The group chat works fine for about three weeks. Then someone pays the electricity bill, someone else buys the washing up liquid and the milk, and suddenly nobody actually knows who owes what or how much. A shared expense tracker solves this immediately — it keeps a running total, removes the mental overhead, and means you're not the person doing debt collection every month. The question isn't whether to use one; it's which one actually fits how flat shares work. Here's a straight-up breakdown of your options, and why the tool you pick matters more than you'd think. For the full picture on how to split bills with your flatmates, start there.
Spreadsheets: Technically Fine, Practically Painful
A shared Google Sheet can absolutely work. You set up the columns, log each payment, and track who owes what. It's free, flexible, and everyone knows how to use it.
The problem is friction. Someone has to update it. Someone has to remember to update it. Someone has to go in and fix it when the formulas break because a flatmate entered their payment in the wrong cell. Over time, spreadsheets get ignored. What started as a system becomes an out-of-date mess that nobody trusts.
Splitwise: The Incumbent
Splitwise is the obvious starting point and it's genuinely good, especially for trip-style expenses — holidays, group dinners, one-off events. It's free, it's well-designed, and it handles one-time expense groups cleanly.
For ongoing flat share use, though, it shows its age a bit. The product was built around settling up and closing groups, not the continuous low-level churn of a household living together for twelve months. It works, but it's not really built for the "this is just how we live now" use case.
Splitr: Built for Ongoing Shared Living
Splitr takes a different angle. Rather than treating every expense as something to eventually settle up and close, it's designed for the reality of flat sharing — recurring bills, ongoing costs, multiple people contributing different amounts over time, and the need to track who's actually paid (not just who said they would).
The key features that make it click for flat shares: you can upload proof of payment so there's no ambiguity, set up recurring bills, and track the running balance without chasing people for screenshots. If your housemate has a habit of "forgetting" they owe you, having a clear paper trail in a shared app is a very effective substitute for the awkward conversation.
It's a newer app, so it doesn't have Splitwise's decade of polish everywhere — but for flat-share-first use, it's the more considered tool.
What Actually Matters
Whatever you use, the goal is the same: everyone in the flat can see the current state of shared finances without having to ask. Any tool that does that reliably is the right tool. The worst outcome is a system so annoying to maintain that nobody uses it after week four.
Pick something, stick to it, and make sure everyone in the flat actually has it on their phone — a system only one person uses isn't a system.