Group Shared Expense Calculator 2024 – Free Travel Expense Sharing Template

This Group Shared Expense Calculator template can be used to calculate each person’s share of expenses in a group. For example, when you go on a trip with your friends where multiple people pay for shared expenses. At the end of the trip, you would need to calculate how much each person owes and to whom. Another example is if you participate in a group event which needs multiple purchases.

We were on a family trip last week for 3 days with a friend’s family. We shared expenses for car rental, hotel reservation, fuel, etc. and both families paid for expenses at different times. When we returned from the trip, we had to calculate our share of the expenses. I built this template to help with that.

FEATURES

• Expenses can be split equally among all friends in a single step
• Expenses can be split unequal among any number of friends
• Expenses can be split unequal by % or Amount
• Report shows all balances among friends
• Calculates expense amounts for each friend

FREE DOWNLOAD

VIDEO DEMO

HOW TO USE

Step 1: Enter friends’ names. The template allows up to 12 friends.

Step 2: Enter the expense transactions

• Date: Date of expense transaction for your reference (Not used in any calculation)
• Transaction: Description of the transaction for your reference (Not used in any calculation)
• Amount: Expense Amount
• Category: Category of expense (Not used in any calculation)
• Paid By: Person who paid for the expense
• Split Type: There are three ways expense can be shared/split.

Let’s take expense for Coffee to illustrate the three split types.

Split Equal: When the expense is shared equally among all the friends.

This transaction does not need any further data entry. In this case, the $12 will be shared among all 8 friends equally. $.1.5 each.

Split Unequal – %: When expense is shared unequally among friends and we know the share in %, we can use this split type.  One example is when only 2 of the 8 friends had Coffee and their shares are 40% & 60%.  We enter the shares in appropriate columns named after the friends.

We will also use this split type when we have all the 8 friends sharing in unequal % share.

Note: when entering %, please enter in decimals. For example, enter 50% as 0.5.

Split Unequal – Amt: When expense is shared unequally among friends and we know the share in actual amounts, we can use this split type.  Following the same coffee example, when only 2 of the 8 friends had Coffee and their shares are $4 and $8.

Data Validation

There are some validation rules built in the template to ensure accurate data entry.

1. Name entered in Paid By column should be present in the Friends list in the Home sheet
2. When using ‘Split Unequal – %’, the % entered for all the friends should add up to 100%
3. When using ‘Split Unequal – Amt’, the amounts entered for all the friends should add up to expense amount

If there are any errors, you will see it in the last column Validation.

You will also see visual indicators on the expense transactions.

Purple indicates transactions where the shares (% or Amount) are under the expenses and the Red indicates transactions where shares (% or Amount) are over the expenses.

Please ensure that there are no errors in order for the report to provide accurate balances.

Enter each transaction in a new row. If you are new to Excel tables, please read this article on Introduction to data entry in Excel.

Step 3: View Report 

Once we complete entering all the expense transactions, we can move to the report sheet.

Click to view full image

The sheet shows all the individual balances on who owes whom how much. We can also see the total amount a person owes and a person is owed to.

We can also select one friend to highlight that friend’s details and summary.

Click to view full image

The summary at the top shows Amount Owed To, Amount Owed From and Net Balance. The details show the Amounts Owed To, in Green and Amounts Owed From, in Red.

If there are any errors in data entry in the Expenses sheet, you will see a warning message in the Report sheet.

We can also see the amounts paid by each person, total expenses by each person and the net balance.

If the Net Balance is negative, that means the person will have to pay to others more than he will receive from them. Since we are distributing expense amounts equally, sometimes we end up with a rounding difference of a few cents.

Changing Currency

You can change the currency format displayed to suit your currency. Just select the currency cells and press Ctrl +1.

Choose the currency from the list and press OK.

If you find this shared expenses spreadsheet template useful, please share the template with your friends. If you have any suggestions to improve, please post them in the comments.