Bill splitter
For tables where one person had three cocktails and one had tap water. Own items to their owners, shared things shared, tip in proportion, and the totals actually add up.
Guide
How to use it
- Enter the bill total and tip as usual, and set the number of people.
- In who had what, put each person’s own items (their mains, their drinks) against their name. Name the rows if it helps.
- Whatever you do not assign counts as shared, starters for the table, sides, the bottle everyone touched, and splits evenly.
- Each person’s line shows their total: own items plus shared slice, with tip added proportionally. The lines sum to the bill plus tip, to the penny.
Examples
Table diplomacy, solved
Four people, £86.40 bill, one had £24 of cocktails: assign the £24, split the rest evenly, and the drinker pays their way without a line-by-line audit of everyone else.
Assign the wine to those who drank it (split their share between them as one amount on one person and settle privately, or give each their half). The teetotaller stops subsidising Malbec.
Cover the birthday person: assign their items to yourself, or just add their share to your own items line. The remaining shared pot splits between everyone as usual.
Method
How it works
The model: everyone’s assigned items belong to them, the unassigned remainder is shared equally, and the tip multiplies each person’s subtotal, so a bigger eater tips proportionally more, which is how fairness intuitively works.
Penny-exactness matters at real tables: the shares are computed so the per-person lines sum to bill plus tip, no orphaned 3p, no round-up quietly absorbed by whoever paid.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Why not just split everything evenly?
With similar orders, do, the plain tip calculator is faster. Uneven splitting earns its keep when orders diverge by more than a few pounds, or someone did not drink.
What counts as shared?
Anything you do not assign: table starters, sides, service items. If genuinely everything was individual, assign it all and the shared pot is zero.
Does the tip split evenly or in proportion?
In proportion to what each person consumed, the convention most tables consider fair. An even tip split subsidises the biggest order.
What if the assigned items add to more than the bill?
The tool flags it, usually a typo or an item assigned twice. Shared cannot be negative.
Can I do different tip levels per person?
No, one tip rate per table, that is a social norm this tool declines to break. Dissenters can adjust in cash.
Does this send anything anywhere?
No, the maths happens on the phone at the table and vanishes when you close it.
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