How to split a bill unevenly
Splitting evenly is quick, and it is fair when everybody had about the same. It stops being fair when one person had a salad and another a steak, or when one of three flatmates has the room twice the size. There are three honest ways to split unevenly; which one fits depends on what you know about the bill.
1. By exact amounts
Use it when you can say who had what: a restaurant bill with separate dishes, tickets at different prices.
Everybody's part is the sum of their own lines. The check is simple — the parts must add up to the bill:
| Amount | |
|---|---|
| Anna | 31.00 |
| Boris | 24.40 |
| You | 32.00 |
| Bill | 87.40 |
Anything nobody claims — a shared bottle, a service charge — is split evenly and added to each part.
2. By shares
Use it when exact amounts make no sense but "equal" is not right either: rent for rooms of different sizes, a holiday house where one family brought two more people.
Agree on shares, not on money. If the large room counts as two shares and the two small ones as one each, there are four shares. A rent of 900.00 is 225.00 per share: 450.00 for the large room and 225.00 for each small one.
The shares stay the same next month even if the rent changes, which is why they are worth agreeing on once.
3. Only among those who took part
Often the bill is split evenly — but not among everyone. The taxi two of you took, the museum one of you skipped, the wine for those who drink.
This is not a special way of dividing; it is an answer to the question "for whom?" asked for every expense. It is also where group trips most often go wrong: an expense is quietly split among all, and somebody pays for a thing they were not part of.
The cent that is left over
100.00 for three does not divide: three times 33.33 is 99.99. Do not ignore the cent — give it to somebody, 33.34 + 33.33 + 33.33, so that the parts add up to the bill. Over a long trip the missing cents are what makes the final balances refuse to come out even.
How SplitKit does it
In SplitKit every expense is split in one of three ways: equally, by exact amounts or by shares — among the members you tick. The left-over cents are spread so that the parts always add up to the amount.
Each expense shows your part next to its total, so everybody can check their own. A record cannot be edited: a wrong one is deleted and entered again.
SplitKit works in Telegram and is free for up to 3 groups of your own. Open SplitKit in Telegram.