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Keeping track of money lent, borrowed and split

You paid for the whole table. Someone covered your deposit while your transfer cleared. A flatmate buys the household things and you settle up monthly. None of this is spending in the ordinary sense, and filing it under a category is how it gets forgotten.

A debt is a transaction with a name on it

Lending money is an expense — the money left your wallet, and your balance should say so. The part most apps drop is who has it now.

Attaching the person to that same transaction solves both halves at once. Your balance is right because the expense was recorded. The debt is visible because the name is on it. And when the money comes back it arrives as income against that name, so the balance comes right again without any manual correction. There is no separate ledger to keep in sync, which is the usual reason these things rot.

Splitting a bill

Record the full amount you paid as one expense — that is what left your account. Then add one debt per person for their share. A debt holds one name, so three friends is three debts.

That looks like more work than one "split" button, and it buys something: each share can be repaid separately, at a different time, in a different currency, and you can see at a glance who has settled and who has not.

Debts in more than one currency

This is where it usually falls apart. You lent euros; they pay you back in dinars because that is what they have.

Debts are kept per currency, so one person can owe you in two at once and each amount stands on its own line. When a repayment arrives in a different currency from the loan, both amounts are kept separately — the same approach as a transfer with conversion — so a euro loan repaid in dinars does not silently change size.

Asking for it back, and letting it go

Walletable never messages anyone on your behalf. It writes the text — gentle, as a list, or amount only — and you send it yourself from your own messenger. A separate option sets a reminder for you, not for them.

And debts sometimes end without payment. Forgiving one closes it, keeps the original spending as spending because the money really is gone, and marks it as forgiven rather than repaid, so your repayment history stays honest. Step by step in the help.

Questions

How is this different from a bill-splitting app?

Splitting apps are a shared ledger between people, and everyone needs the app. This is inside your own ledger: the other person is a name in your list and needs nothing. The trade is that it only tracks your side, which is usually the side you care about.

Does money I have lent count as part of my balance?

No. It left your wallet, so it is not in your balance. What you are owed is shown as its own total, deliberately apart from the wallets, because treating it as money in hand is how people overspend.

Can I record a debt without going to the debts screen?

Yes. Tap − on a wallet, enter the amount, and pick the Lent tile instead of a category — the list of people opens. Starting from + the same tile reads Borrowed.

What happens to shared costs in a shared household?

If you both spend from the same money, a shared wallet is the better fit than debts: one wallet both people see and edit, broken down by member in the charts. Debts are for money that is genuinely owed, not for a common pot.