We were loading bags into the hire car on the last morning when Sam said it.
"Let's just sort the money out when we're home. Everyone's knackered."
We all nodded, and I thought, 'Yeah, fair enough.' That was the mistake.
"So when are we settling up?"
A week after we got back, Priya posted in the group chat: "So when are we settling up?" Nobody replied. It came up again the next week. In week three Tom wrote, "Just tell me how much I owe and I'll send it."
The trouble was that nobody knew how much. Over the long weekend in a rented cottage on the coast, the four of us had taken turns paying. I'd booked the cottage and the car in advance, Sam paid for the pub dinner, Priya covered the fish and chips, and coffees went on whoever was nearest the till. I started a note on my phone on the first evening. It stops at Saturday lunch.
'Should I ask everyone to screenshot their bank statements?' I considered it, but asking friends to share a statement that shows everything else they spent felt a bit much.
What was in the hire car envelope
Then I remembered the paper envelope the hire car paperwork came in. It had lived in the door pocket all weekend, and I'd been stuffing receipts into it without thinking. Twenty-nine receipts. I asked the others to send photos of any they had, and nine more arrived. Thirty-eight in all.
On a Saturday afternoon we met at a café near my flat. I tipped the receipts onto the table, photographed them one by one on my phone and added them all at once. Date, store and total came back as a table with six yellow cells: a fuel receipt already fading, a crumpled one from the farm shop. We blew the photos up and read the amounts together.
"Is that a 3 or an 8?"
"8. The fish and chips were £48. I remember wincing."
The same receipt, twice
Scrolling down, I spotted something odd: the same café, same day, same amount, on two rows. Priya had paid, photographed the receipt, then handed the paper copy to me for the envelope. There were two of those. Once I deleted them we were down to 36 rows.
'If I'd missed that, we'd have split those coffees twice.' Duplicates turn up more often than you'd think when several people send photos.
One column settled the argument
I downloaded the spreadsheet and added a Paid by column. Most rows filled in straight away, until the pub dinner.
"I got the pub, didn't I?"
"No, that was me. You got the chippy the night before."
Sam and Tom both claimed it, and both meant it. In the end we checked the last four digits of the card printed on the receipt. Sam's card. Tom laughed, "Oh, so the chippy was me," and that was the end of it. Without the receipt, the battle of memories would have gone on a while longer.
Halfway through, Priya said, "Take the two coffee runs off, those are on me." With a table in front of us, it was easy to say exactly which two rows to drop.
Three transfers
Totalling by Paid by gave us this:
- Total £1,240, which is £310 each
- Me £580 (including the cottage, car and fuel), Sam £330, Priya £210, Tom £120
Take £310 off what each person paid, and I was owed £270, Sam was owed £20, Priya owed £100 and Tom owed £190. We'd half assumed everyone would end up sending money to everyone, but it came down to three transfers:
- Tom → me £190
- Priya → me £80
- Priya → Sam £20
When I posted the table in the group chat, Tom replied, "Three weeks of that nagging at me and it's done in ten minutes." To be fair we were in the café for about an hour, though most of it was spent drinking coffee and scrolling through holiday photos.
What we'll do next trip
- Pick one envelope for receipts. The car hire envelope, a zip bag, anything, as long as it lives in one place in the car or a bag.
- Settle up the week you get back. After three weeks our memories of who paid for what had drifted apart, and a few thermal receipts had already faded.
- Check photographed receipts for duplicates first. Same day, same shop, same amount on two rows is worth a second look.
- One
Paid bycolumn is enough. The gap between what each person paid and the per-person share tells you who owes whom. - At the very least, check the yellow cells and the totals against the receipts before you trust the numbers.
For the general method, see How to split shared expenses in a spreadsheet. Duplicates are covered in How to find duplicate receipts in an Excel spreadsheet, and keeping track of a trip from the start is in Tracking family vacation spending, before, during and after the trip.