Something Cool: BillMonk

When I was in high school, my friends almost completely consisted of a tight-knit, super-functional band of self-proclaimed nerds known as the Mock Trial team. We prepared hard for competitions over most evenings and weekends of junior and senior year, and acted in many ways like a family. Whenever someone bought stuff for the group, or spotted for a short-changed teammate when we bought coffee, we didn't much fuss over the financial details. "The way I figure, we spend so much time together that it evens out in the end," is what Corey said.

Given that we were too young to go out for drinks, and anyways too poor for that or any other big-ticket diversion, Corey's reasoning held true. However, living in a house with three other college graduates brings in many more shared payments to keep track of. Rent, utilities, fun stuff-- suddenly "it evens out eventually" can no longer apply.

To keep track of loans and shared payments within the house, my roommates have been using an online product called BillMonk. Having recently joined their house, I've added myself to their account. Within, you can enter payments that one member made and keep track of who owes money. For example, Dan pays the ComCast bill with his card every month. Whenever he gets charged, he logs in his account that the cable was shared by all household members, and that he was the one who paid. Soon afterwards I'll get an email notification of the payment and can see my debt to Dan when I review my account.

Earlier this hour, I logged my first payment, which was for the Harry Potter movie tickets from last Thursday. (We had been running late for the 10:15 showing, so I weilded the credit card.) I hadn't had a BillMonk introduction, but the website is absolutely intuitive to the average computer user.

In my account, I first selected the "New Shared Payment" button. Next, I was prompted to enter the description, date, and amount of the transaction. Lastly, I was directed to two drop-down menus. The first asked, Who Paid? I selected myself. The next asked, Who Participated? I selected my roommates and myself. And that was it; BillMonk divides the payment among all us moviegoers, and now we have a record of the debts. And the neat thing is that the program keeps track of all debts within the house, so when I review my own debts, I see that my ComCast debt to Dan has been lowered by the amount of the movie ticket.

Wondering whether the folks that run BillMonk are connected to Google, I read their "About" page. It looks as if the two co-founders used to work at Amazon and are in fact based in Seattle. BillMonk has been acquired by a mobile money-transfer company called Obopay; now the product has a feature that allows people to enter payments from their cell phones. Quite neat! Google isn't involved, although the Mountain View campus did have the founders over for a Tech Talk.