A handy spreadsheet for keeping track of costs across a group of people. It’s ideal for house sharers splitting bills or friends splitting the costs of meals and holidays etc.
The idea behind it is simple –
- Anyone can pay for anything that’s agreed to be shared in full or in part and it gets added to their personal total.
- Whoever has the lowest personal total in the group is the next “to buy”.
- If they do buy the next thing, their personal total is increased and if it’s no longer the lowest, it’s someone else’s turn “to buy”
- Of course, if someone buys when it is not technically their turn, it just gets added to their total and it’ll be longer before it’s their turn “to buy”
I started using it to track online grocery shopping, but it quickly got expanded to cover car costs, holidays, and household bills etc.
Links
View the Spreadsheet – View the Share The Cost Spreadsheet
Start using the spreadsheet – Start Using the Share the Cost Spreadsheet
Take a Look
- View the Share The Cost Spreadsheet
- View the Summary Tab, it shows:
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- Who is next to buy
- Total Spend / week
- Average spend / person
- How much each person has spent more than the person who has spent the least
- The total each person has spent
- Pie Chart of spend by category
- Graph of Cumulative Spend by person over time
- Bar Chart of individual transaction Amount by Person over time
- Chart of average weekly spend over time
- View the Data Tab
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- There is some example data to demonstrate usage
- Every transaction has its own line
- There can be more than one transaction per date
- The dates must be in order, but it doesn’t have to include every date
- Each transaction can have contributions from different people for different amounts
- Each transaction is associated with a category from as select box
- Each transaction can have some notes associated with it
Instructions for Use
- Getting Started
- Open the Share the Cost Spreadsheet
- Sign into your Google Account
- Go to “File”, then “Make a copy”
- Give your version a name
- Click “OK”
- Setting Up
- Go to “Set Up” Tab
- Enter a correct start date (in the green box)
- Enter up to 4 people’s names (in the green area)
- If necessary change the categories to ones that are appropriate (in the green area)
- Go to the “Data” tab
- Select the cell range A3: G23
- Press Delete to remove the example transactions
- Entering Records
- Go to the “Data” tab
- On the next free row, enter the date of the transaction
- Enter how much each person contributed to the transaction
- Choose a transaction category from the select box
- Enter some notes to describe the transaction
- Enter the next transaction