Monday, October 21, 2019

Trip Splitter Privacy Policy

Trip Splitter requests the user to allow it to access various data and devices in your iPhone or iPad. Here are the reasons for the access requests:
1. Contact information. When you define the participants for your trip, you can optionally provide an email address and a photograph to make it easier to use Trip Splitter and to email the participants. Trip Splitter does nothing more with the information from the contacts that you select. Trip Splitter does not share the information with any person, company or affiliate.
2. Location information. When you create an expense item, Trip Splitter will access the GPS coordinates of the place where you create the expense. This allows the expenses to be shown on a map later. Trip Splitter does not share the information with any person, company or affiliate.
3. Camera. Trip Splitter needs to access your camera if you want to attach photos of receipts or attach photos to the Person Splitter Buttons. Trip Splitter does not share the photos with any person, company or affiliate.

Monday, September 23, 2019

Problem with names on "Person Buttons" after upgrade to iOS 13

The iOS 13 upgrade for iPhones and iPads has caused a problem with Trip Splitter's row of Person Buttons. The row is visible in the item expense screen (a row of buttons for Payers and a row of buttons for Splitters), on the main item item list at the bottom (if Settings/Display/Simpler UI = NO) and in the New and Edit Trip screen where the participants of the trip are defined.

The problem causes the person's name to be shifted to the left by a button. The first person buttton's name is actually off the screen to the left, the second person's name is over the first person button, etc.

The problem does not affect the functionality of Trip Splitter in terms of accurately tracking expenses, as long as you mentally shift the person names right onto their correct buttons when defining payers and splitters for expenses. It might be a good time to take a photo of each person to assign to their buttons (My Trips/Edit Trip).

We will be fixing this problem, but updates take a long time.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

How to enter an "Uneven Split"

When you are either creating a new item, or editing an existing item, the even "button" should have a round circle, not filled in, with the word EVEN after it.  This signifies that the expense is an even split amongst all the splitters you have selected in the row of splitters. You can also do an uneven split for payers.

If you touch the EVEN word, it should change to UNEVEN and the circle should fill in. And also a text entry field for the currency amount should show up below each person. 

Then you would touch the persons' icons for all who paid (usually just one) and all who split

Once uneven split is requested and payers and splitters are selected, you should see that amounts are filled in below the selected people. These represent the amounts for an even split and you will typed over these.

Then you would touch the currency amount field for the first person and enter the amount of the expense that they are responsible for. As you enter the amount for each person, the remaining person's amounts are adjusted as an even split amongst them. 

The fields are turned green as you enter a value for the person so that you know which entries you've made. You can't go back to re-enter the amounts once they've turned green without resetting the process by doing something like toggling from UNEVEN to EVEN to UNEVEN, or toggling any payer or splitter or by changing the expense amount..

So to recap, in a simpler set of instructions:
  1. Create an item.
  2. Enter the amount.
  3. Touch Even (to switch to Uneven).
  4. Touch the Payer.
  5. Touch the Splitters.
  6. Enter the amount the first splitter is charged.
  7. Enter the amount the second splitter is charged.
  8. Leave it to Trip Splitter to make sure the last splitter is charged the correct amount to equal the total expense amount.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Some reasons why emailing your trip record might not be working




Occasionally we get technical support questions about a user's inability to send emails about the trip.
Here are some things to check.

  1. Do you have email addresses specified for your participants? You can add them in the edit trip function. Or are you wanting to enter them when you compose the email? Either should work.
  2. Do you have the Apple provided Email app installed and configured? Trip Splitter is dependent on that. You must have it installed and configured in the Settings app.
  3. Maybe there is something weird in the email Trip Splitter is creating. Can you switch to one of your old trips and try to send an email of that trip to yourself?
  4. Is your current trip different in any way? Large? Special characters in names? 
  5. Maybe there are large attachments? You could go to Email settings and turn off those 4 attachments. While there check the emails in the To, CC and BCC to make sure they are good

Here are some questions if is still not working:
  1. Are you using the menu item My Trips/Email or are you trying to email from the Totals screen? Either should work.
  2. Have you ever been able to email from Trip Splitter before or is this the first time?
  3. What happens when you try to email via the My trips/email menu item?

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Saturday, December 17, 2016

Transferring a Trip Splitter database from one iDevice to another

Your Trip Splitter data is stored in a database on your iPhone or iPad. Only the Trip Splitter app can access this database, but since release 3.0, you can manually get to the database via iTunes.  So you can now backup or transfer your Trip Splitter data if you desire.

Here are the steps for transferring the database. This is for iTunes running on a Mac, you'll have to make a few translations if you are running on a PC.

  1. Connect your iPhone (or iPad) to your computer running iTunes.
  2. Select that device from the devices listed in the left navigation panel, near the top. There may also be an icon above that for selecting the device.
  3. When your phone's information is shown in the main window, go to the Apps tab.
  4. Scroll down to the File Sharing section and select Trip Splitter in the list on the left (there should be a list of apps on the left).
  5. Go into the panel to the right that should now be called "Trip Splitter Documents" and there should be a folder called "SharedCoreDataStores" in the list. It should be the only thing in the list.
  6. Position the iTunes window so that a part of your desktop is showing and drag that "SharedCoreDataStores" folder out and drop it onto the desktop (this won't affect the copy on your phone)
  7. If you have a large database, a progress bar will show in the top-center panel of iTunes. 
  8. When the transfer is complete, the "SharedCoreDataStores" folder will hold all your trip records.
To transfer Trip Splitter data to a new iDevice:
  1. Connect your iPhone (or iPad) to your computer running iTunes.
  2. Make sure Trip Splitter is truly terminated.
  3. Select that phone from the devices listed.
  4. When your phone's information is shown in the main window, go to the Apps tab.
  5. Scroll down to the File Sharing section and select Trip Splitter in the list on the left (should be a list of apps on the left).
  6. Go into the panel to the right that should now be called "Trip Splitter Documents" and there should be a folder called "SharedCoreDataStores" in the list. 
  7. That folder will be the database that you are about to overwrite. You can't actually overwrite it though, so you have to delete it or change the name first.  Change the name if you think you might want to ever go back to that version of the database.
  8. Now, in Finder, find the backup "SharedCoreDataStores" folder.
  9. Drag this folder to the Trip Splitter Documents window in iTunes.
  10. Start up Trip Splitter and it should be using the restored database.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Trip Splitter in the News

Trip Splitter was recently named one of the "20 best travel apps to download" by the Australian Webjet.com. According to Webjet, 

"If you’re travelling with friends and want to make sure everyone’s splitting travel expenses, Trip Splitter is a great way to keep on top of who’s paid what. Letting users create a trip, add participants, mark off who’s paid for what and what’s still owing, avoid any nasty arguments about money and let Trip Splitter track your shared expenses and easily even up."

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Different currencies are easy in Trip Splitter!


Trip Splitter handles different currencies very efficiently. You just define a new currency for the first expense item of the new country, as you enter that country. And on that item's currency definition, you also specify "This and Future" so that new expenses will be defaulted in that currency. When you go to the next country, just do the same thing with the first expense in that country.

Here are the steps:
- Create a new expense item
- Enter the amount
- Touch the currency button just to the left of the amount
- When the currency view comes up touch in the upper left-hand corner to change the item currency
- With the spinner, select the new currency of this item
- Touch the conversion factor amount in the formula (the center number) and enter the new conversion factor.
- If you're going to have multiple expenses of the same new currency touch the "This and Future" button
- touch done


Be sure to not touch the trip currency button in the upper right hand corner. There should be no reason to change the trip currency. It is defaulted to the currency of your home country - where you bought your phone. But if you do change it, don't worry, no conversion factors are changed automatically. You can change it back at any time. The Trip Currency is used in communications about the trip. It is used to label the amounts that are owed for evening up. It is used in emails that summarize expenses.


A few notes:
If you need to enter a different currency in the middle of a series of expenses in the new country, you'll have to enter it as a This Item Only. And then when you go to enter another currency of the current country, you'll have to define that new currency factor again and set the This and Future up again. 

In Trip Splitter, each expense item with a currency conversion will have its own conversion factor. If you use the "This and Future" feature, all the items will have the same conversion factor, but they are still saved separately.  So it is important to get the conversion factor correct, especially if you are going to be charging expenses where your credit card company may use a conversion factor different than what you see at banks in the new countries.  If your credit card company uses a very different factor you may feel that you should change the factors in your trip record and that would mean editing all the items with that currency.

Here is a help video about creating expense items in Trip Splitter and it has a video on setting up currency conversions.
http://www.dcsoftwarearts.com/tripsplitter/detailed-video-v200