Writing 2 min read
Introducing: lending and splitting bills
Money that left your account but is still yours: loans tracked as receivables, split bills recorded without double-counting, and settling up.
Zain Haroon — Full-stack Engineer
Lending a friend 5,000 is the entry that breaks most trackers. The money left your account, so the app calls it spending, and your monthly total now says you blew 5,000 you’re getting back on Friday.
Money Diary records it as a receivable instead: money that left your balance but is still owed to you.
Lending someone money
Tell the assistant, or create the entry from the Create menu:
Lend Ahmed 2,000 until Friday
Your account balance drops, because the cash really did leave. The 2,000 is tracked against Ahmed as a receivable and stays out of your spending totals, so your charts keep describing what you actually consumed.
When Ahmed pays you back, mark the loan settled. The receivable closes and your account balance comes back up. No income entry, because none of it was income.
Splitting a bill
Say you pay a 3,000 dinner bill for three people. Two things happened at once, and Money Diary records both:
- A 3,000 expense, because you did pay the full bill.
- A 2,000 receivable, split across the two friends who owe you their share.
Your spending shows 3,000 for the month, your receivables show 2,000 outstanding, and neither number is invented. The common alternative, logging only your own 1,000 share, leaves your bank balance 2,000 lower than the app thinks it should be.
Tell the assistant what happened in one sentence: split the 3,000 dinner three ways with Ahmed and Sara. It creates the expense and the per-person shares together.
Who still owes you
Receivables are listed per person, so the question “who hasn’t paid me back” has an answer instead of a vague feeling. Settle them individually as people pay, which is usually how it happens with a split bill.
Linked contacts
If the other person uses Money Diary and you’ve linked contacts, a loan you record can appear on their side for them to accept, so you both track the same number rather than two drifting versions of it.
Nothing lands in anyone’s ledger because you typed their email. The entry only appears in their account once they accept it, and until then it’s just your record of the loan.
The part I still check by hand
Loans and splits are the entries I read back after the assistant files them. They involve other people’s money and the shares are easy to phrase ambiguously. Open the transaction, confirm the split matches what you agreed, and move on.