Most trip fights are not about money. They are about money nobody wrote down. A little structure up front fixes that.
Before you leave
- Make one group for the trip and add everyone, even friends who are not on Settl yet.
- Decide who books what: one person for the stay, one for transport. Fewer payers means fewer payments at the end.
On the trip: log it the same day
Add expenses as they happen, even with no signal: Settl saves them on your phone and syncs later. For a dinner where not everyone drank, use Itemized and assign drinks to the people who had them.
Watch the graph, not the guilt
The trip's split graph shows who is ahead and who is behind. If one person has paid for everything, someone else picks up the next few bills instead of waiting for a big settle-up.
Within a day of getting home
- Turn on Simplify debts for the trip. It reduces the number of payments without changing what anyone owes in total.
- Everyone pays what the app says over UPI.
- The person receiving taps Received. Done.
Ask Scrooge "how much did we spend on Goa trip?" afterwards if you want the number for the group chat.
