Shared expenses

Under Shared expenses there are two things, and it's worth telling them apart because you use them at different moments.

• Splitting an expense is an action on one specific expense: the restaurant bill. You split it and you're done. You don't create or name anything.
• A shared expense account is a named container: “Lisbon 2026”, “Goya flat”. You all log expenses and settle at the end.

A trip and a flat aren't two different concepts: they're the same shared account, with and without an end date. If you're not sure, start by splitting an expense — if you end up logging more, it becomes a shared account.

Creating a shared account

You're only asked about your situation, not about the model: the name, whether this has an end, who's taking part and whether you have a shared bank account. Cuéntamo works out the rest.

If the account lasts and there are more than two of you or there's a real bank account, it gets its own book. That's the honest model: a flat's joint account is a separate entity — money from several people goes in, rent and bills come out — not a slice of anyone's finances. That way its balance doesn't mix with yours. We tell you when it happens; you don't have to decide it.

The currency is set when you create it and can't be changed later: changing it would invalidate the amounts already logged.

Adding participants: just a name

To add someone you only need to type their name. No email, no phone number, and they don't need to use Cuéntamo. Since we don't store anywhere to write to them, the app doesn't send invitations: you share them — which is what you'd do anyway by pasting the link into the group chat.

And it's one link for everyone. Whoever opens it picks who they are from the list, and their phone remembers from then on. If someone joins at the last minute, there's an “I'm someone else” option so they can add themselves without bothering you.

In the participants list you can see who has joined and who hasn't opened the link yet — which tells you who to nudge.

Two rules worth knowing: someone joining later doesn't change the past (expenses already split stay as they are), and someone who already has expenses isn't deleted, they're archived: deleting them would leave the split out of balance.

Logging an expense

It's three fields: amount, description and who paid. The split is equal by default and shows as an informational line — “among 4 · €9.50 each” — that you can tap if you need something else.

That opens the two-column split, which is what you need when everyone at the restaurant chips in what they can: one column for what each person put in and another for their share. They're different things — you can put in 40 and owe 50 — and both columns have to add up to the total. If they don't, we tell you as you type (“€20.00 missing”), not when you hit save.

What you see and what lands in your accounts

While the account is open, your book shows a single line: your live net position, updated as soon as anyone logs something. That already counts towards your net worth and, with the closing date, your forecast.

Expenses don't come down one by one into your transaction list: a thirty-expense trip would flood it with tiny entries. The detail lands on closing.

Closing the cycle and settling up

When you close, the position becomes real entries in your book: your share is recognised as your expense with its category, and what you're owed or owe sits in each person's debt account. The confirmation tells you exactly what will happen before anything is touched, and you can undo it with Ctrl+Z.

The underlying idea: the split doesn't invent spending, it corrects the attribution of money that already moved. If you paid €400 for a hotel but only €100 was yours, your expense is €100 and the other €300 is money owed to you.

In an account without an end date (a flat), closing a month opens the next one automatically: you always have somewhere to log expenses.

To settle up, Cuéntamo suggests the simplest way to do it, with a list of who pays whom. You can rearrange it if the group prefers. And if you have a shared bank account, you don't settle with people: you pay into the pot, and the bank import will recognise it on its own.

The shared bank account (the pot)

If the group has a real bank account everyone pays into and expenses come out of, say so when you create the shared account and Cuéntamo creates the account inside that shared account's own book, not inside yours. Then point your bank import at it and you barely have to type anything: the movements come in on their own.

Keeping it in that separate book matters: if it lived in yours, your balance, your net worth and your forecast would count other people's money as yours. In there it contaminates nothing, and what is actually yours — your position — you still see just the same.

The pot shows up as one more participant, but it isn't a person: it owes nothing and is owed nothing. It pays the expenses and receives the contributions, so the figure next to its name is the money that should be in the bank. If it doesn't match the statement, something is still unlogged.

Whatever comes in from the bank waits under “Unassigned pot movements” until someone says what it is, because only whoever was there knows:

• Money out is an expense: it gets split among the people (the pot doesn't consume).
• Money in is someone's contribution: you say whose, and it goes to their credit.

Leaving something unassigned unbalances nothing — the bank decides the balance — but it stays out of the split. That's why, when you close the cycle, Cuéntamo warns you about what's still pending before turning anything into entries.