Group Expense Settle-Up Calculator
After a weekend away, one person paid for the hotel, another for petrol, a third for dinner, and everybody has a vague idea they are owed something. Paying everyone back individually means a payment between every pair. Netting everyone out first means a group of five never needs more than four payments, and often fewer, because most of what is owed simply cancels.
What this generator does
Adds up what everyone paid, works out each person's balance against an even share, then repeatedly has whoever is furthest behind pay whoever is furthest ahead until nobody owes anything.
How to use this tool
- List who is in the group.
- Enter each expense on its own line: who paid, what it was for, and how much.
- Work it out, and read the list of payments.
- Check the balances table to see who was ahead and who was behind.
Understanding the controls
- Who is in the group
- Names separated by commas. The total is divided evenly among everyone listed, whether or not they paid for anything.
- What was spent
- One line per expense: who paid, what it was for, how much. The description is carried through so the list stays readable.
Common use cases
- Squaring up after a group holiday or weekend away
- Settling a shared household's bills at the end of a month
- Working out who owes what after a group meal
- Settling costs for a stag or hen weekend
- Checking a splitting app's answer against the arithmetic
How this generator works
The payments are applied back to the balances and every person is checked to land on zero, which catches a rounding error as readily as a wrong figure. The balances are separately confirmed to cancel out, and the number of payments is checked against the guarantee that a group of any size never needs more than one payment fewer than there are people.
Randomness and fairness
Nothing is random. The same expenses always produce the same settlement.
For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.
Limitations and good to know
- The cost is split evenly among everyone in the group. Shares that vary by person, or expenses that only some people were part of, are not handled.
- One currency only, and amounts are rounded to two places, which can leave a penny in the wrong place on awkward totals.
- It finds few payments quickly rather than proving the fewest possible, which is a harder problem than it looks.
- It records what was spent, not what anybody agreed to spend.
Privacy and your data
Names and amounts stay in your browser. Nothing about your group's spending is transmitted or stored.
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