Add up everything spent, divide by the number of people for a share, and subtract what each person already paid. Whoever is negative owes; whoever is positive is owed. Then match the biggest debtor to the biggest creditor so the group settles in a handful of transfers instead of everyone sending everyone three small Venmos.
Three people paid for three things, and now the thread has four different totals in it. Someone “already sent Priya something” and nobody is sure whether that was for the cake or the balloons. The problem is not arithmetic; it is that nobody nets it out before paying.
Work out each person’s balance — paid minus share — before anyone sends money. A ten-person party with three payers usually settles in six or seven transfers; done the naive way it is twenty-one. It also stops the double-payment problem, because there is one list and one number per person.
Decide upfront whether the host’s spending is a contribution or an expense. If the hosts have said “we’ve got the venue, split the rest”, mark them as covered so they owe no share; otherwise everyone, hosts included, pays an equal share and the hosts are reimbursed the difference.
Free · who owes whom in the fewest payments · share as a link
Equal shares of the total, netted against what each person already paid, settled in the fewest transfers. Decide first whether the hosts’ spending is a contribution or an expense.
One expense, one payer, everyone else pays the buyer an equal share. Send the settle-up with the group card so the two arrive together.
No. The splitter runs in the browser and the whole split travels inside the link you copy, so nobody signs up for anything.