Split your household bills

31 Jan 2019
Jon Byrne

Living with housemates has several benefits. It's an excellent way to meet new people and forge new friendships, and your living expenses are typically lower than if you lived on your own. One of the key challenges you may come across when you live with housemates is budgeting for common items and splitting household bills. As banking in Australia continues to become more technologically advanced, several apps have made it easier than ever to make sure everyone is paying their share of the household bills. Here are four apps that make splitting bills with your housemates quick and easy.

Easyshare
Developed especially for housemates, Easyshare makes it easy to upload bills and keep everyone in the loop on what's owed. To use the app, users simply download the app, add their payment details and invite their housemates to join. When a bill arrives, you can add the bill to the app. The app will calculate each person's share and organise payment. This can be done with all of the usual household expenses such as rent, electricity, gas, and internet. For other items such as shared groceries, you can set up an IOU to let a housemate know what's owing. The app will then debit the housemate's account. A 1.5 per cent transaction fee is charged for every transaction through the app.

Splitr
With Splitr, you can take a photo of a bill and the app will calculate the amount owing by each housemate. This app requires one person to make payment and collects reimbursements from the other housemates. For bills with a collection of items, such as a big grocery shop, you can assign payment for specific items to specific housemates.

Splitwise
With several features such as mediation services and "fairness" calculators, Splitwise is one of the more robust payment splitting apps available. To get started, add bill information into the app and detail how much money each housemate owes. The app also features an online ledger. This is handy if you want to keep track of multiple transactions and have a housemate pay you back in a lump sum.

The "fairness" calculator in the Splitwise app uses crowdsourced data to determine how costs should be split based on room size, air-conditioning and if housemates have shared or private bathrooms. Splitwise is free to download and doesn't have any transaction fees.

Finch
With Finch, users open a Finch account. This allows users to add funds to the Finch account. Credit and debit card details can also be added to make payments. If you make payments from the Finch account, there are no transaction fees. Money transfers between Finch users are instant.

With these apps, splitting the bills and other household expenses with your housemates doesn't have to be a headache. To make sure everyone is on the same page about splitting bills, it could be worthwhile having a short catch-up between all housemates, so you can all decide on an app, download it, and add each other straight away.

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