For expenses I split with my partner, I split the transaction and then assign my portion a budgeted category and assign my partner’s portion a “Transfer” type category so it doesn’t affect my budgeted categories. The category I use is called “Venmo Requested”. When my partner pays me back, I also categorize that transaction “Venmo Requested”, resulting in net zero transfers in that category.
The amount I’m owed in a month is aggregated into the “Net Transfers” on my Budget tab.
When that number reaches 0, I know that I’m all settled up for the month. Sometimes I need to change the transaction date for the payback transaction if I charged my partner one month, and they don’t pay me back until after the first of the next month. Because of this, you can see that I’ve gotten into the habit of putting the transaction date from my split transactions into my Venmo Requests so they show up in the description and I don’t have to look up the original transaction date to backdate transactions.
I use several other Transfer categories in this way. For example:
- Reimbursement: expenses you expect to be reimbursed for like a merchandise return or reimbursements from work
- ATM fee: My bank reimburses me for ATM fees and I like to make sure they actually do that
Once you use multiple transfer categories like this, the aggregated Net Transfers number isn’t so useful, especially if you want to see a breakdown of how much you’re owed in previous months or for specific transfer categories. To see that detail, I like to use the Simple Business Dashboard which has helpful charts like this:
You can see that my graph currently tells me that I’m owed about $60 for April and $13 for March. When values are positive like you see for Dec, Jan, and Feb, that means that there’s something wrong. I probably miscategorized the money I was paid back, I need to change the date of some transactions, or something else. Either way, because you’re tracking both sides of each split expense, you go back and double-check your work and can accurately make sure you’re paid back.