Help & Guides

A practical guide from your first trip to settling the group. The examples follow the same rules as the iOS, Android, and web apps.

1. Create your first trip

A trip keeps the dates, currency, budget, participants, expenses, and settlement for one journey together. You can create and later edit it on web, iOS, and Android. The base currency is used for shared totals.

For a dated trip, Total Budget and Daily Budget recalculate each other. You can override either value afterwards.
An Infinite trip has no fixed end, so it cannot calculate a safe daily Budget Runway amount.
Example: Rome from 1–5 June with EUR 500 total budget is five days and EUR 100 per day.

2. Participants, invitations, and virtual participants

A participant is anyone who can pay or receive a share. The owner manages people and invitations under Collaboration.

Use a general invitation when the person does not appear in the trip yet. Accepting it creates a new participant identity.
Create a virtual participant when someone has no account yet but you already need to record their payments and shares.
When that person later joins, select their name and create a targeted invitation. Their account links to the existing history without a duplicate.
Example: Create “Eva” and assign her flight before she installs NomadSpend. Later use “Invite as Eva” so the flight and balance remain attached to her account.

3. Add a regular expense

For an expense, enter what was paid for, amount and currency, date, who paid, and who should carry the cost. Required fields have an asterisk. Click an expense for its read-only detail; editing is a separate action.

Paid by is the person who actually paid the money. The split decides whose cost the expense is.
“Who should pay next?” recommends the payer who would best balance the group after this purchase. It is only a suggestion and can always be changed.
Example: Anna pays EUR 60 for dinner for Anna, Boris, and Cyril. Equal split assigns EUR 20 to each, while the full EUR 60 remains paid by Anna.

4. Split an expense

NomadSpend supports equal shares, exact amounts, and percentages. Shares must add up to the entire expense; rounding is distributed so no cents disappear.

Equal: EUR 100 among three people becomes EUR 33.34, EUR 33.33, and EUR 33.33.
Exact Amount: useful when each person ordered something different, such as EUR 12, EUR 18, and EUR 30.
Percentage: useful for an agreement such as 50% / 30% / 20%.
The payer's own share may be zero, for example when they paid the entire purchase only for other people.

5. Currencies and exchange rates

An expense keeps its original currency and the rate used when it was created. Shared reports convert it to the trip's base currency. The saved rate does not move later, so historical budgets and debts stay stable.

Rates are indicative and can be corrected while creating or editing the expense.
On iOS, GPS can suggest the default currency for a new expense from the country. It is only a default and can be changed.
Example: On an EUR trip you pay THB 1,000. The expense remains in THB, while Dashboard and Settlement use its saved EUR value.

6. Multi-day expenses

A multi-day expense has a start, end, and allocation strategy. Allocation changes daily lists and charts only; the total and participant shares stay the same.

Spread Evenly allocates across every day; Start Date or End Date uses one boundary day; Half at Start, Half at End uses the first and last day.
Enable Split Multi-Day Expenses in Lists in Settings to show only each day's allocated portion.
Example: A EUR 400 hotel over four days appears as EUR 100 per day with Spread Evenly, but remains one EUR 400 expense.

7. Recorded Transfer versus Paid Directly

A Recorded Transfer is money actually moving between participants, such as cash, a bank transfer, an advance, or a contribution to a common pool. It is not a new trip cost and never changes expense-share states automatically.

Use Paid directly only when a participant paid one specific share of one expense outside recorded transfers.
In group balance means the share still participates in the shared calculation; it does not mean the person failed to send money.
Do not record the same payment both ways, or it would be counted twice.
Common pool: if six people send EUR 1,000 each to an organizer, record six transfers. Later expenses draw down their net balances automatically; their shares remain In group balance.

8. Read Settlement

The group balance combines expenses, shares marked In group balance, and recorded transfers. When every net balance is zero, the group is settled.

Settle up is the only section with suggested payments. A transfer may settle several expenses at once, so it need not match one pair.
Details is non-actionable pair history. It can retain entries and non-zero pair balances even when the whole group is settled net.
With more than 14 active non-zero balances, the app still clears every balance exactly, but the fast plan may not use the fewest possible transfers.
Changing an amount, payer, or allocation preserves the explicit choice for a share that remains. An amount change to a directly paid share is recorded in the activity log. A removed and later re-added share starts In group balance.

9. Dashboard and Budget Runway

Dashboard summarizes the whole trip or a selected period. Trend shows spending by day, Categories shows the category mix, and People shows who paid expenses and whose shares remain in group balance.

Expenses Paid is the full value of expenses a person paid. Shares in Group Balance are their portions still included in the shared calculation; use Settlement for the final net position.
Budget Runway estimates a safe amount per remaining day and the projected final total at the current pace. Known future expenses remain included.
A Recorded Transfer changes the net group balance, not the labels on individual shares.

10. Expense list and map

The list is grouped by day with newest days first and can be filtered by category. The map shows only expenses with a saved location and supports category filtering too.

If an expense is missing from the map, open its detail and check its saved location.
A filter never changes or deletes data; it only limits what is currently shown.
Voided expenses remain identifiable in history but do not count toward budgets, charts, or settlement.

11. Void, Restore, and Delete

Void is for a refunded, cancelled, or mistaken expense whose history should remain. Delete is for a record that should never have existed and whose history is unnecessary.

Void removes the effect from Total Spent, budgets, Dashboard, and Settlement, but keeps the row visible and allows Restore.
Delete removes the row from the normal list. Availability depends on permissions and the trip mode.
Example: Void a cancelled hotel that was refunded. Delete a coffee accidentally entered twice.

12. Permissions, ownership, and leaving

In Restricted mode, an expense is edited by the trip owner or its creator; an eligible creditor can update payment status. In Trusted mode, active members can edit shared expenses. Trip settings, invitations, member removal, and ownership remain owner controls.

The owner can transfer ownership only to an active member with an account.
A non-owner can Leave Trip. The owner can Remove a member, while past expenses, shares, and unsettled balances remain recorded.
An owner who wants to leave must first transfer ownership or otherwise resolve trip management.

13. Sync and refresh

The mobile apps are offline-first: changes are saved locally and synchronized when a connection is available. Web requires the server. Open web data refreshes about every five minutes and when the window regains focus or reconnects; you can also use Refresh.

If another device does not show a change immediately, wait for sync to finish or use Refresh.
Restore from Cloud in the mobile app replaces local data with the server version. Use it only for recovery, because unsynchronized local changes can be lost.

14. Export and platform differences

CSV and printable/PDF reports are available on the web, on iOS, and on Android. Use CSV for further work in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets, and PDF for sharing and archiving.

Receipt scanning works on both iOS and Android and always runs on your device — Apple Vision on iOS, Google ML Kit on Android. The image is not saved; reviewed items can be added to the expense and notes.
Logging an expense outside an active trip (Inbox), home-screen shortcuts, and the widget are available on both iOS and Android.
Apple Pay automation and Siri / Shortcuts control remain iOS-only.
OCR is an assistant, not an accounting record: always check item names, amounts, currency, and total before saving.

Still need help?

Contact support at nomadspend@gmail.com

Last updated: August 2026