Splitting Travel Expenses Across Currencies in Telegram (Without a Spreadsheet)

Traveling groups have the worst version of the split-expenses problem: one person pays for a villa in euros, another covers a taxi in baht, someone books a train ticket that three people owe a share of — and by day three nobody remembers who paid for what, in which currency, or whether the last two transfers already settled it.

SplitTabsBot handles it without a spreadsheet, entirely inside the group chat.

The workflow

1. Add the bot to the group. /start — it's a group member now, and everyone can see the ledger.
2. Log an expense. /add 1200 dinner. The bot records who paid and splits it across the group — or a subset: /add 45 taxi @anna @joe splits only between the named people (the payer is always included).
3. Check the ledger. /balance shows the running net per person. Positive means you're owed money; negative means you owe. It's the same "settled-up graph" a spreadsheet would give you, but always current and visible to everyone.
4. Settle. /settle shows the minimal settlement — the fewest transfers that square the group up — and /undo removes a mistaken entry (handy when someone fat-fingers the taxi fare at the airport).

Why this beats the spreadsheet

• Visibility. The balance table is a Telegram message everyone can see at any time — nobody has to open a file or ask "so what do I owe?"
• Speed. Logging an expense takes one line typed in the chat where the receipt photo probably already lives.
• Partial groups. The @mentions in /add handle the common case where only three of six people shared a taxi.
• No app install. Guests who refuse to download Splitwise will still type a slash command.

Fairness tip: settle minimally

Don't settle person-by-person as you go. Run /settle at the end of the trip and let the fewest possible transfers clear the debt — pay whoever is owed the most, and the graph collapses fast.

The honest limits: currency conversion is manual (log amounts in one currency per trip, or convert before logging), and there's no receipt OCR — the photo stays in chat, the number is yours to type.

Try it: @SplitTabsBot. Deeper guide: splitting group expenses in Telegram, and for travel logistics, the event planning with RSVP cards pattern.