How to Track Who Owes Whom When You Don't Share a Bank Account (Ledger Template + Apps)

The method in 4 steps

1. Decide whose cost each kind of thing is. Rent and power are ours. A haircut is its owner's. Agree once on how ours is divided: 50/50, or by income like 60/40. The fair split calculator gives the percentages.
2. Write a line when a shared cost is paid. Date, what, who paid, whose cost, amount. Do it the same day, or do it from the bank statements every week. Skipping it is how a month of costs turns into an argument.
3. Work out Owed for the line. If you paid, the owed amount is your partner's share of the cost. If they paid, it is minus your share. Your own costs paid by you need no line at all.
4. On settle-up day, add the Owed column. The total is the only payment between you for the month.

The ledger template

This is a real table. Press Print for paper, or Copy and paste it into Google Sheets or Excel, where it lands in six columns.

A worked month

Alex and Sam have separate accounts. Rent and car insurance are split 60/40 by income. Groceries, power, dinners and internet are 50/50. A few lines are one person's alone, paid by the other. The costs are made up.

The twelve lines come to $733.30, and the sign is plus, so Sam owes Alex $733.30. Rent is the biggest piece: Alex paid $1,800.00 and Sam's 40% is $720.00.

Check the math

Add the amounts a second way. If it matches, the ledger is right.

The ledger has 12 lines but one payment: $733.30 from Sam to Alex.

Settle-up day

1. Pick a day. The 1st works, because rent has just gone out.
2. Check for missing lines. Scroll each bank's month. Any shared charge with no line gets one.
3. Add the Owed column and agree on the total.
4. Send one payment from the person who owes, with a note like “November settle-up”. How to send it is in paying a partner back.
5. Start a clean list for the new month. Keep the old one.

Spreadsheet, manual app or bank-linked app

The ledger works in any of three places. They differ in who does the typing. For a ranked list of apps, see best apps to split bills with a partner.

A spreadsheet costs nothing and shows you the math, but you do the entering. A manual app does the adding and keeps the balance, and you still enter each cost. A bank-linked app skips the entering, but each of you has to connect an account, and the two apps differ on what the other person sees: Wonderful lets each of you choose, account by account, between everything, only totals or nothing, and Honeydue asks what a partner can see after you connect a bank.

Wonderful keeps a running total of who owes whom and counts each charge for the person or the pair it belongs to. It does not move money. You still pay each other yourselves. It runs in the browser only, with no iPhone or Android app, and there is no free plan after the trial.

When it gets messy

Refunds

Give a refund its own line with a negative amount, paid by whoever got the money back, and the same split as the original charge. In the example, Sam got $18.40 back on groceries. Alex's half is $9.20, so the line reads +$9.20 and the total goes up by that much.

One person pays for both

If Alex puts everything on one card, every line says Alex paid. Owed is then just Sam's share of each line, and the lines that are Alex's own cost owe nothing. It is the same ledger, with fewer ways to go wrong.

Payments between you

The settle-up payment is not a cost, so it has no line. Write the date and amount below the total, and the next month starts from zero. If a month ends with a payment still owed, carry the total to the first line of the next one.

Things that are not shared

Leave them off. A gift for the other person, or a cost you each cover alone, never needs a line. The ledger is only for what you split.

Not sure how to divide the shared costs in the first place? See the split expenses spreadsheet and how to split bills based on income.