Group trips run on fronted money — someone books the shuttle, someone else buys four people's gas canisters. The Expenses tab keeps score so nobody has to.
Adding An Expense
Add an expense with a title, amount, date and who paid, then split it between members — evenly or with custom amounts per person. Pack Shadows join in like anyone else, as payer or ower. Each expense also takes:
- a category — Transport, Food, Groceries, Stay, Permit, Gear or Other — shown as an icon tile so the list scans easily
- an optional link (the booking confirmation, the receipt, the campsite page)
- notes, and an optional link to what it belongs to on the plan — an itinerary item or a food drop. An item holds one expense, but several costs can share a drop (the food, the postage, a holding fee), and each shows on the drop's itinerary row
Planned Vs Actual
Expenses can be planned (the ferry you'll book next month) or actual (money already spent). Planned expenses keep future costs visible without touching anyone's balance — they're excluded from the running totals until they become real. A planned expense can even leave the payer as TBD while the group figures out who's booking. When the money moves, flip it to actual.
Private Expenses
Not every trip cost is the pack's business. Your flights, the drive to the trailhead, the new rain jacket — real money you're spending on this hike, but nothing anyone else needs to see or chip in for.
In the expense form, the Split among header is a switch: flip it to Private and the whole splitting section disappears, because there's nothing to split. A private expense:
- is visible only to you — it never appears in anyone else's list, balance, settle-up, activity log or expense summary email
- counts towards your own total — along the top of the page and in the Your position panel — so that figure answers "what is this trip costing me" rather than "what do I owe the pack"
- can be planned or actual, same as any other
- sits in the list with everything else — shaded a little differently, and carrying a PRIVATE pill where the split count normally goes. Hover the pill for a reminder of what it means. The pack's figures beside it — hike total, average per hiker, balances, the settle-up, the projected split — are built from shared expenses alone, so they read exactly the same for you as they do for everybody else
Private expenses work whatever your role — even on view only, since they're your own records rather than the pack's. They can't be linked to an itinerary entry or a food drop, because both are shared with the whole hike. If you decide a private expense should be shared after all, edit it and flip the switch back.
Exporting: the PDF export leaves private expenses out by default, so the file is safe to send to the pack. When you have some, the export dialog offers a tick box to include them in a list of their own.
Only Mine
On a hike with more than one person, Only mine at the top of the page hides the entries that don't involve you, so you can check your own costs on a long list. It keeps what you paid, what you're part of the split for and your private expenses, and payments you made or received. Everything else is hidden from the lists only: the totals, your position, the balances and the settle-up stay the same, and the counts at the top say how many of how many you're seeing. Your choice is remembered on that device.
Balances And Settling Up
The Your position panel shows where you stand: what you've paid, what your share is, any reimbursements you've paid back or been paid back, and whether you're owed or owing overall. Beside it sit the pack's figures — the hike total and the average per hiker.
Your total, along the top of the page, is what the trip is costing you: your share of every expense, plus any private ones. While some of your share is still only planned it reads Your projected total, since the final figure depends on what those purchases end up costing.
When the trip winds down, the settle-up suggestion turns the whole tangle into the smallest possible set of payments — "Alex pays Sam $62" beats eleven micro-transfers. Record each reimbursement as it's paid and the balances update until everyone's square.
Keeping payments down means the money is routed through the pack, so the person the settle-up has you pay isn't always the person you owe. If you'd rather each pair settle up between themselves, switch the panel from Fewest payments to Settle directly: it then lists one payment for every pair that isn't square, for exactly what's between the two of you. That's more payments, but each one can be checked line by line in Check the sums (below). The choice is remembered on that device, and it changes nothing for anyone else. The closing summary email and the PDF always show the fewest payments.
Pick one way for the whole pack and stick with it. Once some of you have paid the fewest-payments way, what's left between pairs no longer cancels out pair by pair, and Settle directly can ask somebody who is square overall to both pay and be paid. The panel says so when that happens.
Checking The Sums
Before you hand money over, Check the sums (under the list of expenses) shows how your position adds up, one pack mate at a time. It has a row for each pack mate: what they owe you, what you owe them, or that you're square. Open one to see the statement behind it, oldest first:
- every expense they paid that you had a share of, with your share counting against you
- every expense you paid that they had a share of, with their share counting for you
- every payment between the two of you
- a running total after each line, ending on the figure in the row
Underneath are the four totals that make up that figure (what each of you covered for the other, and what each has paid back) and a note on how it compares with the settle-up. An expense you both shared but someone else paid isn't on your statement with each other, because you each owe the payer, so the note names it. Record a payment fills in the two of you; type the amount yourself.
You can also open a statement by tapping a pack mate in Running balance, or a payment you're part of in the settle-up. Planned and private expenses are never on it, so a statement reads the same for both of you. Shares are worked out to fractions of a cent ($34.95 split four ways is $8.7375 each). Each line shows its share to the cent, but every total adds up the exact shares, as your position and both settle-up plans do, so the lines can add up a cent away from the running total beside them; the statement says which shares when they do. If an entry still names somebody who has been removed from the pack, it appears as No longer in the pack until you reassign it.
Tip: When the owner closes the hike, everyone gets a final expense summary email with the settlement — a clean record for the group chat sceptics.
Adding Expenses Offline
You can add an expense — or plan a purchase — with no reception at all. It appears straight away marked Queued, counts towards the hike total and everyone's balances, and sends itself the moment you're back in range. Until then it's yours to change or discard, so a wrong amount typed at camp is a two-tap fix.
Recording a reimbursement works offline too, with one rule: you can only log a payment you made. Both people are standing there when cash changes hands, and offline neither can see that the other has already logged it — so the person who handed the money over is the one who writes it down.
Two things still wait for a connection: editing or deleting an expense that's already saved (a pack mate may have changed it since), and linking one to an itinerary entry or a food drop. The Fewest payments settle-up also pauses while anything is queued — the balances above it are already up to date, but that payment plan is only worth drawing once everyone's entries have landed. Settle directly and Check the sums are worked out on your device, so they carry on and count your queued entries.
For the full picture of what does and doesn't work offline, see offline mode.
Currency
Each hike has one currency, chosen when it's created — every amount on the hike uses it.