HipTrip

Splitting Expenses

Track shared costs on a trip and see who owes whom — no more mental math or spreadsheets.

Who can log expenses

Anyone with access to an itinerary — the owner or anyone it's been shared with, at either view or edit permission — can log expenses and be a split participant. Logging an expense doesn't change the trip plan, so it isn't gated behind edit access.

You can also split a cost with someone who doesn't have a HipTrip account. Add them as a guest by name (and optionally an email) right from the add-expense form — no invite required.

Adding an expense

  1. Open an itinerary and choose Expenses from the menu (the ⋯ button near the top of the trip page).
  2. Click Add expense.
  3. Enter a description, amount, and (optionally) a category like lodging, food, activities, or transport.
  4. Choose who it's split between — select any current trip member and/or add guests by name.
  5. Choose how to split it:
    • Split equally — HipTrip divides the total evenly across everyone selected. If it doesn't divide evenly, the extra cents go to the first people in the list so the split always adds up exactly to the total.
    • Exact amounts — enter exactly how much each person owes. The amounts must add up to the total before you can save.

Whoever adds the expense is recorded as the payer.

Balances

The Expenses page shows a running balance for every member and guest on the trip: who's owed money, and who owes it, based on every expense and settlement recorded so far. Balances are always computed fresh from the full history — nothing is cached, so they're never out of date.

HipTrip also suggests the smallest set of payments needed to settle everyone up (e.g. instead of five separate payments, it might suggest just two).

Settling up

Click Settle up to record a payment between two people — for example, after someone pays a friend back via Venmo or cash. Pick who paid, who received it, and the amount. You can start from one of the suggested settlements or enter it manually.

Recording a settlement doesn't move any money — it's a ledger entry so the balances reflect that the debt has been paid.

A settlement always needs at least one real HipTrip member on one side — a guest can't record anything themselves, but any current member can record a settlement on a guest's behalf.

Editing and deleting

Only the person who logged an expense or the itinerary owner can edit or delete it. The same rule applies to settlements: only a party to the settlement or the itinerary owner can delete it, unless a guest is involved — in that case any current member can remove it.

Deletes are permanent — there's no undo, so double-check before removing an expense or settlement.

Multiple currencies

Every expense has a currency, but HipTrip doesn't convert between currencies or mix them into a single balance in v1 — plan on entering all expenses for a trip in one currency.