01
How an expense becomes a balance
Splex first looks at the payment shares. If one person paid the whole bill, that is simple. If several people paid parts of the bill, Splex treats each payer as having covered that proportion of every owed share.
Example: Alex and Sam pay 60 and 40 for a 100 bill. Dana owes 50 of that bill. Dana's 50 is split across the payers in the same 60/40 ratio, so Dana owes Alex 30 and Sam 20.
After that, opposing debts between the same two people are netted. If Alex owes Sam 12 and Sam owes Alex 5, the displayed debt is Alex owes Sam 7.
02
Where the cents go
Money is stored in cents. When an equal split cannot be divided evenly, Splex distributes the leftover cents deterministically instead of losing them.
A 10.00 expense split equally between three people becomes 3.34, 3.33, and 3.33. No cent is lost, and no cent is counted twice.
Exact splits and percentage splits also have to add up to the total after rounding to cents. If they do not, the form shows how much is still missing or over.
03
How settlements change balances
A settlement is a recorded payment from one participant to another. It subtracts from the debt in that direction. If you record that Alex paid Sam 20, Alex's debt to Sam is reduced by 20.
The amount you enter can be in another currency. For balances, Splex converts the settlement into the group or friendship currency using the rate for the day the settlement is created.
Deleting a settlement removes it from the balance calculation, but the activity history still keeps a record that it existed.
04
Simplified debt
In groups, the normal view can show the real pairwise debts. The simplified view keeps each person's final net balance the same, but reduces the number of payments needed to settle the group.
Example: Alex owes Bea 5, Bea owes Chris 10, and Chris owes Alex 5. Alex's net is zero, Bea's net is -5, and Chris's net is +5. The simplified result is just: Bea pays Chris 5.
This does not rewrite old expenses and it does not change any balance. It only changes which settlements are suggested in the balance details.
05
Preferred payment methods
Each person can save a preferred payment method in their account settings. It tells the people who owe you money how you would like to be paid.
When someone wants to pay you in the settlement dialog, Splex shows how you would like to receive the payment. Registered people in the same active group or friendship can see your payment method; unrelated users cannot.
For paypal.me handles, Splex opens a PayPal link with the amount and currency filled in where possible. For PayPal email addresses, Splex shows the email and opens PayPal's normal send-money page. Either way, Splex does not make the payment for you and does not know whether PayPal was completed. You still have to save the settlement in Splex.
Common questions
Does simplified debt change the balance?
No. It changes only the suggested payment path. Each person's net amount stays the same.
Why can one person get the extra cent in an equal split?
Because the total has to add up exactly. Splex stores money in cents, so any leftover cents from an equal split are assigned deterministically instead of disappearing.
Read next
Documentation
Adding expenses in Splex
How expense entry works in Splex: nearby suggestions, calculator fields, currencies, split methods, multiple payers, locations, receipts, and offline sync.
Documentation
Friends and groups in Splex
How friends, groups, invites, unregistered members, archives, deletion, leaving, and member removal work in Splex.