Jon from Splitwise here. Yep - we don't include interest rates or try to price debt transfers, because we want to keep things casual. The "debt simplification" is an awesome feature but is not on by default because some people have differing levels of trust with different friends.
We do send monthly reminders to make sure people are good about either paying back or picking up the check next time. People often just use it to keep track of who should pay next and that is the way I primarily use Splitwise personally. With good friends, Splitwise is just a way to let our balance roll and figure out who should pay today.
With more distant or very diligent friends who don't like being in debt, they settle up right away and like the monthly reminder emails. To each his or her own!
We have our API just for things like this. I actually have personally borrowed money with interest (a large amount to pay off a credit card) from a friend, and tracked the debt, payments, and interest on Splitwise. We did repayments via PayPal and I added interest each month using my own calculations. We were both very happy and it's been paid off for a while now.
If someone wrote a general Splitwise interest-on-your-balance app (I would make it be opt-in for friends who agreed, with 0% still as the default for balances) on our API, that'd be awesome.
Thanks Jon! When I get some free time I might play with the API a little bit. I'm sure flat interest % for balance at the end of the month (or any other point in time) would be fairly simple but I would want to take it a step further. I would like it have a "grace period" of X months (or X time intervals) from money lend date before interest kicks in and even then you would only be charged interest on money that hadn't been paid in X time intervals not all you owe. Of course this would be much more difficult than a simple:
$interestBillAmount = $amountOwed*$interestRate
That ran each month. Anyways keep up the great work, I use Splitwise all the time and it's a huge time and stress saver!
Jon from Splitwise here, thanks @mjmahone17 for mentioning our answer to this problem.
I think if you have complex or specific preferences about rent splitting (ie I don't want to live next to the kitchen) and live with a bunch of fellow nerds, an implicit fair division system may work well. The NYT calc is a great new implementation the Francis Su paper - the old Java one was broken.
If you have non-nerd roommates, couples living together, or are already assigned to rooms by fate or immutable preference, that's what the Splitwise calculator is for. The price are based on square-footage, survey data, and common sense. Not everyone is willing to change from the room they like, or sit for an auction.
Good point, for cases where you can't actually make a choice a curated price calculator is the best one can really hope for. In any case splitwise is a nice product btw :)
Splitwise (http://splitwise.com) also has a roommate bill-tracking tool, of which I'm the co-founder. We have Android and iPhone apps that sync with the cloud, and you don't need to connect with Facebook to sign up. Doesn't do chores or to-dos though, if that's something you want in your roommate site.
Let me know if you'd like to meet sometime @rschmulker, I'm based in Cambridge MA and Providence RI. You can reach me at hello@splitwise.com.
We do send monthly reminders to make sure people are good about either paying back or picking up the check next time. People often just use it to keep track of who should pay next and that is the way I primarily use Splitwise personally. With good friends, Splitwise is just a way to let our balance roll and figure out who should pay today.
With more distant or very diligent friends who don't like being in debt, they settle up right away and like the monthly reminder emails. To each his or her own!
We have our API just for things like this. I actually have personally borrowed money with interest (a large amount to pay off a credit card) from a friend, and tracked the debt, payments, and interest on Splitwise. We did repayments via PayPal and I added interest each month using my own calculations. We were both very happy and it's been paid off for a while now.
If someone wrote a general Splitwise interest-on-your-balance app (I would make it be opt-in for friends who agreed, with 0% still as the default for balances) on our API, that'd be awesome.