Splitting the Bill With Your Barkada Just Got Easier Thanks to This Local Expense Tracker

(SPOT.ph) We’ve all been there. Someone covers the bill after a fun night out with friends, starting a waiting game over how much you owe them and a scramble to find their QR code or bank details to send your share. Or maybe you’ve been on the other end, corralling roommates into paying their share while trying to track who’s paid what based on screenshots.

BayadTayoOpo, a free Filipino-made website for tracking expenses and splitting bills, wants to make the ambagan process easy. The best part? It's completely free, and your entire group doesn't need to register to get started.

The idea came to 27-year-old Cebu-based developer Jonathan Aplacador during a group trip, when he grew frustrated with an expense-tracking app that required everyone to create an account just to access its limited free features. He decided to create BayadTayoOpo as a simpler alternative for barkadas.

“One of the really important features was the premise of having no requirements for other members’ participation. If ikaw lang may gustong maglista, pwedeng ikaw lang mag-operate. Create a group, invite pending members, start tracking. If they want to join, you can invite them,” Aplacador shared in an interview with SPOT.ph.

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If you’ve ever used an app like Splitwise, you’ll probably intuitively know how to use BayadTayoOpo. First, set up your group and add the names of the people you need to split with. As of writing, you can set up unlimited groups with an unlimited number of members—there just has to be at least one other member aside from yourself.

Once you’ve made the group, you can start logging expenses. Give each one a description, amount, date, expense category, and assign who paid for it.

You can also customize the split between Equal or Custom—perfect for bills! Easily monitor remaining balances within the app, too.

You can also use the Settle Up tab to check how much you’re owed and owe your friends. You can even add payment details like a QR code or bank details, a feature that Aplacador specifically added to unload group chats of screenshots. Don’t worry, your details stay within your group and cannot be accessed by anyone else.

Another handy feature is Currency Conversion, which Aplacador added to the site at a user's suggestion. Especially useful for international transactions, you can input the amount in one of BayadTayoOpo’s 18 currencies. It will then suggest a Philippine Peso conversion based on the day’s rate taken from a public Application Programming Interface.

And when life gets busy (or you get tired of following up on your friends and family), you can even set automatic in-app and email email reminders to notify group members how much they owe you—because transparency is key.

As the app grows, Aplacador shared that he will continue to improve the app based on user feedback. He’s now exploring how to add features like deadlines, direct splitting, and cross-group settlement, as well as further testing offline entry and online sync.

Accessibility is a major consideration for Aplacador, which is why he has no immediate plans to turn BayadTayoOpo into a downloadable app. By keeping it browser-based, users can access the site whenever they need it without having to install another app they might only use occasionally. It also helps him keep development and maintenance costs down.

“I really wanted it to be free. I created the app with that in mind so storage is small, photos are minimal enough to do the job. I want to keep it free forever,” Aplacador said.

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