Expense Tracking & Settlement

Fairly manage shared costs on golf trips with automatic balance calculation and optimized settlement plans.

Overview

Golf trips involve shared expenses: greens fees, rental houses, group dinners, and more. Tracking who paid what and calculating who owes whom becomes complicated fast. The expense tracking feature handles all the math automatically, generating a clear settlement plan so your group can focus on golf instead of spreadsheets.

Key Features

Expense Recording

Track all shared costs throughout your trip:

• Any participant can add expenses: No bottleneck on one person - add from dashboard or the mobile portal
• Receipt upload: Attach photos of receipts or PDFs (up to 10MB) from phone or desktop; receipts are served through short-lived links (about an hour), so bookmarking one won’t work
• Categorized organization: Lodging, golf, food, transportation, entertainment
• Flexible splitting: Even splits, select specific people, exclude people, or custom amounts per person
• Notes and descriptions: Add context for any expense
• Real-time sync: Everyone sees updates immediately

Automatic Balance Calculation

The system continuously calculates each participant’s financial position:

Balances update instantly when expenses are added, edited, or deleted.

What counts as game money

A balance is not just shared costs. Money won and lost on the course is folded into the same number, so “what I owe” is one figure rather than a cost sheet and a separate pile of side bets:

Only competitions marked Include in Settlement contribute. Turn that off on a tournament whose money is settled outside the app and it drops out of everyone’s balance.

Each player’s row breaks the total down by source, so a player can see that they are up on skins but down on the trip pot.

Why wagers are excluded. A wager records a winner and a pot, but not who put money in. Without the paying side there is no way to net it to zero, so counting it would invent money and quietly push the cost onto whoever fronted the trip expenses. Wagers are tracked and shown, but they do not move a balance.

Smart Settlement Optimization

An organizer generates the settlement plan from the dashboard (Expenses → Settle Up). It is built from the unified view — shared expenses plus game money — and takes into account any payments already recorded. The algorithm minimizes the number of payments needed:

The Problem: In a group of 8 people with complex expenses, naive settlement could require 20+ individual transactions.

The Solution: Our settlement optimizer analyzes all balances and generates the minimum number of payments to settle everyone up. A typical 8-person trip settles in 4-6 transactions instead of 20+.

How It Works:

1. Calculate net balance for each participant
2. Sort participants by balance (highest owed to highest owing)
3. Match payers with recipients to minimize transactions
4. Generate clear “Alice pays Bob $X” instructions

Wager Tracking

Record informal bets so they are not forgotten:

• Add a wager: description and pot amount
• Settle it: pick the winner (or no winner)
• Shown, not settled: wagers appear on the Expenses page but are not included in settlement plans — see why

How Balances Work

Balance Calculation Example

Consider a 4-person trip where expenses are tracked:

Total: $1,680

Settlement Generation

From the balances above, the optimizer generates:

Three transactions settle the entire trip. Without optimization, this could require up to 6 transactions (each owing person paying each owed person).

With Game Money

If Steve won a $50 Nassau from Tom during the trip:

Because the Nassau nets to zero across its participants, the group’s total is unchanged — the money simply moves between players. The same applies to skins, tournament payouts and buy-ins.

Settlement Algorithm

Optimization Goals

The settlement algorithm optimizes for:

1. Minimum transactions: Reduce the number of payments needed
2. Simple amounts: Round to clean numbers where possible
3. Clear instructions: Unambiguous “pay this person this amount”

Algorithm Steps

1. Calculate Net Positions: Sum expenses paid minus fair share for each person
2. Identify Creditors: People with positive balances (owed money)
3. Identify Debtors: People with negative balances (owe money)
4. Match and Settle: Pair largest debtor with largest creditor, settle as much as possible, repeat

Example Walkthrough

Starting positions:

• Mike: +$380 (owed)
• Dave: +$180 (owed)
• Steve: -$220 (owes)
• Tom: -$340 (owes)

Step 1: Tom (-$340) pays Mike (+$380)

• Tom can pay $340
• Mike receives $340, new balance: +$40
• Tom’s balance: $0 (settled)

Step 2: Steve (-$220) pays Mike (+$40)

• Steve pays Mike $40
• Mike’s balance: $0 (settled)
• Steve’s new balance: -$180

Step 3: Steve (-$180) pays Dave (+$180)

• Perfect match
• Both settle to $0

Result: 3 transactions instead of up to 6.

Expense Categories

Lodging

Track accommodation costs:

• Hotel rooms
• Rental houses / Airbnb
• Resort fees
• Housekeeping tips

Golf

Track all golf-related costs:

• Greens fees
• Cart fees
• Caddie fees and tips
• Range balls
• Club rentals
• Forecaddie tips

Food

Track meal expenses:

• Restaurant dinners
• Breakfasts
• Grocery runs
• Snacks and drinks
• Room service

Transportation

Track travel costs:

• Rental car
• Gas
• Airport transfers
• Rideshare (Uber/Lyft)
• Parking fees

Entertainment

Track non-golf activities:

• Bar tabs
• Casino
• Activities and excursions
• Tips and gratuities

Custom Splits

When to Use Custom Splits

Not every expense applies to everyone equally:

Custom Split Options

When adding an expense with custom split:

1. Select Participants: Choose who shares this expense
2. Equal Split: Divide evenly among selected people
3. Custom Amounts: Enter specific amounts for each person

Collecting Payments

Collect deposits and buy-ins before the trip instead of chasing money after. Perfect for things like “$400 a head for the house and the tournament purse.”

Creating a Payment Request

From the trip’s Expenses tab, open the Payments section:

1. Click New Payment Request
2. Name it (e.g. “Trip deposit”), set the amount per player, and optionally a due date and description
3. Choose who owes it — all trip players or a specific subset
4. Create it. Every selected player gets an unpaid entry

Tracking Who Has Paid

The Payments section shows a grid of players × requests with a status chip for each:

Click any chip to record a manual payment, waive a player, or reset to unpaid. Running collected vs. outstanding totals appear at the top.

How Players Pay

Players see their outstanding requests at the top of the Expenses page in the Trip Portal:

• Online card payment: When online payments are enabled for the platform, players tap Pay now and check out securely with a card. Their status flips to Paid automatically.
• Direct payment: When online payments aren’t available, the portal shows the organizer’s Venmo/PayPal details (from their payment preferences) so players can pay directly — then the organizer marks the payment received on the dashboard.

Tips

• Create separate requests for separate things (lodging deposit vs. tournament buy-in) so partial payers are easy to track
• Set a due date so players see when money is expected
• Waive non-participants instead of deleting the request — the totals stay accurate

Integration with Trip Features

Trip Dashboard

Expense summary visible from the main trip view:

• Total trip cost
• Your current balance
• Number of pending settlements

Participant List

Each participant shows their financial status:

• Quick balance indicator
• Detailed breakdown on click
• Settlement status

Side games

Skins and Nassau are created per round from the portal and flow into settlement automatically:

• Skins — a value per skin, or a prize pool split across the skins won (carryovers included). A hole is decided once the whole field has scored it or the round is complete; ties carry. Team skins is not supported yet.
• Nassau — front, back and overall bets, plus automatic presses (one per player per nine when a player falls behind by the configured threshold). Team Nassau plays best ball per side. Participants can also press manually through the API; the portal has no press button yet.

Use Cases

Standard Buddy Trip

A group of friends takes an annual golf trip:

• Shared rental house
• Group greens fees
• Communal meals
• Various side bets

Expense tracking handles all shared costs, and settlement generation ensures fair resolution.

Extended Golf Vacation

Week-long trips with complex finances:

• Multiple accommodations
• Different courses each day
• Mix of group and individual meals
• Various activity costs

Categories and custom splits keep everything organized.

Ryder Cup Style Trips

Two-team format with shared and team expenses:

• Overall trip expenses split among all
• Team-specific costs (matching shirts, team dinner) split within teams
• Ryder Cup money handled through a tournament buy-in or trip pot, which does settle

Custom splits handle team-only expenses seamlessly.

Permissions

Who Can Add Expenses

By default, all trip participants can:

• Add expenses
• Edit their own expenses
• View all expenses and balances

Organizer Privileges

Trip organizers (trip admins) can additionally:

• Edit any expense
• Delete expenses
• Generate settlement plans
• Manage wagers and payment requests

Settlement Completion

The payer, the payee, or an organizer can mark a settlement paid. Anyone else is refused.

Best Practices

During Planning

• Set expectations about expense tracking before the trip
• Designate who handles large upfront payments
• Agree on splitting philosophy (even vs. itemized)

During the Trip

• Add expenses as they happen from the Trip Portal on your phone
• Upload receipt photos directly when adding an expense
• Select who paid and how to split (everyone, specific people, or custom amounts)
• Communicate large expenses before recording
• Review balances periodically

Settlement

• Wait until all expenses are recorded
• Verify entries before generating settlements
• Use digital payment methods for easy tracking
• Mark settlements complete promptly

Getting Started

Ready to track expenses on your next trip?

1. Read the complete guide
2. Add expenses from the dashboard or the portal
3. Run skins and Nassau from the portal; they settle automatically
4. Generate the settlement plan at the end (organizer)
5. Mark payments as they happen and close out the trip