Know what a month actually costs — annual bills and all

SharedExpense is an expense tracker for households and groups that spreads annual and quarterly bills across the months they actually cover. It shows what you collectively spend; it never works out who owes whom.

Start trackingHow the allocation works

Annual bills are why monthly totals lie

A yearly insurance premium is not a March expense — it is twelve months of cover that happened to be paid in March. SharedExpense divides it across those twelve months, so March stops looking like a disaster and the other eleven stop looking cheap.

When you record an expense you choose an allocation type: no allocation for a one-off, or monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, or a custom coverage start and end date. The amount is divided evenly across the months that period covers.

Both views stay available. Cost shows what a month cost with bills spread across the months they cover. Cash shows what actually left your accounts. The difference between them is usually the most interesting number on the screen.

SharedExpense
CostCash

September so far · true cost

$2,840

$1,190 actually left your accounts

Already committed

$4,300

Paid already, covering you through July 2027

An illustration of the Summary report on a cost basis, rebuilt in HTML with example figures — not a screenshot.

Numbers you can open

Tap a category, a month, a year or a week figure and a sheet lists the individual expenses that make it up — and for a bill spread across months, the row shows both the slice and the full payment it came from.

SharedExpense

Insurance · September 2026

ExpenseAmount
Total$310
Car insurance
$100 of $1,200 · spread over 12 months		$100
Home contents
$210 of $2,520 · spread over 12 months		$210
An illustration of the transaction sheet opened from a category total, rebuilt in HTML with example figures — not a screenshot.

Three report screens answer three different questions. Summary is what this month looks like. Trends is whether it is going up, by week, month or year. Breakdown is where the money is going, by category, person or group.

Comparisons appear on their own: against a typical recent month, against the same day of a typical month while the month is still running, and against the same month last year. When there is not enough history to compare honestly, the comparison is hidden rather than shown as zero.

Shared, without the settling up

Create a group for a family, a flat or a trip, invite people by email, and everything logged to it lands in one shared history. Nobody is ever presented with a balance to clear.

Shared categories

Push a category to a group and the group gets its own copy. Renaming it there never touches your personal one.

Who spent it

A per-person breakdown of who logged what. It is a record of spending, not a ledger of debts.

History that survives

Expenses stay in the group's timeline even after the person who logged them leaves, so past monthly totals stay correct.

Add an expense with no signal

SharedExpense is an installable progressive web app. Logging an expense works with no connection at all: it is stored on your device, counted in your totals straight away, and synced automatically when you are back online.

Sync is safe to retry, so a flaky connection cannot produce duplicates, and a failed item tells you it failed instead of disappearing. Months you have already opened stay readable offline. Reports, group management, settings and editing an existing expense need a connection.

What it deliberately does not do

Knowing what a tool refuses to do is usually more useful than another feature list.

No debt settlement

No balances, no “you owe me”, no settling up. This is the core design decision, not a gap.

No currency conversion

Reports show one currency at a time and say when something has been left out, rather than guessing an exchange rate.

No bank sync

Expenses are entered by hand. Nothing connects to your bank and nothing imports statements.

Questions people ask

How do I split family expenses without tracking who owes whom?
Put everyone in a shared group and log expenses to it. SharedExpense adds them into one household total and shows the breakdown by category, by person and by group, but it never calculates a balance between people and never asks anyone to settle up. It answers "what did we spend" rather than "what do you owe me", which is the question most households living out of a common pot actually have.
How do I budget for annual bills like insurance or road tax?
Record the payment once and choose an allocation type: monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, annual, or a custom coverage start and end date. SharedExpense divides the amount evenly across the months the payment covers, so a $1,200 annual premium paid in March shows as $100 in each of twelve months rather than $1,200 in March. You can still see the raw payment by switching the report from cost basis to cash basis.
Does SharedExpense work offline?
Adding an expense works fully offline. It is saved on your device and syncs automatically when you reconnect, and it appears in your totals immediately in the meantime. Months you have already viewed stay readable offline from a local cache. Reports, group management, settings and editing an existing expense need a connection.
Is SharedExpense a Splitwise alternative?
Only if what you want is shared visibility rather than debt settlement. Splitwise is designed to work out who owes whom and settle it. SharedExpense deliberately has no settlement feature at all: it exists to show a household or group what it collectively spends over time. If you need to split a restaurant bill among friends and square up afterwards, Splitwise is the right tool.
Does it convert between currencies?
No, and that is deliberate. You set a currency per account, and each expense takes the currency of the account that paid it. Reports show one currency at a time and tell you plainly when spending in another currency has been left out, rather than converting it at a rate the app would have to guess. Eleven currencies are available.
What does SharedExpense cost?
It is free to use. The app is in active development and there is no paid tier today.

See what your months actually cost

SharedExpense is free and runs in the browser. Sign in to create your first group and record an expense.

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