Itemized receipt splitter
Assign each line on the receipt to whoever ordered it, and let tax and tip follow.
Items
Add at least one item with an amount to see the split.
An even split is the wrong answer when one person had a $9 salad and another had the $46 steak and two glasses of wine. Enter the lines on the receipt, tap who ordered each one, and everyone pays for what they actually had.
Items ordered by more than one person split between them. Tax and tip are the part people usually get wrong, so they are handled separately below.
Tax and tip follow what you ordered
Dividing tax and tip evenly quietly undoes the itemizing. If the tax on a $150 table is $12 and one person's share of the food was $12, an even split of the tax hands them a quarter of it — more than the tax on their own meal.
So tax and tip divide in proportion to each person's item subtotal instead. The person with the $46 steak carries about five times the tax of the person with the $9 salad — more once their wine is counted — which is the same ratio the restaurant charged.
Shared plates and the bottle of wine
Assign an item to more than one person and it splits equally between them, so a shared appetiser or a bottle of wine doesn't need its own arithmetic. Everything else on the receipt stays attached to whoever ordered it.
This is where itemizing beats an even split even for friendly tables. Nobody has to decide whether it would be rude to point out that they only had the soup.
Discounts and vouchers
A discount applied to the whole bill divides the same way tax does — proportionally, so it lands mostly on whoever spent the most. A voucher for one specific dish is better entered by reducing that item's price directly.
The result never leaves anyone owing a negative amount. If a proportional discount would push someone below zero, their share is held at zero and the remainder is redistributed, so the parts still total the bill exactly.
It has to add up
The total is calculated from the items you enter plus tax and tip, not typed in separately. That means the per-person figures always reconcile against the receipt: there is no second number to disagree with the first, and no cent goes missing between the lines and the total.
Questions
- How do you split a bill by what each person ordered?
- Enter each line on the receipt and assign it to whoever ordered it. Items ordered by several people split between them, and tax and tip divide in proportion to each person's subtotal.
- Should tax and tip be split evenly or proportionally?
- Proportionally, if you have itemized the food. Splitting tax evenly after itemizing partly cancels out the itemizing, because the person with the smallest order ends up subsidising the tax on the largest one.
- How do I handle a shared appetiser?
- Assign it to everyone who ate it and it splits equally between them. The rest of the receipt stays attached to individuals.
- What if someone ordered nothing?
- They appear in the result at zero. Nothing is assigned to them, so no tax or tip is either.
- Can I apply a discount?
- Yes. A bill-wide discount divides in proportion to each person's subtotal. Nobody's share can go below zero — if a discount would push it there, the remainder redistributes across the others and the parts still total the bill.
- Is the itemized total guaranteed to match the receipt?
- The total is derived from the items plus tax and tip rather than entered separately, so the per-person figures always sum to it exactly.
When one calculation isn’t enough
A calculator answers a single question. Make It Even keeps the answer current: add expenses as they happen, split each one however it needs to be split, and everyone sees the running balance. It handles multiple currencies using the exchange rate from each expense’s own date, so old totals never drift.
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