Expense Splitting Guide

Feature overview

How it works

1. Add expenses as they happen—dinner, transport, activities. Enter amount and who paid.
2. Brunchie calculates who owes whom. No manual math.
3. Settle up when you're ready. Open the settle-up view and you'll see each recipient's preferred payment details right there—no need to chase anyone for their Venmo handle or bank info. Mark payments and watch balances clear.
4. Upload receipts—attach receipts to expenses for records. No need for separate apps or digging through photos later.

Use cases

• Group trips: flights, hotels, meals, activities
• Dinners: split the bill evenly or by item
• Events: shared costs for venue, catering, decorations
• Bachelorette / bach trips (in their own hangout) — see the bachelorette setup guide

Heads up: expenses and "additional guests" hangouts are mutually exclusive

If your hangout allows additional guests (+1s), the Expenses tab is hidden. This is by design: an elastic headcount can't be split fairly because the people on the bill keep changing after it was logged. Brunchie keeps the two features mutually exclusive on purpose.

What to do instead:

• Want to split costs anyway? Turn off "Allow additional guests" in the hangout's settings. The Expenses tab comes back immediately.
• Want to split for just a subset of attendees? Make a separate hangout for that group, don't allow additional guests on it, and track expenses there. Link it back to the main hangout in the description if you want.
• Wedding budgets are a different case — they default to host-private mode where only the cohost team sees the split. See the wedding planning guide for that flow.

Upload receipts

Attach receipts to expenses so you have a clear record of what was paid. Snap a photo or upload a file—Brunchie keeps it with the expense. Better yet: tap Scan Receipt at the top of a new expense and Brunchie reads the merchant, amount, date, currency, and category from the photo automatically. You can edit anything before saving.

Tips

• Add expenses as you go—don't wait until the end.
• Use the settle-up view to see the minimum number of payments needed.
• Recipient tip: set your preferred payment methods in your profile so anyone who owes you can pay without having to ask. They'll see your details right on the settle-up screen.
• Link expenses to a hangout so they live alongside your guest list, itinerary, and seating chart.
• For international trips, Brunchie handles multi-currency expenses — log in the local currency and settle in yours.
• Settle-up reminders fire 3 and 10 days after the event — then stop. Brunchie won't nag you for pennies' worth of rounding leftovers either.

Related guides

• Group Trip Planning — full trip workflow with expenses, itinerary, and polls
• Bachelorette Setup Guide — the bach trip in its own hangout with peer settle-up
• Importing Data — paste a guest list and import seating charts alongside expenses
• Wedding Planning — wedding budgets are host-private; bach trips run separately

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