No minuses

[TedTed]

People who use this as a Splitwise replacement and not as a personal budgeting system should be able to enter a positive number X in a quick add UI to mean "I paid X, this should be split among multiple people". Having to add minuses every time is error-prone and confusing.

This is particularly confusing when there's no "split", e.g. I only know that person A owes me X. Then I un-tick my own box and enter a negative number... ?

[danielkeller]

I'm still thinking about a way to do this that's consistent. Possibly if you have "split" open at all it shouldn't allow you to enter a positive number. Or maybe I should give up and have "outflow" and "inflow" columns.

[TedTed]

I don't know if this helps, but here is how I think I would want to visualize things. On Splitwise, there are two columns:

• one with the big number that corresponds to "how much did someone paid", and their name immediately above that number (like "you paid CHF 10", or "Dan paid CHF 30");
• one with a summary of how it affects me (like "Dan lent you CHF 20", or "You lent 6.67").

The former number is always positive. This is the number on the receipt, on the bill, in my head when I think "I paid X for stuff". If someone else pays for something, I would still expect that number to be positive in the UI. I see this not as "a line in my personal finances" but as a kind of household-level event — the only reason why it could be negative is stuff like "the SNCF reimbursed me because the train we all took was late". I like how Splitwise presents the latter number (as always positive, but with a "you lent" vs. "X lent you" text) because it's so self-explanatory, but I would be OK with it being positive or negative instead.

I care more about the former number when I pay something (because that's what I enter in the UI so I'd want to check this), but knowing how it affects me is also useful (because that's what matters to my finances, and also as a double-check that I got it right). I mostly care about the latter when someone else pays, but the former is also useful as a spot-check. Seeing "here is what everyone paid for everything" is kind of nice to get an idea of total household expenses, and in case I'd ever want to check that someone else entered something correctly. (I don't really see myself doing that, but that seems like a reasonable use case.)

Currently, the main table views in budge-it don't let me see both numbers at once. The "Inbox" view under "Category" only lets me see the latter, which makes it hard to use as input (I put in a number, and then a different number appears below). The "Inbox" view under "Account" only lets me see the former, but only for stuff I paid myself, and with negative signs everywhere. Both views have a "Total" column which is essentially pure noise for me.

[danielkeller]

Some thoughts I've had about the UX:

• The "owed by" account view is frequently confusing or not useful.
• Quick add is currently a compromise between adding personal expenses and splitting things, to the detriment of both.
• I think I've said this before, but splitting and not budgeting is not only a valid use case, it's the expected onboarding for new users, so it's a good avenue for progressive disclosure of the data model.

So what I've been thinking of is:

• Debt accounts will have two modes. The current one will be called "debt account," and the new one will be called "split expenses." By default debts with payees will be the former, and debts with friends will be the latter. Later on this will be configurable at the payee/friend level.
• This will have no effect on the semantics of transactions, only what the account view looks like.
• The split expenses view will have the columns "date", "memo", "CHF" (or whatever), "your part", and "total." The total is the running sum of "your part."
• The amount ("CHF" column) in this view will have the opposite sign to the rest of the application, that is, they represent the magnitude of the expense. The other columns will be from your own perspective. (The amount will be wrong for expenses entered by others until we implement visible payees; #51.)
• In the overview, the number will be the same as it is now, that is, positive if the user is owed and negative if they owe. Also, split expense accounts are always visible in the overview even if the account is empty.
• With #76, groups will work the same way as individual friends, and either be configurable or be only split expense mode. Likewise with shared payees (#73).

The quick adder will be specialized to the account mode:

• Debt accounts will not have quick add, since it's ambiguous.
• In split expenses accounts, the split checkboxes are always open, and the person/people the account is with will be force-checked.
• The amount in split expenses will target the amount column, so the total, positive amount.
• Quick add in regular accounts will not be splittable. There will be a default minus sign, but it will be editable. Potentially the text field will be the payee and not the memo. With #51 we may change the quick add in split expenses to set the payee as well.
• The two quick adds should be a visually distinct as possible to clarify the different behavior.
• Possibly we replace quick add with better defaults for "new transaction" in regular accounts and/or split expense accounts.

Open questions:

• How to conveniently add expenses that someone else paid.