Hopefully when you start planning for your next vacation, your first step is to establish a budget. But what about when you are traveling with friends or extended family? Most likely you are sharing the task of paying for excursions, hotels, transportation, deposits, etc. It is so much easier to ensure everything goes smoothly if your excursion or transportation is part of one reservation.
When we travel as the Party of 10, we set-up a shared Google sheet to track who paid for what travel expenses and how those expenses are split. And we make sure that each family is sharing in the upfront expense so it’s not hitting just one side of the Party of 10. At the bottom of the google sheet we calculate the total amount paid by each family and who owes the other family money prior to the trip.
For the trip itself, we like to use the app Wanderlog. This is a great trip planning app to put in all of your trip details like flights, hotels, excursions and it maps out your recommended path to each of your destinations each day. But more importantly, we share the app with our Party of 10 and all expenses during the trip that are split are put into the app so we can easily track who owes whom.
From the original Google sheets doc, right before the start of the trip, we put in the amount that is owed as our starting balance. Then we can easily see who should be picking up the tab for dinner that night based on the amount owed by each of the families. Or in our case, who is picking up the tab for Gelato!
I personally love this app because everyone on the trip can get access and confirm accuracy of the receipts and the best part about the app is that it’s FREE! The app has so many features that it would work great for almost any trip.
