One bill at the restaurant: one family pays, everyone pays their own share

By Milan Martiniak · 1 November 2026 · 3 min read

Three families have lunch at a mountain restaurant. The waiter brings one bill for €163.80 and Mr Brown pays by card, because nobody wants to wait while the staff split it. But the Taylors had two trout, the Smiths four lemonades and the children had pancakes. Splitting it in thirds would not be fair, and nobody wants to work it out from a crumpled receipt in the evening.

That is what Everyone pays their own is for in Spolu. Each family enters how much of the bill was theirs, and the rest belongs to whoever paid. It works the same for a shared supermarket shop.

The numbers

Each family adds up what only they had and adds their part of what was shared:

The shared things were a bottle of wine for €18.90, which the Browns and the Taylors split in half, and a jug of water for €3.90 for all three families. The Browns paid, so the Smiths send them €57.10 and the Taylors €46.35. These amounts are added to the other costs of the trip, and at the end everything is settled at once with as few transfers as possible.

Step by step in Spolu

1. Whoever paid adds the expense. The amount, the name of the place and who paid. They can attach a photo of the receipt, so the others can open it on their phones instead of asking what was on it.
2. Choose “Own share” and the families who were at the table.
3. Every family enters its part. In the expense, fill in “My part of the bill” and tap “Save my part”.
4. A family that was not there taps “Nothing here for me – I wasn’t there”. Otherwise the settlement would wait for them too.
5. The family that paid keeps the rest. They do not enter a part, it is worked out for them.

Until every family has entered its part, the settlement says “Some parts are still missing” and who it is waiting for. One tap on “Remind in the chat” posts a card with the bill to the chat, and the family gets a notification.

How to work out your part quickly

• Circle your items on the receipt or the photo and add them up. On a long receipt it is quicker to add up what was not yours and subtract it from the total.
• Items with several pieces, like six lemonades, split by how many each family had.
• Shared things like a bottle of wine or a jug of water, divide by the number of families who had some.
• A tip is usually not on the receipt. If you left one, add it as a separate expense and split it as you agree, for example per family.

When “own share” is not worth it

For a big shop where everybody eats most things, it is quicker to choose “Kids pay less” and count nothing. Own share is for when the families’ spending really differs: at a restaurant, at a bar, or a shop where one family buys gluten-free bread, another a big pack of nappies and the third only beer.

In Slovakia: straight from the receipt

Slovak receipts carry an eKasa QR code. In the Slovak version of Spolu you can scan it, the items load by themselves and every family just ticks what was theirs.