Free tool
Who owes who calculator
Enter each person's balance — positive if they are owed money, negative if they owe some. The tool returns the list of payments that brings everyone back to zero.
Each person's net balance
- €
- €
- €
Positive = this person should be paid back. Negative = they owe money. E.g. -12.50.
Payments to make
Enter the amounts to see the result.
The tool reduces the number of transfers by matching the largest debtor with the largest creditor. The result is always exact and deterministic, but it is not guaranteed to be the absolute minimum number of transfers.
Everything is computed in your browser: nothing is stored or sent.
Whole-cent arithmetic with a largest-remainder distribution of the leftovers: the shares are checked against the total by automated tests.
For tracking several expenses over time, with your friends.
What the calculator expects
This tool starts from balances, not from individual expenses. For each person, enter a positive amount if the group owes them money (they paid more than their share) and a negative amount if they still owe. If you do not know the balances yet, work them out first from what each person paid and what each person owed.
All the balances must add up to exactly zero, and that is the single most useful check. Until they do, the tool shows the gap instead of a wrong payment plan — a balance is missing, or an amount was copied incorrectly.
How the plan is built
At each step, the person who owes the most pays the person who is owed the most, for the largest amount possible. Repeat until every balance sits at zero. The result is deterministic: the same balances always produce the same transfers, in the same order.
In practice this produces at most one transfer fewer than the number of people, which is more than good enough for a group of friends. It does not claim to find the absolute minimum number of transfers in every case: that problem is far more expensive to solve, for limited practical gain.
After the calculation
A payment plan is only worth something once it is actually carried out. Record who paid what as you go, and tick the transfers off as they happen: that is exactly what a Pivunio group does, without anyone having to retype the balances.
Frequently asked questions
Where do I find each person's balance?
A balance is what someone paid minus what they owed. If Leah spent £200 for the group while her fair share was £137.60, her balance is +£62.40. The guide on calculating who owes who walks through that step by step.
Why must the balances add up to zero?
Because every unit of money spent was fronted by someone and owed by someone. If the total is not zero, a person is missing from the list or one balance is wrong. Fixing the gap before paying saves you from redoing transfers later.
Can we settle differently from what the tool suggests?
Of course. The plan is a practical suggestion, not a rule. As long as everyone ends at zero, any combination of transfers works — this one simply keeps the number of payments low.
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.