Trip Splitter - Options to increase speed by minimalizing entries

Trip Splitter has many short-cut options to increase data entry speed by minimalizing entries made.  Take advantage of these options and you may reduce the (already fast) Trip Splitter entry time which allows more time enjoying your trip.

Option	Description	How
Default Participants and Payer	Quite often many of trip expenses will involve the same people. And sometimes one person pays almost every time. If that is true for, set that configuration of splitters and payers as the default. When a new expense is created, the time of specifying the splitters and payer will be saved.	Settings, Options, Display, Set "Simple User Interface" to No.  This "No" setting creates a sliding button bar at the bottom of the Trip Splitter screen. Swipe to the left to view the trip participants. Touch each participant that is to be a default.  Touch the default payer one more time.
Quick Add Item Button	Rather than go to the Menu and touch Add Item to add an expense, just touch the + button.	The quick add item button (+) is new in Trip Splitter 3.0.9.
Quick Expense Type Selection	Set "Simple User Interface" to No, and a item type button bar will be displayed at the bottom of the main item list. Touching a type icon will create a new expense item of that type, thus eliminating the need to touch the expense type icon.	Set simple User Interface to No.
Default Participants and Payer Plus Quick Expense Type Selection	By setting the default participants and payer plus using the quick expense type selection, creating a new expense item is shortened to entering the amount and touching Done. Of course, the optional memo, payment method and photos may also be added.	Set simple User Interface to No and use Quick Expense Type Selection.
Allow access to iPhone Location Services	As an item description is entered, a list of business names near your location will be displayed.	iPhone Settings, Privacy, Location Services, set to On for Trip Splitter.
Use Current Users on Create	If your travel companions are always the same, this option is for you. When a new trip is created, the participants from the previous trip will be automatically included. Be careful though, because the users are "linked" across the trips so that if you change a name, email address or photo, that change will be made to all the trips created with that user.	Settings, Options, Set Use Current Users on Create to Yes.

New user interface Trip Splitter 3.0.9 - Faster and simpler

What's new in the 3.0.9 release?

Some really great enhancements are now available in Trip Splitter 3.0.9.  This version was released to the iTunes store on June 30, 2015. The most exciting enhancements are improvements to the user interface.

Improved User Interface - Trip Splitter 3.0.9 will guide the user through new trip or item entries. For example, to add an expense to a trip, simply press the prominent new "+" button. An amount field will appear. As the amount is entered, "Select Who Paid" and then "Select Who Split" prompts will be present. As these are selected, the Item Type will pop up, followed by Item Name. We've done away with the More/Less approach and now have just a scrollable screen to show all the data about an expense. Less important data is still positioned at the end. And we've made scrolling safer by depicting the date/time as a button so you can't accidentally change the date of an expense with a scrolling gesture.

Additionally, most screens now also work in landscape orientation.

The main menu button has been moved to a more standard position at the left of the top bar. Photos of users/splitters are now fully integrated into the payers and splitters specification process.

And the larger screen sizes of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are taken advantage of.


Other enhancements include:

• Item payment type (cash, credit card, etc) defaults to what you used on the previous item.
• Splitter’s full name, in addition to button name, included in financial emails.
• Setting added (Settings/Display) for a “Simpler User Interface”. For now, the only thing affected is the buttons bar at the bottom of the main view.
• Totals/Even up Screen is only brought up from the menu now (not from rotating the main view).
• There is a floating “Done” button to finish from anywhere when scrolling in an item screen.
• When editing individual amounts for uneven splits, once a person’s amount has been specified, the background is turned green to indicate that it cannot be changed until the whole set of usage amounts are reset.
• Moved the Even/Uneven split toggle button up to the Payers split area.
• Better layout and sizing of screens on the iPad.
• Performance improvements in scrolling the main list and in bringing up the item editing screen.
• Pointed to Trip Splitter Blog and Journ Blog from Settings/Help in all splitters.

Trip Splitter 3.0.9 is expected to be released in the next month. We cannot wait to share this new and improved version with you!

Trip Splitter - One of "10 Essential Travel Apps"

According to Paste Magazine, Trip Splitter is one of "10 Essential Travel Apps for the iPhone and iPad".  Article author Jennifer Allen states "Traveling with friends and want to keep track of who owes what? Trip Splitter makes it exceptionally easy, allowing you to quickly split bills and keep a tab on what everyone owes. It should save plenty of arguments, plus ensures you always know how your finances are faring."

We agree!  Make Trip Splitter one of your spring break companions by downloading now.

To read the entire Paste Magazine's March 5, 2015 article click here.

Spring Break - You manage the fun and let Trip Splitter manage the money

By now, your spring break plans have been made, destination selected, travel/hotel arranged and travel mates selected.  Much of this preparation may have been accomplished with apps.  Do not, however, allow your app advantage to stop there.  When traveling with friends and sharing expenses, Trip Splitter is the app to use.  With Trip Splitter, you can concentrate on the fun and not managing the money.

Trip Splitter is an app designed to simplify the tracking, management and sharing of group travel expenses.

To begin tracking expenses with Trip Splitter, simply create a new trip and enter the travelers (unlimited number).  Trip Splitter provides preset expense categories such as food, lodging and gas and an “Other”.  As an expense occurs (in any currency), select the category, the amount, who participated and who paid.  To help with naming the expense, Trip Splitter will even suggest a list of names of establishments where the expense was entered.  In addition, photos of receipts can be taken and managed with Trip Splitter. At any time during the trip, Trip Splitter can provide a detailed report of who has paid for what and when and who owes.

Tech Traverse included Trip Splitter in their list of Spring Break Apps of 2014. According to this review, with Trip Splitter “All you have to do is make an entry whenever someone pays for your beer. It is very easy to use and most of its features are self-explanatory. Also, it will help you to keep your expenses under control.”
Trip Splitter has other received significant recognition including:

• “App of the Week” by ABC Technology Review,
• “Top 7 Travel Budget Planning iPhone Applications” by TechGainer,
• “50 Ultimate Travel Apps” by CNN Travel, and
• A rating of 4+/5.0 by Trip Splitter customers.

So, whether its dinner and drinks or trekking across Africa with friends, Trip Splitter is an easy way to stay within budget and manage expenses when sharing costs with friends.   Trip Splitter was developed by DC Software Arts for  iPad or iPhone use and is available in the iTunes store. Click here to download the Trip Splitter app.

Note: if you want to track and split expenses as Trip Splitter does, but you would also like to track and share other things about your trip, like a GPS log of everywhere you went, check out our Journ app at the iTunes store.

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.