Explanation of CSV and TXT file email attachments

If you have the setting "Email/Include CSV and Text Files" turned on, then you will see the following 3 file attachments in any email you send from Trip Splitter.

1. The Archive .txt file contains all the information that Trip Splitter maintains about expense items. Besides the who paid/who split information, it contains the GPS location information and what is called the "Place" information which in the USA would be things like State, County, City, address, zip code. In other countries local conventions are followed.  This file is a "tab delimited file" and can be imported into other spreadsheet applications that accept such file formats for import.

2. The Splitters .txt file is a tab delimited file of the expense split information. It is designed to be importable into the Google spreadsheet template (discussed below) that can be used to verify your split results. It can also be used to import into other spread sheet applications for general use.

There is a Google spreadsheet template that can be used to verify your split results using the Splitters .txt file.  If you have from 5 to 8 splitters however, then be aware that the last line of that template does not correctly handle reporting the results. The item expense information in the .txt file can be copied and pasted into the shared expenses spreadsheet template. The template may only work with currency formatted in the US standard - periods for decimal places and commas for thousands separators.  The template is at: http://docs.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0As3tAuweYU9QcHlVM3hrY2tocEkzS1hOWEtObTNsZGc&mode=public

3. The Splitters .csv file is a legacy format and contains the expense split information in a comma separated format. However, the Google expense template discussed above was changed to not accept csv files, but tab delimited files, so the CSV file should not be used any longer. Also, if you have commas in any of the exported fields like Name, they will mess up any csv dependent processing. Commas are removed from numeric exports. That however, may cause problems in currencies that use commas as the decimal separator.

Explanation of Trip Splitter's Even-Up Algorithm

First of all, a quick overview of how to use Trip Splitter optimally. It is designed to make everything about sharing expenses fast and easy to do. If you are having trouble with anything, you probably aren't using Trip Splitter correctly.


First define a trip and all your participants. (Menu button, My Trips, New Trip)

Then you enter expenses as they occur, indicating who paid and who participated.

At the end of the trip (or anytime to see the current situation), you turn the device sideways and you will see the minimum number of inter-person payments that would even everyone up. These are called "even-up" payments.

You can also send an email at any time which will summarize all of this. The first table in that email details the "even-up" payments. The second table summarizes all the expenses by person and their total amounts of payments and total amounts of usage.


When people first start using Trip Splitter, they sometimes create a small number of expenses and test the even up algorithms.  The even up algorithm sometimes created non-intuitive payments because it is designed to create the minimum number of payments between the parties to even up. The non-intuitive results show up most often when looking at a small number of expenses. You might get a situation where one person is to pay another person and those two people didn't even participate in any of the same expenses.


But it is correct, because Trip Splitter has an algorithm that creates the minimum number of even-up transactions between all the participants, and doesn't just look at the relative usage/payments between specific pairs of people.  Because of user requests we are looking at supporting variations on the even up process, such as taking into account people who are financially coupled like spouses, or making everyone even-up in relation to one other participant, like a trip leader who pays most of the expenses. But right now, no changes are scheduled.


In a recent release, we added an explanation of the even-up process that is displayed in cases of 10 or fewer expense items, to help with the possible non-intuitive results. I'll include that here as an added explanation of what is going on.


If these even up payments do not seem intuitive or accurate, please consider that our algorithm is based on creating the fewest number of inter-person payments. The goal, obviously, is for everyone to pay out exactly the amount of their portion of the expenses they were involved in. Once the totals of everyones' payments and expenses are calculated, the person owing the most is marked to make a payment to the person who overpaid the most, etc. This may result in payments between people who didn't even participate together in a shared expense, and that can be confusing. But you can verify it is accurate by sending an email of the expenses, and the tables there will show how much each person paid and how much each person used of the shared expenses.


As the note mentions, the way to satisfy yourself that everything is accurate is to examine the first two tables in the financial email. The second table shows you how much each person used of all the expenses and how much each person paid toward all the expenses. If those two amounts aren't the same for each person, then they either overpaid or underpaid. The first table shows who would pay who how much to make it all come up even.

Backing up your Trip Splitter data

Your Trip Splitter data is stored in a database on your iPhone or iPad. Only the Trip Splitter app can access this database, but since release 3.0, you can manually get to the database via iTunes.  So you can now backup your Trip Splitter data if you desire. And you can restore it if you need to. This is a Trip Splitter unique backup technique - if you are backing up your whole iPhone, then you are backed up for cases like losing your phone or a total crash of your phone.  But if you have a lot of data in your Trip Splitter records and you would feel better having a backup copy of the database, that is now possible.

Here are the steps for backing up. This is for iTunes running on a Mac, you'll have to make a few translations if you are running on a PC.

1. Connect your iPhone (or iPad) to your computer running iTunes.
2. Select that device from the devices listed in the upper right corner of iTunes.
3. When your phone's information is shown in the main window, go to the Apps tab.
4. Scroll down to the File Sharing section and select Trip Splitter in the list on the left (there should be a list of apps on the left).
5. Go into the panel to the right that should now be called "Trip Splitter Documents" and there should be a folder called "SharedCoreDataStores" in the list. It should be the only thing in the list.
6. Position the iTunes window so that a part of your desktop is showing and drag that "SharedCoreDataStores" folder out and drop it onto the desktop (this won't affect the copy on your phone)
7. If you have a large database, a progress bar will show in the top-center panel of iTunes. 
8. When the transfer is complete, get Finder running and find that file and right click on it and change the name to something like SharedCoreDataStores20130906.pkg.  It is important to give it a file type of .pkg. This turns the folder and the contained database into the kind of data object that can be restored back to Trip Splitter later.

To restore Trip Splitter back to a previous backup copy:

1. Connect your iPhone (or iPad) to your computer running iTunes.
2. Make sure Trip Splitter is truly terminated.
3. Select that phone from the devices listed in the upper right corner of iTunes.
4. When your phone's information is shown in the main window, go to the Apps tab.
5. Scroll down to the File Sharing section and select Trip Splitter in the list on the left (should be a list of apps on the left).
6. Go into the panel to the right that should now be called "Trip Splitter Documents" and there should be a folder called "SharedCoreDataStores" in the list. 
7. That folder will be the database that you are about to overwrite. You can't actually overwrite it though, so you have to delete it or change the name first.  Change the name if you think you might want to ever go back to that version of the database.
8. Now, in Finder, find the backup copy (in this example, the file named SharedCoreDataStores20130906.pkg
9. Drag this file to the Trip Splitter Documents window in iTunes.
10. Change the name of the file back to the original "SharedCoreDataStores", with no extension.
11. Start up Trip Splitter and it should be using the restored database.

We are now working on an upgrade to Trip Splitter that will help you track many more things about your trip than just your expenses.  Tentatively to be named "Trip Friday" as in Robinson Crusoe's "Man Friday", the faithful and personal assistant.  It is still a few months away.

In addition to the current expense types of entries, it has 4 new types: GPS logs (we call them Tracks) of your trips and treks, Events, Places and Notes.  At the end of the day, the Track will show where you went and 30 or so attributes of the track like how many miles, top speed, times moving and stopped, min and max elevations, etc. And you can have as many tracks a day as you want - one going all day for the trip record, and others for those individual hikes and special treks.

Each entry in your trip record can have any number of photos associated with it and we've got our own fantastic new camera view for making it easy to take and organize the photos, totally within Trip Friday.  You can tag photos with stars now, arrange the order, and add comments. And at the end of each day you can send out a "social" email and/or post the photos to Facebook for your friends and family to follow your experience.  There are plans for slide shows, web pages, and ebooks.

Managing the trip item list is getting easier. You can order the list forwards or backwards. You can group the items by day, week, month, quarter and year. You can number the groupings, e.g. Day 1, Week 1.  Functions like emails (social and financial), slide show, mapping, archiving can be done at the grouping level, the single item level, or the whole trip level.

At night we have a new "travel alarm mode" that displays beautiful clocks that we've moved in from our Art of Time application. While your phone is acting as a night-stand alarm clock, we archive the day's items and photos to your Google Drive account and post your selected photos to Facebook.

Trip Splitter recommended in the Austin American Statesman Newspaper

Thanks go out to our friend Sandra in Austin who let us know that Trip Splitter was recommended in an article about Apps that would help you traveling around the world.

Very quick review by Apple

Apple reviewed Trip Splitter very quickly this time. I submitted the binaries Monday night and they were on the store by late Wednesday afternoon. Normally, this step takes 10 or so days.

Even with the late availability Wednesday, there were 787 upgrades to the Trip Splitter and 567 to Trip Splitter Lite yesterday.  And no Tech Support emails so far! (there is a fairly complicated data migration step to CoreData on first launch)

Trip Splitter 3.0.0 about to be released to Apple

DC Software Arts is two "experienced" (old) programmers (Dave and Clif)  and a young artist/designer (Chris).  We have a number of iPhone apps in the store, but our best seller is a simple expense splitting app called Trip Splitter. It gets great reviews because it is pretty, well designed and works well.

The last few months have been spent converting the data storage mechanism to the more robust "Core Data" database in anticipation of adding iCloud support. While we were at it though, we did add the ability to delete splitters (users) from trips and the ability to undelete trips (there is a setting to change to allow this).

The code base for Trip Splitter also supports 4 other applications that we have in the app store - Trip Splitter Lite, Event Splitter, Divy It (roommate splitter) and Tailgate Splitter.  Most of the discussions in the blog will apply to all those apps.

This is the third major enhancement to Trip Splitter so the upcoming release is numbered 3.0.0.

The versions of the other apps are:
Trip Splitter Lite 3.0.0
Event Splitter 3.0.0
Divy It 2.0.0
Tailgate Splitter 2.0.0