My girlfriend and I extensively use Splitwise to track and share split expenses (eg dining out, rent, etc). We use this in combination with YNAB for tracking and budgeting. I’m looking to move away from this system, and Tiller seems the best option. I’m curious how other people handle this, and also want to see if y’all think my idea below will work.
My goals
- One Tiller sheet with my expenses and my girlfriends expenses all in one sheet
- The ability to track how much we owe each other
- The ability to view individual spending habits or joint spending habits
- (bonus) individual and joint budgeting
How I’m thinking of doing it
- I extend the expenses sheet to include:
- Payee column (automatically determined by account owner)
- Tag column. Each expense is tagged by who the transaction was for: P (me) or B (my girlfriend) or both (split expenses).
- I also set up an account called “Bank of P” and “Bank of B”, these track how much we owe each other.
- Using AutoCat:
- In the simple case where the person paying is the person who owes, then do nothing. eg If P paid and P owed, then do nothing (just keep P tag). Same thing for B and B.
- In the case where someone paid for someone else entirely (detected using the tags), create an offset transition so the payee’s spending is reversed, and the money owed is tracked. eg If P paid but only B owed, then create a new “transfer” transaction out of “Bank of B” for the equivalent amount. In the end, P’s spending habits are net 0, and Bank of B reflects how much is owed to P.
- In the case of a split transaction (again detected using the tags), automatically split the transaction, adding a transfer like above, but only for half the cost.
- Once all that is done, I would update the spending habits and budgeting sheets to support filtering on tags.
Thoughts?
Is tags the right way to do this? Is AutoCat sophisticated enough to do those automations? Are there any community build alternative solutions?
