Splitting dinner checks can cause a splitting headache, even when the diners are mathematics majors. Three computer science
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students at the US"s Carnegie Mellon University
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worrying about shared bills so they decided to act. Shashank, Amit and Ashwin
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a free website, Buxfer.com, in September, to help people remember who owes what and to whom.
Instead of trying to
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how every dinner bill should be split, the site allows users to form groups of friends or housemates to track shared expenses over longer periods of time. For example, if one housemate pays for dinner for everyone, he earns credits in his Buxfer group and pays less on next month"s rent. Buxfer quickly became popular among college students and young
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who often pool expenses and borrow small amounts from each other.
News of the site has
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largely by word of mouth and on blogs. It now has about 3,000 users who have made transactions of more than US$875,000. Buxfer
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e-mails users about new transactions. When a user
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Buxfer, the amount he/she owes or is owed is shown on the homepage. Users can also leave notes for each other on the site.
Buxfer has been an eye-opener for Veda as it has shown him how much money was
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between him and his friends. The site is helping him track US$300 that others owe him, as well as the US$1,500 he owes to a friend who bought an
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ticket to India for him.