate names are rejected rather than silently creating another person.
If the problem starts with one receipt and unequal orders, Split Bill Calculator works out those personal shares. This shared-expense page divides each selected expense equally. When choosing a voluntary gratuity before entering a complete restaurant expense, Tip Calculator calculates that addition.
Exact cents and the number of payments
Every expense is allocated in whole cents. If division leaves pennies, the earliest selected people in the main group list receive those pennies. Typing participants in a different order does not change that rule. The calculator splits each expense separately, so combining entries can change which person receives a leftover cent.
A balance is the amount paid minus the allocated share. The payments clear all balances to zero. For up to 16 nonzero balances, exact subset dynamic programming finds the maximum number of separate zero-sum groups, then settles within those groups. This yields the fewest direct payments. The mathematical zero-sum relationship is described by Verhoeff; the search cap is this calculator’s computational limit.
For example, the recorded test with five people paying 14.00, 13.00, 12.00, 5.00 and 6.00 toward equally shared costs leaves balances of 4.00, 3.00, 2.00, −5.00 and −4.00. The exact plan uses 3 payments, transferring 9.00 in total. A naive largest-balance matching can need an extra payment on this case.
With more than 16 nonzero balances, the tool gives a valid largest-balance matching plan and labels it without a minimum-count guarantee. A group may contain up to 20 people and 100 expense rows; settled people do not count toward the exact-search limit. These are input and computation limits, not financial or legal rules.