Sharing accomodations and expenses, is a way of living for most of the foreign students and legal workers from other countries in US. The trend is picking up in other countries as well. The worst part of staying in a group, is to maintain the bills and expenses. Usually each and everyone has turns to maintain bills and expenses. (Thanks to Microsoft Excel). The bills are given to the person who is handling the expenses and acts as the admin to maintain the same. The task is always hectic and being monetary many a times the admin comes into scrutiny for even small mistakes.Now here is an automated Expense Management System Gyaati.com, which has been developed based on Web 2.0 concepts and open sourcing. The whole system is developed keeping in mind the needs of people who are sharing expenses aka accomodation but find it difficult to maintain and track the expenses. The system solely works on Social Networking (Or Can we term as Partner networking), where each and every user would register to the site and form a group (People who are sharing the expenses) in the same.
Any expenses by any one in the group, would be sent as a email notification to the other member of the group, for their approval. Once the Transaction is approved, the monetary transfer would be performed in person by the group members. Site provides the group members with tracking, based on approved, approval pending. And ofcourse a tab to Create aka logging in the expenses. One person, can be a part of many groups (One for accomodation sharing, One for Car pooling, one for Weekend Outings etc etc.). The expense sheets and data would be available only for the members of the group. Atmost care has been taken for even transaction types. Like equal splitting or different expense split among members. The second one usually comes in Hindu community when some members of the group have Non Vegeterian and some not.(Usual Problem I face :)) ). The other feature includes leaving messages for partners. Remember the stickies on the walls.
Source: Watblog
UPDATE : Recently I came across better and more sophisticated way of doing same thing on Bill Monk. Check out various options. I am sure you are going to love that site.
