Free resource
Expense splitting spreadsheet template
A real workbook, not a screenshot: you enter the expenses, it works out everyone's share to the cent, the balances, and a sequence of repayments.
Plain .xlsx file, no macros and no sign-up.
The five sheets
- 📘
Read me
How it works: weight conventions, the rounding rule, and the settle-up method.
- 🧾
Expenses
One row per expense: date, description, payer, amount, and a weight per participant.
- 🔍
Owed detail
Calculated. What each expense costs each person, with a per-row check column.
- ⚖️
Balances
Paid, owed and net balance per person, plus the overall consistency checks.
- 🤝
Settle Up
A transfer sequence recalculated automatically from the balances.
Weights, rather than tick boxes
Every expense has one column per participant. Enter 0 for someone who is not involved, 1 for a normal share, 2 for a double share, 0.5 for a half share. Only the ratio between the weights matters, which covers both a dinner two people missed and a rent where one bedroom is worth one and a half shares.
| Person | Weight | Calculated share |
|---|---|---|
| Ana | 1 | 26.54 |
| Ben | 1 | 26.54 |
| Chloe | 0 | 0.00 |
| Dan | 1 | 26.54 |
| Eve | 1 | 26.54 |
| Farid | 1 | 26.54 |
Total allocated: 132.70, exactly the amount entered.
Why no cent goes missing
A spreadsheet cannot reproduce a largest-remainder allocation directly. The workbook therefore uses a deterministic rule, spelled out in the Read me sheet: the cumulative share of the first n participants is rounded, and each individual share is the difference between two successive cumulative values.
Rule applied to every expense
share(n) = ROUND(amount × cumulative weights(n) ÷ total weight, 2) − ROUND(amount × cumulative weights(n−1) ÷ total weight, 2)
Those differences telescope: they always add back up to the rounded amount of the expense. Any leftover cent lands on the same person for the same input, and the check column verifies it row by row.
The settle-up sheet
Settle Up uses a greedy method: the largest debtor repays the largest creditor, and it repeats until every balance is zero. For six people that means at most five transfers. It is a practical, reproducible method rather than a proven minimum: another combination may occasionally need one transfer fewer.
When a spreadsheet is enough, and when it gets in the way
A workbook is ideal when one person keeps the accounts: a weekend, a rental, a stable flatshare budget. Everything is visible, editable and easy to archive.
It becomes tiring the moment several people want to log expenses at the same time, from their phones, during the trip. That is exactly what a shared group does: everyone adds their own expenses, balances recalculate, and nobody waits until they are home to know where they stand.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need Excel to use it?
No. The file also opens in LibreOffice Calc and Numbers, and imports into Google Sheets: every formula it uses is standard. There is no separate native Google Sheets version.
How many people and expenses does it hold?
Six named participants and a hundred expense rows. You can copy the formulas further down, but a workbook gets awkward once several people need to maintain it together.
Are there macros or tracking?
None. No macros, no external connections, no tracker, no email required. It is a plain .xlsx file, produced by a public script in our repository.
Do the cents actually add up?
Yes, by construction. The Owed detail sheet has a check column that must stay at 0.00 on every row, and the Balances sheet verifies that the total allocated equals the total spent.
Editorial review — Written and reviewed by the Pivunio team. The methods described here are the ones the app itself uses, and they are covered by automated tests.