Expenses and splitting costs

Expenses keeps a log of what you and your groups spend, and who owes whom. Each entry has an amount, a currency and a date. It is one of:

Kind	What it is
Tracked expense	“We spent ₹4,200 on groceries.” Nobody owes anybody; it counts as spending
Split expense	“Alex paid ₹3,000 for dinner, split equally.” Everyone’s share goes on balances
Payment	“Sam paid Alex ₹1,000.” Settles up part of a balance; never counts as spending

Expenses in the main navigation has two views:

• Overview lists your own ledgers under Your expenses, then each of your groups’ ledgers, with your balance in each ledger, such as “You owe ₹1,200”, and what you paid this month. Amounts in different currencies are never added together. A group whose ledgers couldn’t be loaded says so, rather than leaving its balances out.
• Your ledgers opens your own ledgers.

Each group’s Expenses tab holds that group’s ledgers. While you owe or are owed money somewhere, Home’s Today line says so, such as “You owe ₹1,200 in Goa trip”, and opens that ledger.

Ledgers

Expenses live in ledgers. A family group might keep a Household ledger in rupees and a Japan ledger in yen for a trip, and each settles up on its own.

• You don’t have to set one up. Your first expense creates a ledger called General in a group, or Personal for your own expenses, in the expense’s currency.
• New ledger, in the ledger switcher, makes another, with a Name (up to 60 characters, different from the book’s other ledgers) and a Currency. A group’s ledger also has a Mode and its People.
• Mode is how the ledger opens and how new expenses start. Split is for shared costs, such as a trip: balances and settling up come first, and a new expense starts split equally. Track is a spending log: the month’s totals by person and category. Any expense in either mode can still be split or left unsplit. A group’s first ledger, General, starts in Track mode; change it with Edit ledger.
• Currency is only the default; an expense can use another, such as a rupee expense in a yen ledger. Balances and totals are kept per currency and never converted.
• People is Everyone, which follows the group’s members as they change, or the people you pick, such as the six going on the trip. They’re who a split starts with. Everyone in the group still sees every ledger.

Your own ledgers only track your spending, so they have no mode or people. The switcher lists open ledgers, with archived ones below. The ledger you open is in the page’s address, so you can share a link to it.

Adding an expense

Choose Add expense and fill in What, Amount, Currency, Date and Category. In a group, Paid by says who paid, and the Split section decides who shares the cost:

• Not split: a tracked expense. It counts towards spending but changes no balance.
• Equally: pick the people sharing it. Any leftover paise or cents go one each to the first people listed.
• Amounts: an exact amount per person, which must add up to the total.
• Percent: a percentage per person, up to two decimals, which must add up to 100%.

The form shows each person’s share as you type, and what’s left to assign. What it shows is exactly what is saved. The line at the bottom names where the expense goes, such as “Saved to Friends › Japan”.

Categories are groceries, dining, rent, utilities, transport, travel, shopping, health, education, entertainment, gifts and other. Each expense has one payer and one currency.

If the connection drops while saving, the form says the change may already be saved and offers Retry, which sends the same change again and can’t save it twice.

Balances and settling up

A group’s Split ledger shows Balances, such as “You’re owed ₹500” or “Sam owes ¥3,000”, and Suggested transfers that settle everyone up in a few payments. Balances and transfers are per ledger and per currency. A Track ledger shows them too, once it has a split expense or a payment.

• Settle up beside a suggested transfer opens a payment with the amount filled in.
• Record a payment, in the ledger’s menu, or Payment in the Add expense form, records any other payment between two members.

Gluon only records payments: the money itself moves outside Gluon, by UPI, bank transfer or cash. Once everyone is even, the ledger says “Everyone is settled up.”

A Track ledger shows the month’s Total, what each person Paid in a group, and spending By category, with arrows to move between months, above that month’s entries.

Editing and history

Open an entry, or choose Edit from its menu, to change it: the description, category, date, amount, who paid and how it’s split. Changing the amount of an equal or percentage split shares the new amount the same way. Its currency, its ledger and whether it’s an expense or a payment can’t change: delete it and add a new one.

Everything is recorded in the open:

• An edited entry says who last changed it and when, such as “Edited by Sam on 30 Oct”.
• History, in an entry’s menu, lists every change to it: who made it, when, and each value before and after, such as “amount ₹3,000 → ₹3,600”. History in the ledger’s menu lists the whole ledger’s changes.
• In a group, every edit, delete and restore of an entry, and every created, renamed, changed, archived, unarchived or deleted ledger, posts a line in the group’s chat, such as “✏️ Vaishnavi edited “Dinner” in Japan: amount ¥30,000 → ¥36,000” or “🗂️ Vaishnavi created the ledger “Japan””.

Adding an expense or a payment doesn’t post in the chat, nor does the General ledger the first expense starts; the people a split expense or payment includes get a notification instead.

Deleting and restoring

Delete, in an entry’s menu, takes it out of the list, the totals and the balances. Its history stays. A deleted entry can be brought back for 30 days from the ledger’s or the entry’s History, which shows it as “restorable until” a date, with Restore. A restored entry comes back exactly as it was, with the same people and shares. After 30 days it’s gone for good.

Archiving and deleting ledgers

Archive, in the ledger’s menu, puts a finished ledger away, such as a trip that’s been settled. An archived ledger moves below the others in the switcher and accepts no new, changed, deleted or restored entries until you Unarchive it. If you still owe or are owed money there, it stays on the Overview, so archiving never hides a debt.

Delete ledger only works for a ledger with no entries, deleted ones included until 30 days after their deletion, for one made by mistake. A ledger with entries can be archived instead.

Export CSV, in the ledger’s menu, downloads the ledger’s entries as a spreadsheet file: each entry’s date, description, category, currency, total and split, then each person’s paid and share. A cell that a spreadsheet would read as a formula starts with '.

Your ledgers and group ledgers

• Your ledgers are private to you and only track your own spending: no splits, balances or payments.
• A group’s ledgers track and split. Every member sees every ledger and its whole history, including entries from before they joined, because balances only add up as a whole.

The two never mix: what you say in a private chat goes to your own ledgers, and what you say in a group’s chat goes to that group’s. To split a cost with a group, add it in the group’s chat or on its Expenses tab.

Who can change what

In a group, any member can add, edit, delete or restore any entry, and create, change, archive or delete any ledger. The history and the chat’s lines show who did what. Your own ledgers are yours alone.

People who leave. Someone who leaves a group loses access to its ledgers, but their entries and balances stay, shown under their account’s current name as “Priya (left)”. They get no more notifications. An entry they’re on can still have its description, category and date changed, but not its amounts or people, and it can’t be deleted or restored, so their debt doesn’t change after they can no longer see it. An expense that isn’t split stays fully editable, since it changes no one’s balance. You can still record a payment with them to settle what they owe or are owed, up to their balance. Anyone can Export CSV to keep their own copy before leaving.

Ask Gluon

In a group’s chat, mention @Gluon; in a private chat, just ask:

• “We spent ₹4,200 on groceries today.”
• “I paid ¥30,000 for dinner, split it between the three of us.”
• “Split this receipt three ways” with a photo of it.
• “Add the taxi, ₹900, Nishkal 60% and Vaishnavi 40%.”
• “Start a ledger for our Japan trip in yen for the six of us.”
• “Who owes whom in Japan?” or “How much did we spend on dining this month?”
• “Record that Sam paid me ₹1,000.” or “Archive the Japan ledger.”
• “Change yesterday’s dinner to ₹3,600.”

Gluon splits a cost only when you say so or name who shares it; otherwise it records it unsplit. It names the amount, currency, date, split and ledger it used. With one open ledger, new expenses go there; with several, Gluon has to name one, so say which if it isn’t clear.

In a group, adding, changing or deleting an expense, recording a payment and creating or changing a ledger ask for your approval by default. The card shows where it goes and the effect, such as “Friends › Japan” and “You paid ¥30,000 · Sam owes ¥10,000 · Dad owes ¥10,000”, or why it would be refused. In your own ledgers, only deleting asks, and an added or changed expense shows as a card in the chat. When your Gluon changes or deletes an entry or a ledger someone else created, it always asks first and names them, unless the tool is Off. All the Expenses tools are free; see Tools.

Gluon can’t restore deleted entries, delete ledgers or download a CSV; do those on the page. For a spreadsheet, chart or statement, Gluon can read each ledger’s entries, balances and history as files in its workspace, if the Expenses permission allows.

Notifications

When someone else adds a split expense or records a payment that includes you, you get a notification, such as “Alex added an expense with you in Friends”. It never shows the amount, the description or the ledger, since a lock screen may be seen by others; tapping it opens the ledger. Tracked expenses and your own ledgers don’t notify anyone.

Limits

• Descriptions up to 200 characters, ledger names up to 60, up to 50 people on an expense and 100 ledgers per group or for yourself, counting deleted ones.
• Amounts can’t have more decimals than their currency: two for rupees and dollars, none for yen.
• You can make 60 changes to expenses a minute and 2,000 a day, across all your ledgers.
• A group’s ledgers, or your own, hold up to 50,000 entries, deleted ones included until 30 days after their deletion; the page warns from 40,000. Once full, new expenses, amount changes and new ledgers stop, while payments, other edits, deleting and archiving still work, so everyone can still settle up.
• Refunds, budgets, several payers on one expense, recurring expenses and currency conversion aren’t supported. To correct an amount, edit the expense.