Divide & Pay – a free tool to manage and share your group expenses.

By Ekta Patel on August 26, 2014 28 Comments / 4752 views

Hi Rodinhooders,

“Lamp Technologies” is a web development company based in Surat.

We would like to share https://www.dividenpay.com, a free tool to manage and share your expenses with friends, fellow travelers or roommates.

I have had many group trips so far & managing group expenses has always been a pain point for me and my friends.

Whenever we plan a trip, someone from our group has to volunteer for managing expenses during trip.

There are many cases, where keeping track of the expenses & funds is a boring job and sometime challenging too.

More than one person pay for an expense

An expense is shared by all / some people

People contribute funds occasionally during trip

Sort out who owes what to whom & share summary with rest of the group

At the end of the trip, people get back to their routine and many forget to pay their dues.

During our last trip, we were looking for some easy app/tool to manage & share our group expenses. We tried out some apps, but none was easy to use. That’s when we decided to build Divide & Pay.

Add Expense/Fund

Summary Page

Please have a look at https://www.dividenpay.com/ and let us know your valuable feedback.

Take a tour of Divide & Pay

Updates (Date: Feb 11, 2015)

Hi Rodinhooders,

Thanks for your suggestions so far on our web version of Divide & Pay. In last few months, we’ve worked on tuning the application. The most common feedback we got is to have Mobile App for Divide & Pay.

We’re happy to inform you that, we’ve just released 1^st version of Divide & Pay Android App. We’ll be happy to hear feedback or answer any questions you may have.

Thank You
Ekta Patel, ekta@lamp-technologies.com
Twitter: @ektabpatel
LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/patelekta/

Nilesh Gamit, nilesh@lamp-technologies.com
Twitter: @nileshgamit
LinkedIn:https://in.linkedin.com/in/nileshgamit/

Comments

Ekta Patel

28 Comments

Amit Shroff August 27, 2014, 3:27 am
Dear Ekta,

Really wonderful concept, if it works can create wonders for your. I have couple of questions that I would like you to answer.
1. Do you have a mobile version.
2. If yes, can it work offline and later sink data, or if working offline but if device are connected through bluetooth or wifi, can it sink them, reason you might be travelling someone where you don’t have network.
3. If no, then to make it work, you would need a mobile app. Since people usually don’t carry laptops on family holiday or group holidays.
4. Check on Pay font, seems exact copy of what PayU use, you might get into litigation, until you don’t have a written permission from them.
5. Why is USD a default currency type? Is it meant for US Customers?
6. What is your revenue model?
7. Do you have online payment option?
8. After All funds & Expense, if we have balance payment, can we do a refund to nullify the account.
Regards,
Amit
Ekta Patel August 27, 2014, 4:38 am

Hi Amit,

Thank you for the feedback first. Really appreciate.

Please find your answers below.

1. Yes, mobile app is already in development.

2/3. Yes offline data and syn later is good option. Thank it is a good suggestion.

4. Thanks for sharing this. We check with Paypal though but not with PayU. Will check and may revised based on it. Thanks again for letting us know.

5. It just we keep it for now. Right now India is first market to share with. But I am keen on global part and how people manage when they globally visit. i.e I am spending in $ but same time some rough conversion of Rupees would be great to track my expense. So yet not so much clear about how to fit this in our app.

6. We have not figure out Revenue model yet. We are right now concentrating on how dividenpay solve users problems.

7. No right now it is basic version only but yes payment option is good choice for users.

8. To answer this let me tell you to use “Fund” part of our app. This is missing in many other expense manager app or site we went through. i.e when someone gives money back, you can add it as fund and this will nullify and balance the account. Is this what you are asking ?

Let me know if you have more questions.

Thank you for your Feedback.
Anoop Nair August 27, 2014, 7:52 am

Hi Ekta

Nice concept and a nice website. Just one concern about the logo. As Amit said, the PAY word font is similar to PAYTM or PAYU (http://www.paytm.com or https://www.payumoney.com/). You must change it before getting into trouble.

Thanks!
Ekta Patel August 27, 2014, 9:26 am

Thanks Anoop.

Logo Update now.
Sandeep Gupta August 29, 2014, 9:51 am

One of roommates used https://www.buxfer.com/ around 6-7 years back to manage our shared expenses. May be you can also have a look at the same.
Ekta Patel August 29, 2014, 10:09 am

Hi Sandeep,

Thank you for suggestion.

Yes we will go through site you mention. I just took a brief look and it does not seems what we are really planning for the future development.

We already have some more updates in pipeline & we are sure that we will stand out with more unique features.

Regards,

Ekta
Nitin Jain August 29, 2014, 1:14 pm

Hey,

Great effort !

We use shortreckonings.com .. you might want to try it out.. just in case you can take a leaf out of their book..

I see the unique idea where you have the “Fund” option. This is probably missing in other apps.

However, as a workaround, we just simply put up a new expense called “Balance Clear” paid by the guy who had to pay, and paid for the guy who was supposed to receive the money. So, it kind of works life a fund option, and keeps it clean.

All said and done, great ideas by others already here. Yep, I guess mobile app is a must for this kind of a model 🙂

Cheers
Ekta Patel August 29, 2014, 1:59 pm

Hi Nitin,

Thanks for suggestion.

Yes “Fund” is definitely a good option which was missing in other apps.

“Balance Clear” is going to be release soon. We are going to make small updates shortly. Will keep update on discussion here.

Thanks.
Bilal Budhani August 29, 2014, 2:29 pm

Hi Ekta,

I would really love to use your app if there’s a mobile app for it. Usually on the go we don’t have access to laptops and internet (at times) in some remote areas.
Rishi August 30, 2014, 4:58 am

Hi Ekta! There are other bill sharing/splitting apps in the market. I’ve used SplitWise and couple others in the past. How do you plan to make it different?
Ekta Patel August 30, 2014, 5:35 am

Hi Bilal.

Yes. Android mobile app development is in pipeline. We’ll update more details here once we’ll be ready to launch. Managing offline data will be there in mobile app. Amit Shroff has also suggested about this.

Thanks,

Ekta
Ekta Patel August 30, 2014, 5:51 am

Hi Rishi

Yes, there are similar apps in market. Before starting development of Divide & Pay, we were also using some of the apps including Splitwise. Though we’re not happy with usability of those apps and feel that there are still some scope to provide better solution and fill the gap.

As of now, we’re concentrating on improving usability for different sections. “Managing Fund” is something unique, you’ll find only in Divide & Pay. There are some good features in active development, which we’re planning to launch soon.

Stay tuned.

Thanks

Ekta
Ekta Patel August 30, 2014, 11:26 am

Hi all

Today we’ve released 2 more features.

1) Sign In using Facebook and
2) A person can settle up the dues

Sign In using Gmail is coming soon along with other small updates.

Shoot us with your feedback.

Happy weekend 🙂

Thanks
Ekta
Sandeep Verenkar August 30, 2014, 1:15 pm

Hi. Mobility is athe way to go nowadays . Your app is sure candidate for mobile use case. Instead of building native apps for android ,iOS etc, build one using angularjs,css and wrap it up using Phongap build. Shall keep the mobile apps manageable. All the best.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal August 31, 2014, 7:38 am

hahahah! nice!!

how will you market this?

How will people REMEMBER to use this app, once in 2-3 years?
Ekta Patel September 1, 2014, 8:38 am

Thanks Sandeep.

Yes. Mobile app is in pipeline. Phonegap is good idea. We tried working on it sometime back, but found some performance issues with it. But we’ll definitely think of it as we also want to reach to maximum people.

Thanks

Ekta
Ekta Patel September 1, 2014, 8:40 am

Thanks 🙂

Well we want to create buzz for this app, but we’ve not figure out good marketing strategy yet to promote the app. Right now, we are spreading news about this app in our network and trying to get feedback from users.

Yes, you are right. It’s not continuous engagement, though we feel that it’s important for users, who find it difficult to manage their expenses. For travellers, this app might be useful once / twice in a year; for roommates and other expense sharing, it might be used frequently. We’re planning to add individual expense management in future, which will allow users to manage day to day expenses (variable) & fixed expenses (e.g. insurance, loan payment, annual membership etc.)

Thanks,

Ekta
Sankalp Sharma September 1, 2014, 9:36 am

Hi Ekta,

It’s nice. I was using Expenses.co.in have a look.
Ekta Patel September 1, 2014, 11:15 am

Thanks Sankalp,

I can see everyone is using one or another such app but each app is missing something. We are trying to filling that gap and improving on UI/UX is the primary focus.

Thanks,

Ekta
Rishi September 1, 2014, 3:46 pm

will look forward to it. best wishes!
NIkul Sharma September 2, 2014, 11:55 am

Wonderfull concept Ekta. Indeed you could create a platform for a group to finalize iteneary based on votes and discussions, books airline tickets individually and show status of hotels and other packages real time for the group tour while each member pays individually.

This is particularly helpful when Air Tickets and Hotel Room rates are dynamic by the hour.
Ekta Patel September 2, 2014, 12:24 pm

Thanks Nikul

That’s entirely different app we are working on for managing trips efficiently 🙂 . We may plan to add features you’ve mentioned. But yes, it’s good suggestions. Dividenpay is actually a side product of the other travel app we’re working on. As scope of Dividenpay was small, we planned it to launch first.

Thanks
Ekta
Nilesh Gamit October 7, 2014, 7:44 am

Hi all

Divide & Pay is now full-fledged web app. We are excited to announce some cool features today.

After adding these features, we feel that it’s perfect app for managing group expenses. Here’s a quick summary.

1) You can now login to Divide & Pay using your Facebook or Google account
2) A group member can also add his expense / fund details. This is useful, when very few members of particular group are involved in expense sharing
3) Once you’ll log in to Divide & Pay app, it’s now possible to get notifications about “Recent Activities” from different groups.
4) When you settle up the amount, you can associate particular expense item with it. This is useful, when you get paid back for particular expense you made on behalf of others.
5) It’s possible to do automatic settle up between two members having common groups. For e.g. Raj owes INR 1,000.00 to Simran in Group A. & Simran owes INR 1,200.00 to Raj in Group B. After automatic group settle up, Simran owes INR 200.00 to Raj in Group B.
6) User can set default currency type in his profile. He can set currency type at group level also. This is very useful. Let’s assume that you live in India and you’ve set default currency type to INR in your profile. Now, you are planning your next trip to Europe. You can keep currency type for this new group as EUR.
7) Currency Conversion is added. Currency rates are updated hourly. When you do automatic group settle up, currency conversion will automatically convert amount and do settle up for you.
8) A cool dashboard with beautiful charts. You can easily figure out “Whom you owe most?” and “Who owe you most?”.

If you’ve not tried Divide & Pay yet, do give it a try on your next trip … https://www.dividenpay.com/

Divide & Pay Mobile App is On the way.

We’re getting few users occasionally and considering Collage Students as primary target audience for this app as of now.

As there are many collages, we would like to get some helpful suggestions from Rodinhooders to start with. How can we reach to students?

Regards
Nilesh
Nilesh Gamit February 10, 2015, 12:28 pm

Hi Rodinhooders,

Thanks for your suggestions so far on our web version of Divide & Pay. In last few months, we’ve worked on tuning the application. The most common feedback we got is to have Mobile App for Divide & Pay.

We’re happy to inform you that, we’ve just released 1^st version of Divide & Pay Android App. We’ll be happy to hear feedback or answer any questions you may have.
asha chaudhry February 11, 2015, 3:46 am

nilesh,

pls also update the post at the end with today’s date. your comment might get missed… will promote u again.
Nilesh Gamit February 11, 2015, 8:57 am

Hi Asha

Thank you. We’ve updated the post. 🙂
Karan Ahuja February 11, 2015, 9:05 am

bahut ghisaa pitaa idea hai .

hacker news pe 2 saal pehle aaya tha .

get out of it now 🙂

unless you really enjoy using it yourself !

TC

Karan
Darshan Bhambiru March 6, 2015, 1:28 pm

Just thought would add this update for relevancy 🙂

Happy Holi!!