What's the difference between /balance and /settle?

/balance shows each person's net balance — who's owed, who owes. /settle calculates the minimal settlement: the smallest set of transfers that clears every balance, rather than everyone paying everyone.

Does the calculator actually move money?

No — it only calculates and displays numbers. SplitTabsBot never processes a real payment; your group still pays however you normally would. Nobody can accidentally send cash by running /settle, and the command is safe to run in the group chat where everyone can see it.

Why would /settle show fewer payments than the number of debts?

Because it nets debts against each other across the whole group instead of listing every individual owed-to-owed relationship, which usually collapses into far fewer actual transfers. Four people who each owe three others can end up with three payments in total — or two.

What does a $0.00 balance mean?

That person paid exactly their share of everything logged so far — they're square, not missing. They still appear in splits they took part in; there's simply no transfer for them in the settlement. A settlement that leaves one member at $0.00 is working correctly.

Can two people use it, or is it only for bigger groups?

It works for two people, but with two people there's nothing to net — one person just owes the other the difference, which you can work out in your head. The calculator earns its keep at three or more people, where the pairwise debts start to overlap.

Is there a limit to how many expenses I can log?

Free groups get 20 expenses. A one-time 150 Stars payment unlocks unlimited expenses and CSV export for the whole group.

Do I need to run /settle for the numbers to be right?

No — /balance is accurate on its own, and /settle doesn't change any balances, it just proposes the transfers that would zero them out. You can run /settle purely to look, tell everyone what it says, and run it again next week with more expenses logged in between.

How Telegram Group Expense Splitting Math Works (Minimal Settlement Explained)

A group that's been splitting costs for a while — a trip, a shared apartment, a recurring group order — usually ends up with a tangle of who-paid-for-what that's hard to untangle by memory. A group expense calculator like SplitTabsBot solves two separate problems: figuring out each person's net balance, and figuring out the smallest set of payments that clears everyone up.

Those are genuinely different calculations. Net balance just adds up what each person paid versus what they owe across every logged expense. Minimal settlement goes a step further: instead of everyone paying everyone they technically owe something to, it works out the fewest transfers that leave every balance at zero.

SplitTabsBot handles both, as two separate commands, so you can check where things stand at any point (/balance) without forcing a settlement, and only ask for the actual payment plan (/settle) when the group is ready to actually pay up.

Worked example. Six months into a shared flat, three people have been covering different things: Alice paid $480 for the internet and $90 for the shared streaming plan, Bob covered $410 of groceries over the months, and Carol paid $260 of the electricity. That's $1,240 across three people, so $413.33 apiece. Alice paid $570 — she's $156.67 up. Bob paid $410, essentially square. Carol paid $260, so she's $153.33 down. /balance shows those three positions; /settle doesn't ask Carol to write two cheques. It has her pay Alice the $153.33 in one transfer, and the flat is square. Two debts collapsed into one payment, which is the whole reason the minimal settlement exists.

This is also why netting beat-by-beat comparisons go wrong in a group of five or more: the arithmetic isn't hard, but nobody does it consistently from memory, and one person silently loses track of a $12 round of coffees while everyone else has moved on.

Keep reading

Steps

Add expenses as they happen with /add. Example: /add 42.50 dinner @alice @bob — amount, description, who it's split between. The payer is automatically included in the split.
Check /balance anytime. This shows each member's running net balance — who's owed money overall and who owes it — based on everything logged so far, without proposing any specific payments.
Run /settle when you're ready to actually pay up. Takes no arguments. It calculates the minimal settlement — the fewest transfers that would bring every balance to zero — instead of every debtor paying every creditor individually.
Read the two outputs differently. Think of /balance as the scoreboard and /settle as the fixture list. If someone's balance is $0.00 while others are up and down, nothing is wrong — they're simply square, and /settle won't waste a transfer on them. A balance of $0.00 still means they were part of every split they appear in.
Fix mistakes with /undo, or start over with /clear. /undo removes the most recent entry if something was logged wrong; /clear wipes the whole group's ledger for a clean restart.

Good to know

Net balance (/balance) and minimal settlement (/settle) are two different calculations — one shows position, the other shows a payment plan — and SplitTabsBot keeps them as separate commands on purpose.
The minimal settlement is about the fewest transfers, not the smallest individual amounts — it can still mean one person pays a larger single amount if that clears more balances at once.
No real money moves through the calculation — /balance and /settle only display numbers; actual payment still happens however your group already pays each other.
When NOT to use a minimal settlement: if the group genuinely wants the paper trail of who-owed-who for every individual expense, pay each other directly and use /balance as the audit trail instead. If the group is two people, netting is trivial. And if the group only ever splits things evenly and settles same-day, a calculator adds ceremony without changing the answer.
Edge case: rounding. Amounts come in cents, and a split across three people can't divide a cent evenly, so per-person shares can land a cent apart — the group's balances are still internally consistent, because the total paid always equals the total owed. Don't be surprised if two people owe $41.34 and $41.33 for the same third of an expense.
The calculation only knows what's been logged. Expenses people forgot to /add aren't in the settlement, and a settlement run before everyone has logged their weekend spend will disagree with the settlement run after. Log first, then settle — and if someone remembers something afterward, /add it and run /settle again; nothing about the earlier settlement is locked in.
Free: 20 expenses per group. Pro is a one-time 150 Stars (≈ $3) payment for the whole group, not per member, that removes the cap and adds CSV export.
The payer is always counted as one of the people splitting an expense in /add, so you don't need to separately list yourself.

See SplitTabsBot About the bot Open in the hub

FAQ

What's the difference between /balance and /settle?: /balance shows each person's net balance — who's owed, who owes. /settle calculates the minimal settlement: the smallest set of transfers that clears every balance, rather than everyone paying everyone.
Does the calculator actually move money?: No — it only calculates and displays numbers. SplitTabsBot never processes a real payment; your group still pays however you normally would. Nobody can accidentally send cash by running /settle, and the command is safe to run in the group chat where everyone can see it.
Why would /settle show fewer payments than the number of debts?: Because it nets debts against each other across the whole group instead of listing every individual owed-to-owed relationship, which usually collapses into far fewer actual transfers. Four people who each owe three others can end up with three payments in total — or two.
What does a $0.00 balance mean?: That person paid exactly their share of everything logged so far — they're square, not missing. They still appear in splits they took part in; there's simply no transfer for them in the settlement. A settlement that leaves one member at $0.00 is working correctly.
Can two people use it, or is it only for bigger groups?: It works for two people, but with two people there's nothing to net — one person just owes the other the difference, which you can work out in your head. The calculator earns its keep at three or more people, where the pairwise debts start to overlap.
Is there a limit to how many expenses I can log?: Free groups get 20 expenses. A one-time 150 Stars payment unlocks unlimited expenses and CSV export for the whole group.
Do I need to run /settle for the numbers to be right?: No — /balance is accurate on its own, and /settle doesn't change any balances, it just proposes the transfers that would zero them out. You can run /settle purely to look, tell everyone what it says, and run it again next week with more expenses logged in between.

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Curious what the Pro features cost? See pricing.