If you really want to make sure everyone contributes, try Tilt maybe? I think the idea is that the pool can't be used until everyone pays in. https://www.tilt.com/

For mobile payments, Venmo perhaps? https://venmo.com/ Though I would probably just use PayPal myself.

Use this code: hello20 and you can get $20 off your first tilt :) Much love HN.

Depending on your coworkers, amusing games about who gets to buy each other lunch may ensue as people attempt to get a really nice splitwise score, or demand repayment in the form of remote-controlled helicopters. (But that's startup life for you.)

Anyway. Cash is a boring solution, but you get bonus points if someone brings in a few hundred in dollar coins and $2 bills :P

(I do cash and cards, my "wallet" is a broccoli rubber-band.)

But I am the same way and hate trying to 'collect dues'. One approach would be to have everyone take turns paying for the entire meal and not worry about collecting individual payments. They do this in some countries regularly (I think Spain is one) - people take turns paying for everything so it works out in the end. Although I do recall a Spanish friend saying there was one person in her group who would habitually take longer to come up in the roster of "person paying entire meal".

It's an interesting idea for an app though. Instead of you nagging late payers, the app could send email reminders to them. There could be stickiness to an app that has some reputational knowledge of how individuals have paid up in the past. Sort of like a fico score but among friends or coworkers.

China famously operates like this. Interestingly, they call the western techniques of splitting the 'AA method', implying an equal split by participants.

Just as fair is to randomly decide who pays for the entire thing - perhaps weighted based on what portion of the check they're responsible for.

Seriously though:

https://www.splitwise.com

Every now and then someone would pass out some cash to catch up (and log it in the sheet). It worked surprisingly well for us.

I think the reasons it worked were 1) everyone agreed in principle, and 2) not entering your updates was effectively the same as giving everyone else money.

For more complicated stuff, life travels, I keep a Google Spreadsheets which calculates what each paid, and how much each needs to pay to the others. Then I share it with everyone.

I remember looking for the word "iou", meaning "I owe you" and found some apps regarding splitting the bills, but I ended up with Tricount.

One of my co-workers was from Hong Kong and mentioned that they did this once or twice a week. So being a clueless American, I asked how they handled splitting the bill.

I guess I wasn't too surprised at his response, but he seemed completely puzzled as to why this was an issue. He said they each paid their share, and that was that.

I shared how this is a constant problem for diverse groups in the US, and he basically understood, but thought it was really funny.

My theory as to why this is an issue is that people all have their own preferences around food. What to eat, how much to eat, whether they'll also drink, and how much to tip.

We feel very entitled to all of those. Some people, when offered an all-you-can-eat service, will eat an insane amount of food, while others will eat the same that they would if it were plate-by-plate.

Some will drink if the alcohol is cheap, others will drink twice as much if it's expensive.

Some want just a salad, while others want salad, a main course, and dessert.

Welp, this causes a huge disparity because the bill comes in and either you need to go line by line to get the total, then impose a line by line tip percentage for each person, and, surprise surprise, nobody has cash.

So, how can all this be solved?

Here are a few solutions.

1) If it's for the office, have the company pay for it. This is a really reasonable request. Expense it. It removes any question about who owes what, and removes the sort of grating annoyance of collecting money from individuals. Doing that again and again will wear down a team.

2) Get everyone on board with the same money transfer app, and collect payment immediately.

Use Venmo, or Square Cash, or what ever else is out there. Instant payments make this all go away. If you want to get the app adopted fast, have your company pitch in and send $5 or $10 to each person as an incentive to join up on the same app. This will pay dividends down the road.

3) If all else fails, make it clear up front that the price is going to be split equally, and keep a public log of who has and has not paid – send out an email reminder to the team with the names and who owes what. This may seem extreme, but if for some reason you're unable or unwilling to do 1) or 2) this will make things clear up real fast. If you are concerned that someone on the team can't afford to pay, obviously, don't hassle them, and try to amortize the cost by spreading it over the rest of the team as discretely as you can, or ask a few people who are sympathetic to pitch in offline.

For tools: At my company we use Abacus for expenses, and Venmo for cash transfer.

Amongst friends, we use Square Cash, mainly because one of the regulars works for Square :)

The alternative is to make the waiter go around and handle each guest individually. In scenarios where a single payer isn't available and just "collectively putting some cash on the table until it's OK" is not an option, this works quite well. Restaurant staff I think like it as well, because overall the tip will probably be larger.

It's annoying, but it's also really annoying to have to break up a bill after the fact, which is why this entire problem exists in the first place. It's definitely not the restaurant's fault that people can't agree on how to pay for things :)

It's a great example of a "small" piece of software that does one thing and does it well.