Wednesday, August 29, 2012

taxes & tips, summary, and easier split

It's pretty common for different people to order different things at restaurants: some get drinks, some get deserts, and some get bigger entries (or even two!). As many of you know, our shared bills already support multiple items. If only Mary and John had drinks, you may specify each item and their share so only they should pay for it.

Taxes and Tips


Many of you like the fact that we support itemized bills, and some have requested the support for "taxes and tips".  If you're in a country where taxes or tips are necessary, this new feature would split the taxes and tips amounts proportionally to each person's share on the rest of the bill.

To use this new feature, click on the "add taxes and tips" when editing a shared bill.


Once you enter the taxes and tips amounts, each person's share would be automatically calculated for you.
The back-end calculations are not too simple, and although you shouldn't run into issues, let us know if you think you've found a bug.

Bill Summary

Many a-times you may want to know each person's share or what impact a bill has on each person. We're happy to announce the "bill summary" feature that displays the summary of each person for shared bills.

You would be able to view the share of each person, how much they paid, and how much net effect of the bill on each person.
This summary panel is located at the bottom of each shared bill. As well, "settle details" have been moved to this section as well.

Splitting costs

We've also made it easier to specify the share of each person, with fewer clicks and more options. When you change the "split" within a shared bill, you would now see something like this:

You can select who's involved with the check boxes on the left (as before). We have changed the options for splitting to include Even x 2 and Even x 3, for those who may be paying for others. What that basically means is that a person specified to split "evenly x 2" would share twice as much as a person specified to split "evenly". You can see this in the example above where Mary's share is twice as much as Tom's.

We have also taken out "custom percentage" to simplify the plans we have for this feature ahead. Custom amounts are still available, and the percentages are still there to help you see each person's share as a percentage.

As you can tell, we're working very hard to push out features to please you guys. Hopefully this has been helpful. Let us know if you run into issues.

Happy splitting!
-Billsup team

13 comments:

  1. This is really helpful.

    The only missing link is to make the Debt Shuffle option non-default.
    If I don't want to end up paying some random guy I don't know, I should have the facility to make such a choice.

    Thanks,

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Pranshant, thanks for your feedback. Debt shuffle option is non-default. In fact, we don't shuffle your debts around unless you ask us to (we call it "debt transfer"). You have full control of who is involved in debt transfer so strangers won't have to pay each other. See http://blog.billsup.com/2012/08/yes-its-coming.html for more details.

      Delete
  2. You guys are AWESOME, this is great feature work in a very short time

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good features. I want to report a small problem.
    Can you let any one involved in the transaction edit it. Right now only the person who created it could edit the bill. Some times there's a chance he could split the bill in a wrong way. Instead of asking him to edit the bill,the others could correct it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Good features. Want to add a little more on other issue.
    Can you let all the people involved in a transaction permission to edit it instead of just it's creator. Will be useful if the person who created the bill messed it. Instead of waiting for him to correct it,the others could edit it directly.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "custom percentage" was a good feature. I don't know why its so tough to support when you can support things like "Even x 3".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thanks for your comment, we may choose to keep it for now.

      Delete
  6. You guys really doing great work... we all know everyday users of billsup are increasing so we just hope you will be having high servers... so that we can access site all the time with out delay :)

    Cheers to you team
    Chetan

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hey folks

    Is it possible to get an application for Windows Phone in near future?

    I know i can open browser can connect but it is very useful if there is an app

    Thanks
    Sreekar

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. we're developing this and it will be available soon. thanks for your request.

      Delete
  8. wooooo! awesome!
    you guys are super responsive to suggestions :)
    thanks again

    ReplyDelete
  9. Seems like there is one bug in billsup. The one who uploads the bills gets the more of the share among the group. For example, if the price of the item is $5 which is split among 6 people, the guy uploading the bill has to pay $0.85. For each item his share is more.

    May I please know if you are planning to put a fix for this bug?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hi sac, thanks for noticing this. This is actually by design: whenever an item cannot be split evenly, the "extra" amounts get split between the first X participants.

      For example:
      if there are 10 people and the bill is $10.02, then 2 people need to pay $1.01 (0.01 more than the others) - otherwise the total amount would not be correct if you add up everyone's amount.

      Currently the "victim" of the extra amount is the first X people - in the future we may make this more customized or randomized so that the first guy don't always end up with the extra.

      Delete

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