Trip mode: one group, many expenses, one fair settlement
Holidays, city breaks, road trips, festivals, flatmates. A group in SumFair collects every expense over days or months, in any mix of currencies and payers, and settles it in the fewest transfers.
Groups: who is in and what they can do
A group is a set of people plus a ledger. Both a restaurant bill and a trip are groups; a trip just lives longer.
- Create a group
- Name, dates, base currency. That's all. The person who creates it is the host.
- Add people by link
- Share one link or QR code; each person joins with a first name. No accounts, no invitations by email, no app install.
- Manage participants
- The host can rename or remove a participant, lock the group, regenerate or expire the invite link, and hand over the host role.
- Roles
- Hosts edit anything and finalize. Participants add expenses they paid for, claim items and mark their own payments; they cannot change totals, payers or other people's shares.
- Save and reuse
- With a free account: saved groups, favourite people, group preferences, and a duplicate-group action for the next trip.
- Every change is logged
- “Maria changed the fuel split”, “Tom marked 214.75 as paid”. The audit trail is visible to everyone in the group.
Expenses a trip can hold
- Manual expense
- Taxi 60 EUR, paid by Alex, split equally. The everyday entry.
- Scanned receipt
- A restaurant bill inside the trip, split by item exactly like restaurant mode.
- Several payers
- Ski passes: Maria paid 320, James paid 100. Recorded as it happened instead of pretending one person paid.
- Expense for a subset
- Only three of the five went rafting. The others don't share it.
- Transfer
- Maria paid Alex 50 EUR in cash. Recorded so balances stay right.
- Refund and income
- The hotel returned the deposit; a voucher covered part of a dinner. Negative expenses and shared income keep the ledger truthful.
Currencies
Each expense carries its original amount and currency. The trip has a base currency. When an expense is added, SumFair stores the exchange rate it used, where it came from and when; that rate stays attached to the expense forever. A rate can also be entered by hand, for cash exchanged at a kiosk. Balances are shown in the base currency and, on request, in each person's own currency.
Settlement
Balances update after every expense. At settlement, SumFair computes the smallest set of transfers that brings everyone to exactly zero: seven IOUs between four people typically become three payments. You can settle:
- everything;
- only until today, for the person leaving early;
- only selected dates, expenses or people.
Settled expenses are locked into a checkpoint that stores the balances and transfers at that moment. A checkpoint can be reopened with explicit confirmation; SumFair then recalculates and records who reopened it and why. Nothing is edited quietly.
A ski week, worked through
| Expense | Paid by | Amount | In EUR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chalet, 5 nights | Alex | 1 240.00 EUR | 1 240.00 |
| Ski passes | Maria 320, James 100 | 420.00 EUR | 420.00 |
| Dinner at Gasthof Post, scanned | Tom | 186.40 EUR | 186.40 |
| Fuel, Bucharest to Mayrhofen | James | 1 120.00 RON | 225.35 at 4.97 |
| Hotel deposit refund | to Alex | -120.00 EUR | -120.00 |
Without simplification the four owe each other in seven directions. SumFair settles it as Maria → Alex 318.20, James → Alex 241.55, Tom → Alex 214.75. Balances sum to zero; the RON expense keeps its 4.97 rate even if the market moves next week.
Trip and group questions
Do trip members need an account?
Can someone join a trip halfway or leave early?
How are exchange rates handled?
Can I reuse a group for the next trip?
Start the group before the trip starts.
Add people by link. They join without an account.