SplitTheRent announces public beta of free bill-sharing tool
Cambridge, MA – What is the fair way to split the rent on an apartment when bedrooms are different sizes, or only one room has a private bathroom? What if you live with a couple sharing a bedroom? SplitTheRent.com is a website that solves these social conundrums and other room-sharing issues based on principles of applied economics and mathematical analysis of survey data.
“Sharing an apartment with friends seems like it should be easy, but when you’re collecting money or trying to negotiate room prices, things can get awkward,” says founder Jonathan Bittner, an astrophysics graduate student at Harvard.
SplitTheRent made headlines this February with its innovative “rent-splitting calculator” that takes into account size and quality of bedrooms and divides rent fairly among housemates.
Today, SplitTheRent launches a beta version of a free bill-tracking service. It can be difficult to keep track of how much each person owes when one person pays for the electricity bill and a grocery trip and another person pays for the rent. Each month, SplitTheRent tells everyone how much they owe for rent and bills, and who needs to be paid back. It organizes everything on a single page, so that users can see their apartment expenses at a glance.
“The goal of our new tool is to simplify the chore of settling accounts each month and to automatically send reminders,” explains Bittner. “Getting paid back for bills and rent should be simple and our site helps make it that way.”
SplitTheRent's mission is to make shared living easier by providing neutral advice, fair judgement, and simplified expense sharing through its website, SplitTheRent.com.
SplitTheRent now splits bills and expenses as well as rent
The new SplitTheRent (splittherent.com, formerly splittherent.org) homepage lets users create a free account to store and share expenses with housemates. Each user adds shared expenses on SplitTheRent.com using a computer or mobile device, so that one housemate isn’t stuck with the responsibility of tracking finances for the group. Automated emails remind users of payment due dates and eliminate the unpleasant duty of “being the bad guy” who has to remind housemates when they owe money. The site even confirms with the person responsible for writing the rent check to make sure that it's been sent each month.
Innovative new features
SplitTheRent's expense-sharing tool is innovative and modern. Creating an apartment takes only seconds. It's also fully integrated into SplitTheRent's popular “Rent Calculator.”
Innovative new features include:
- A super-simple interface which makes everything visible on one page - much easier to use than a spreadsheet.
- A “quick-add” for expenses written in plain English. For instance, entering “Electric Bill 50” would be understood by the site without additional clicking or entering data in multiple boxes.
- Tracking for who writes the rent check and whether or not it has been sent, which saves time on writing emails back and forth.
Mobile apps, online payment tools, and other exciting features are planned for Summer 2011.
About SplitTheRent
SplitTheRent was founded in February 2011 by Jonathan Bittner, an astrophysics graduate student at Harvard. The new site is a collaboration between Bittner and Yale Computer Science student Ryan Laughlin (www.prettydang.com), who has joined SplitTheRent as a design and technical co-founder for the development of the site. The site will be adding new features and tools during Summer 2011.
SplitTheRent is the online arbiter for fairness in shared living. It uses surveys of actual people, as well as expert judgment and mathematical analysis, to find ways to quantify fairness and give neutral opinions on individual situations. Its web-based calculators have received the attention of leading applied economists (Freakonomics, Tyler Cowen), consumer advocates (Consumerist), and web-tool devotees (Lifehacker).