Author Topic: Shared expenses spreadsheet?  (Read 2995 times)

misterhorsey

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Shared expenses spreadsheet?
« on: June 04, 2017, 01:55:33 AM »
Hey all

Can anyone point me in the direction of a google docs based spreadsheet for allocating and dividing shared expenses?

I need one to calculate shared expenses in my share house, where different people pay different amounts for different things.

I used one a while ago to share camping expenses and it worked a treat.  It tallies up all the expenses and then sets up a reconciliation where all the participants pay each other to balance out uneven expenditure, rather than pay into a central kitty or to a central banker. 

For example, Alice pays $50 for wood, Andrew pays $10 for Marshmallows, Alex pays $25 for groceries and Christiaan pays $30 for petrol. And then the spreadsheet calculates what everyone owes everyone.

However the one that worked previously seems to have broken. I've googled for other examples but can't seem to find any that work well. 

An excel example would work too but I'd prefer a google docs document as it's easier to share.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!


Proud Foot

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Re: Shared expenses spreadsheet?
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2017, 12:31:58 PM »
How good are you with spreadsheets?  All you would need to do is have a column for each person and enter the items they paid for on each row.  Total up the amount each person paid and the total paid and divide the total by the number of people.  Do the difference for each person to see if they then receive money or need to pay money.  This will tell you how much each person will need to do.  It will take seconds to then decide who pays what to who.

JHoward

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Re: Shared expenses spreadsheet?
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2017, 12:56:35 PM »
My roommates and I use splitwise for this and it works really well. We've even done complicated things with summer sublettors paying utilities for partial months, someone paying more than their share of a durable purchase in exchange for eventually getting to keep it, etc. It's easiest if everyone has and uses their own accounts but given that you can add bills/payments on behalf of other people it's not strictly necessary.

HipGnosis

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Re: Shared expenses spreadsheet?
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2017, 12:59:03 PM »
Personally, I wouldn't want to be in a situation where I'm relying on multiple people that aren't friends to pay me differing amounts month after month.   I can't imagine it working smoothly for long. 
And I wouldn't really want to pay different people different amounts every month.  It sounds like you're dumping some of the responsibility of being a landlord onto the tenants - whom have no agreements between each other.
And it sounds like you're already doing this, without having worked out how it's done. 
Perhaps this is a reason there aren't communes any more. 

misterhorsey

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Re: Shared expenses spreadsheet?
« Reply #4 on: June 08, 2017, 06:26:21 AM »
How good are you with spreadsheets?  All you would need to do is have a column for each person and enter the items they paid for on each row.  Total up the amount each person paid and the total paid and divide the total by the number of people.  Do the difference for each person to see if they then receive money or need to pay money.  This will tell you how much each person will need to do.  It will take seconds to then decide who pays what to who.

Not very but willing to give it a go. I'll have a mess around.  Some of the spreadsheets I've seen are very elegant in the way they manage payments from one person to another, however under the hood the formulas look rather complicated.

edit: oh and thanks!

misterhorsey

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Re: Shared expenses spreadsheet?
« Reply #5 on: June 08, 2017, 06:28:49 AM »
My roommates and I use splitwise for this and it works really well. We've even done complicated things with summer sublettors paying utilities for partial months, someone paying more than their share of a durable purchase in exchange for eventually getting to keep it, etc. It's easiest if everyone has and uses their own accounts but given that you can add bills/payments on behalf of other people it's not strictly necessary.

Thanks I'll check it out.  However, I would prefer to just be able to find a spreadsheet than mess around with an online platform with accounts and such. 

I have found a spreadsheet, but the formulas die when I import it into google docs so it can't live on the cloud.  So it may be that I just keep a tally and email it around to everyone for confirmation before reconciliation takes place.

misterhorsey

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Re: Shared expenses spreadsheet?
« Reply #6 on: June 08, 2017, 06:38:33 AM »
Personally, I wouldn't want to be in a situation where I'm relying on multiple people that aren't friends to pay me differing amounts month after month.   I can't imagine it working smoothly for long. 
And I wouldn't really want to pay different people different amounts every month.  It sounds like you're dumping some of the responsibility of being a landlord onto the tenants - whom have no agreements between each other.
And it sounds like you're already doing this, without having worked out how it's done. 
Perhaps this is a reason there aren't communes any more.

Perhaps I wasn't terribly clear in my initial description, but I think you've made a few mistaken assumptions about the scenario.

I'm not the landlord.

I'm actually one of the roomies in this share house. We all get along really well. We all trust each other. And we are setting up a kitty for shared expenses (cleaning products, spices, fire wood etc). So it's just an admin thing and having a spreadsheet empowers one of the housemates to go out and buy stuff on behalf of all the others and know that he/she will be reimbursed.