FairShare Help Documentation

A complete guide to the expense splitter for roommates and flatmates, from your first group to settling up.

Last Updated: November 9, 2026

1. Getting Started

The first time, FairShare offers to start a group, to Try it with an example flat, to open a shared file or a backup, or to paste a link from a flatmate. Once a group is open, the toolbar shows its name, how many people live there and what settles it, with Help on the right. The five tabs choose the view: Balances, Expenses, Repeating bills, Insights and People and group.

2. Starting a Group

1. Type the name of the flat or group, for example Flat 4B.
2. Type who lives there, starting with yourself; Add another person adds a row. Two people cannot have the same name, so add an initial if needed.
3. Choose the currency and press Start the group.

The first name is taken as you on this device, so Balances says what you owe and what you get back; change it under People and group, On this device, I am. Add each person's move-in date under People and group so nobody pays for days before they moved in. More groups (a trip, a second flat) are added from the group picker in Balances or from Your groups.

3. Adding an Expense

1. Press Add an expense (or N).
2. Type the amount: 1450, 1,45,000, 1.2k, 2.5L, 450 + 320 or 180 x 4 all work, and a currency sign or code in front is read too. The line under the box shows what it read.
3. Type what it was for; the category is guessed from it and can be changed.
4. Check the date, choose who paid, and choose how to split it (section 4).
5. Press Save, or Save and add another to keep the date, payer and split for the next one.

The line under the split says whether it adds up to the bill, how much is still to share out, or what is wrong. An amount over 1,000 crore rupees (10 billion in a currency with cents) is refused as too large. Under Note, another currency, repeat it you can add a note, record an expense paid in another currency, or make it a repeating bill.

4. The Seven Ways to Split

• Equally between the people you tick. Everyone and Nobody tick or untick everyone.
• Amounts: what each person owes, adding up to the bill. Share what is left equally among the empty ones fills in the rest.
• Percent: each person's percent, adding up to 100. Same for everyone fills in equal percents.
• Shares: for example 2 for the person with the big room and 1 for everyone else.
• Adjust: shared equally, plus or minus an amount for someone (200 for the one who had the drinks, -100 for the one who skipped dessert).
• Items: type the lines of the receipt and tick who shares each. Tax, delivery and anything not listed are shared in proportion to each person's items, or equally if you choose.
• Days stayed: for a bill that covers a period, like electricity. Give the period and press Count from move-in dates; the bill is shared by the days each person lived there.

Every amount is counted in whole paise (or cents), so the shares always add up to the bill. When a bill does not divide evenly, the leftover paise go to the people with the largest remainders, and a tie is settled by the bill itself, so the odd paisa goes round.

5. Payers, Money Received and Other Currencies

Several people under Paid by lets you type what each person paid; it has to add up to the bill. Money received (at the top of the window) is for money that comes back to the group: a refund, a returned deposit, cashback. For an expense paid in another currency, tick Paid in another currency, choose the currency and check the rate (how much of the group's currency one unit cost). For most currencies the rate is filled in from the European Central Bank's reference rates of 6 November 2026 (the UAE dirham and the Saudi and Qatari riyals at their fixed rates to the dollar); the Kuwaiti dinar and the Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Nepalese rupees and the taka are typed. Type the rate you were charged if it was different.

6. Balances and Statements

Balances opens with a sentence that sums up the group (who pays whom, what you owe or get back), then four figures: what was spent this month, your share (or each person's on average), what is still to settle, and who owes the most and so could pay for the next shared thing. Balances lists each person with what they paid and their share; a bar to the right means they get money back, to the left that they owe. Open a name for their statement: every entry they are part of, newest first, with the running balance, to copy or print.

7. Settling Up

Fewest payments works out the smallest number of payments that settles everyone: it finds the largest number of small groups whose balances cancel out among themselves, exactly for up to 20 people with money owed. It can ask someone to pay a person they never shared a bill with; the amounts still come out right for everyone. Who owes whom keeps every debt between the two people who shared the bill. The map beside the list draws who pays whom (for up to 12 people); thicker arrows mean more money, and pressing an arrow opens that payment. Settle beside a payment opens it filled in; choose how it was paid and save. Record all as paid records the whole plan at once, and Copy for the group chat copies it as text.

8. UPI Codes and Reminders

For a group in rupees, add each person's UPI ID under People and group (it looks like name@bank). The payment window then shows a QR code and an Open a UPI app button: any UPI app opens with the payee, their name and the amount filled in. FairShare does not see or confirm the payment, so record it after paying. Remind beside a payment gives a friendly message with the amount and the UPI ID; edit it, then copy it into your chat or use your phone's Share button. A UPI ID goes into the group's link and file, so your flatmates see it.

9. Repeating Bills

1. Under Repeating bills press Add a repeating bill.
2. Type the amount (or tick The amount changes each time), what the bill is, its category, the first day it is due and how often it repeats (every week, 2 weeks, month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months or year), and optionally the last time.
3. Choose who pays it and how it is shared, and press Save the bill.

The bill is added to the expenses on each day it falls due, including days that already passed. A bill shared by everyone follows the people living there on each day; a bill shared by named people is not passed on to others when they have all moved out. Bills whose amount changes wait in Balances under Bills waiting for the amount, with Add the amount and Skip. Pause stops a bill (the times it fell due while paused are skipped), Edit changes it from the next time, and Delete stops it for good; expenses it already added stay. Any expense can also repeat from the expense window.

10. Splitting the Rent Fairly

Under Repeating bills, Split the rent fairly takes the rent a month (filled in from your rent bill) and one of two methods:

• By room size: the share shared by everyone equally (for the kitchen, the hall and the bathrooms you share) and, for each person, the room size in any unit and the extras in percent for an attached bathroom, a balcony or an AC, as much as you agree. A couple sharing a room can each take half of it.
• By what each room is worth: name the rooms, and each person writes what they would pay for each room so that their figures add up to the rent (other totals are scaled). The rooms go to the people who value them most in total, and the prices are envy-free: nobody would rather have someone else's room at its price, and the least happy person is as well off as any envy-free split allows.

The result shows what each person pays, rounded to whole rupees and adding up to the rent. Use for the Rent bill (named after your rent bill), or Make it a monthly rent bill when there is none, makes your rent follow the split from the next time; Copy copies it as text.

11. Expenses and Insights

Expenses lists every bill, purchase and payment, newest first, month by month with what was spent; search by what, who or how much (/), or choose a person, a category, a kind or a month. Open an entry for its details. Insights shows, for this month, last month, 3 months, 12 months or all time: what was spent, a month on average, the biggest category and the biggest single expense; a chart month by month (the arrow keys move between months); where it went, by category (open one to see its expenses); and what it cost each person, with how much of their share they paid up front. Payments between flatmates are not spending, so they are left out.

12. People and Moving Out

Under People and group, open a person to change their name, colour, move-in and move-out dates and UPI ID. When someone moves out, give them a moved-out date instead of removing them: they stay in the history and in Balances until what they owe is settled, and new bills leave them out. A person can only be removed while nothing is recorded for them. If two names are one person (after an import, say), Same person as moves everything onto the other name. This group's name, currency and how amounts are written (1,00,000 or 100,000) are set under This group; changing the currency keeps the numbers and does not convert them.

13. Sharing with Flatmates

There is no account and no server. Under Share with your flatmates: Copy a link to the group, Save the group as a file, or Share on phones. When a flatmate opens the link or the file (or uses Open a file from a flatmate or Paste a link), the group is added to their FairShare, or merged with their copy: for each expense, person and bill the newest change wins, deletions travel with the copy unless the entry was changed later, and nothing is counted twice. The window says what the copy brings before anything changes. The link carries the group after its # sign, which browsers do not send to any website, and the page takes it off the address before its ad and analytics scripts load; anyone who has the link can read the group, so send it only to the people in it.

14. Importing from Splitwise

1. In Splitwise, open the group and export it as a spreadsheet (CSV).
2. In FairShare, People and group, Your data, press Import from Splitwise and choose the file.
3. Choose whether it goes into the open group or a new one, and match each name in the file to a flatmate or add them as new people.
4. If the file has amounts in another currency, check the exchange rate shown (filled in from the European Central Bank's rates of 6 November 2026 where it can be).
5. Press Import; the message offers Undo.

Each row becomes an expense, money received or a payment, with what it did to each person's balance; the categories are matched where they can be. Rows imported before are left out. FairShare's own spreadsheet (Export a spreadsheet) has the same layout and can be imported the same way, with its categories kept.

15. Your Data, Files and Printing

Everything is kept in this browser's storage on this device; nothing is written until you start a group. Under People and group, Your data: Back up everything saves every group to a file, Restore a backup merges a backup with the groups you have (files over 10 MB are refused, and every value in a file is checked), Export a spreadsheet (CSV) writes the open group's entries, Print the statements prints the balances, the payments to settle up and each person's statement (the browser's own Print prints the same), Delete this group removes the open group, and Delete everything removes every group FairShare keeps in this browser, leaving the rest of the site alone. The site's sun and moon button sets the light or dark theme.

16. Keyboard Shortcuts

Outside a text box: 1 to 5 open the five views, ← and → move between the tabs (with Home and End), N adds an expense, P records a payment, and / searches the expenses. Esc closes a window. On the month chart in Insights, the arrow keys move between months.

17. How It Was Checked

Before it was published, the tool's sums were compared with a separate reference written from the rules on this page: thousands of typed amounts in all 31 currencies, every way of splitting with random groups and bills, the sharing out of the odd paisa, balances and statements, the fewest payments against an exact search over every way of grouping people, repeating bills against a separate date library (the 31st, leap years, weeks, quarters, people moving in and out), both rent methods (the envy-free prices against a separate linear programme), merging copies, the spreadsheet both ways, UPI links and every QR code read back by two separate readers, the older FairShare's data, and damaged and hostile files. The page was then checked in the browser on phones and computers, in both themes, with an accessibility scan of every view and window.

18. Troubleshooting

• The split says something is still to share out. Amounts and percent have to add up to the bill or to 100; the line under the split says how much is missing.
• Someone is missing from the split. They were not living there on the bill's date; check their move-in and move-out dates, or press Show people not living there on the day.
• A repeating bill was not added. The person who pays it has moved out, or everyone it names has; the note in Balances says which. Edit the bill under Repeating bills.
• A flatmate's link does not open. It was cut short in the chat; ask for it again, or for the file. A very large group is safer sent as a file.
• The pay code does not appear. It appears only for a group in rupees, when the person being paid has a UPI ID.
• My data is gone. It is kept per browser and device; a private window or cleared browser data starts empty. Restore your latest backup, or ask a flatmate for the group's link or file.

19. Support

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form. Please describe what you did without sending your group, names or amounts.