Everyone wants to live in a harmonious environment, right? With the stress you might face in your academic or working life, the last thing you want is to come home to even more issues to resolve.
Roommate bill-splitting apps are becoming increasingly common as people look for solutions to common household disputes. How many times have you fallen out with your housemates over someone not paying their fair share towards cleaning products, groceries, bills or rent?
In today’s world, roommate bill-splitting apps make perfect sense. Many people living in shared accommodation consider themselves digital natives, and we spend a large part of our lives using smartphone apps to make things easier and more immediate. Using these solutions to manage your household finances is a pretty natural next step.
But with so many options cropping up all the time and roommate bill splitting apps being a relatively recent concept, it can be hard to know what to look for. acasa has put together this handy guide to what your roommate bill splitting app should do for you.
What should a roommate bill splitting app do?
The most important thing a roommate bill splitting app should do is make it simple and straightforward for you and your housemates to track shared living expenses and transfer money accordingly.
There are a multitude of different features your chosen app might use to do this, but the end goal should always be the same: to make your life as somebody living in shared accommodation as hassle-and-drama-free as possible—at least when it comes to bills!
Depending on how good they are, some roommate bill splitting apps might even save you money by pairing you with cheap, reliable and energy-efficient suppliers for your broadband and utilities.
What to look for:
Not all roommate bill splitting apps are made equal, unfortunately. Separating the duds from the delights on the Apple Store or Google Play can involve quite a lot of guesswork. On top of this, you might not find out whether your app of choice is any good until you’ve downloaded it, made an account and perhaps even paid a fee.
Some features are more crucial to that elusive sense of household harmony you’re after than others. In our opinion, these are some of the roommate bill splitting app functions that separate the best from the rest:
- Record Payments: More than simply bill you when things are due, your roommate bill splitting app should enable you to keep a log of payments you have made. This can include transfers between you and your roommates, such as that meal you all went out for last week or the cost of cleaning products you’ve all agreed to chip in for. It’s a way of keeping on top of those smaller expenses that can add up, while also letting the other person know that you’ve paid them.
- Balance History: Every good plan has a backup. While roommate bill splitting apps are almost guaranteed to make managing your money as a household easier, in the event that an issue be raised anyway, your app should give you access to your balance history. By referring to your balance history, you should be able to see a clear breakdown of your personal expenses and payments, immediately identifying if and where wires got crossed or human errors were made.
- Direct billing: One of the advantages of roommate bill splitting apps is that you can share responsibility for your household costs in every way. When you set up an account with your utility or broadband provider using more traditional methods, it will be in a single person’s name who will be charged for the entirety of the bill and then be paid back by their housemates. With roommate bill splitting apps, you have the option of each person being billed directly for their share of the cost. This means that if someone is late coughing up, no one person is immediately left out of pocket.
- Notifications: Juggling all your different household bills and keeping track of who owes what are probably the two root causes of most disputes over money in shared accommodation. It’s essentially considerable unpaid administration that can understandably go wrong sometimes. A good roommate bill splitting app will take this burden off your shoulders and make it easier than ever to stay on top of your household bills. Look for an app with a simple, user-friendly dashboard and notifications of upcoming charges.
- Transparency: Something that can be a roadblock in any and all disputes between roommates is someone trying to cover their tracks when they haven’t paid. Sometimes, people may even be convinced they’ve paid up when they haven’t, trapping the entire house in a Catch-22. This is another reason why you need clear visual tools, such as the dashboard, so that everyone can see who is and isn’t up to date with their payments.
Use acasa
acasa is designed for anyone sharing a house, from students to young professionals to couples. With acasa, you can avoid unnecessary conflict around splitting utility bills with our direct billing and balance tracking systems.
Get a free quote for your property and enjoy a more stress-free approach to managing your shared house.