Split bills with friends

What it is

Splits is Lipi’s way to split bills with friends. One split is one shared expense: a name, a total, a date, who paid and each person’s share. Use it for a Pokhara trip, flat electricity, a birthday dinner or any bill more than one person pays for. Splits are free.

What problem it solves

Group money gets messy because the payer fronts the cash and everyone else forgets. A split keeps one record that every member can open. It shows the total, each share and who has settled. Nobody has to scroll a chat to find “who paid the hotel”. The payer can also copy their share into their own books, so personal spending stays correct.

How it works

1. Open Splits in the menu and tap New split. Give it a name such as “Pokhara trip”, pick the Currency and set the Total and Date.
2. Under Members, add people by email, pick someone you split with before, or add a name-only guest. Choose Paid by.
3. Check the Shares. They start equal. Adjust one share and the rest recalculate. Untick anyone who is not part of it. Attach a Receipt photo if you have one, then tap Create split.
4. Invite people. Open the split, tap the QR icon and share the code or Copy link. The other person opens the link and taps Join.
5. Follow the split on its page. A chat-style timeline shows each member with a status: Owes, Paid, Claimed or Unpaid. The side panel shows the total, the payer and a progress line such as “1 of 4 settled”.
6. Settle as people pay. See Settle up for claims, confirmations and reminders.
7. Optional: tap Copy to my books to record your own share as an expense, or the money coming back as income.

The list page shows every split with a line such as “You owe”, “to collect” or “All clear”, the number of members and how many still need settling.

Details and rules

• Plan: Free. There is no Premium gate on splits.
• Members: up to 50 per split. A member can be a Lipi user (by email) or a guest with a name only.
• Shares must add up to the total exactly. Lipi checks this on the server, so rounding never leaves a spare paisa.
• Zero-amount splits are allowed but never settle on their own.
• Currency: each split has its own currency. Choose it when you create the split.
• Creator and payer: the creator is added as the payer. To give the creator a share, keep their own row in the members list.
• Locked while payments exist: you cannot edit the total, currency, shares or payer while any payment is claimed or paid. Revert the payments first.
• Invite codes have 12 characters, last 30 days and can be replaced with New code. The old code stops working at once.
• Member menu: rename a member, make someone the payer or the owner, remove someone, or leave and rejoin.
• Leaving: if you still owe or are owed, you stay listed until you settle. If the owner leaves, the split closes for everyone and its history stays.
• Breakdown shows who owes whom across the split.
• Sharing needs internet. Joining, claims and confirmations happen between people’s accounts, so they need a connection.

Works with

• Settle up for paying back inside a split.
• Lending and borrowing ledgers for long-running money with one person.
• Share links and invite codes for every kind of link in Lipi.
• Splits dashboard widget for what you owe and are owed on the home screen.

Ask an AI assistant

Connect Lipi to ChatGPT or Claude and try: “Split Rs. 24,000 for the Pokhara hotel between me, Mina and Rajan.” The assistant uses create_split. Ask “Who owes me money across my splits?” and it uses get_splits_summary. To record a payment, say “Rajan paid me back Rs. 8,000 in cash” and it uses record_split_settlement.