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Frequently asked questions
Want to ask us something that's not on this list? Contact us.
General
- What do you mean by "social money"?
- I'm worried about spam. Will BillMonk spam me and my friends?
- What happens when I add a friend?
- Why does everyone need an email address or phone number?
- What does the "Remember me" checkbox on the login page do?
- How are you integrated with Facebook?
- What happens when I deactivate my account?
- What if someone lies about how much they owe?
- How can my club or company use BillMonk?
- What is the difference between an "open" and a "closed" transaction?
- What is a "tag"?
- Who can see comments?
- Can I build applications on top my downloaded history spreadsheets?
- Who gets the partial penny?
- Which currencies are supported?
- How do you look up currency exchange rates?
- How do you decide who the victim is?
- How do I delete a recurring bill?
- How does debt shuffling work?
- How do I know that debt shuffling is fair?
- How does debt shuffling respect my privacy?
- Can I record that I'm borrowing something from a friend, even if it's not in their library?
- Can I record that I'm lending or borrowing with someone who doesn't use BillMonk yet?
- What does verified mean?
- What if your friend loses your stuff?
- How does selling an item work? Is BillMonk a marketplace?
- Why use BillMonk SMS?
- How do I add my cell phone to BillMonk?
- How do I send BillMonk an SMS message?
- Which cell phone carriers are supported?
- Why do you use SMS email - wouldn't a number be easier?
- What is your profit motive?
- What did you use to build BillMonk?
- What new features are you working on?
General: What do you mean by "social money"?
"Social money" is the informal currency between friends; for example, if I owe you $20, you can ask me to pay for your lunch tomorrow. This flow is founded on trust, not a legally binding guarantee. We coined this term in order to name an important aspect of social life.
Money can stress friendships; "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend" [Shak., Hamlet].
Our goal is to defuse the financial tensions between friends by providing a tool that manages social money in a manner that is easy and fair. Use BillMonk when you need to track money and there isn't a better way.
General: I'm worried about spam. Will BillMonk spam me and my friends?
No! See our privacy policy.
We do send messages to your email address and/or cell phone, but only in response to actions that your or your friends have taken. And you have complete control over which messages you receive.
If you create a bill using a friend's phone number or cell phone number, and if we haven't seen that friend before, then we will send him or her an invitation message with a password (see next section).
We will not:
- Give your contact information to a 3rd party
- Send you those snarky unsolicited "site update" messages
- Send you advertising (tacky! so very tacky!)
General: What happens when I add a friend?
Once you have logged in, you can add friends by typing in their email address. If we have seen that address before, we look up the friend and show their name. If we have not seen that address before, we'll send an invitation that looks like:
BillMonk is a free service that helps friends to borrow money and stuff.
* Money: debts, shared bills - we do the math
* Stuff: books, movies, etc. - we track where everything is
Join BillMonk by clicking the following link:
https://www.billmonk.com/...
Or you can visit http://billmonk.com and sign in using this email address (friend@domain.com) and the temporary password "xxxx"
We won't send them any messages about bills and loans until they have decided to join BillMonk.
General: Why does everyone need an email address or phone number?
We designed BillMonk on this premise: everyone in a financial transaction has the right to know about and alter that transaction. Email addresses and phone numbers give us a means of notifying users of changes, and give users a method to login and manage their transactions. While there are valid use cases at odds with this premise (for example, you want to manage debts for a group without involving them in BillMonk, or someone doesn't have an email address), we believe that it is more important to guarantee transparency and control by requiring that everyone can be contacted.
General: What does the "Remember me" checkbox do?
When you sign in, you can check "Remember me". If you check this box, we will store your login on your computer for a week. If you don't check this box, BillMonk will log you out after an hour of inactivity. Of course, clicking "Log out" removes your login either way.
- Check this box if: you're the only person using your computer and you don't want to sign-in whenever you visit BillMonk.
- DO NOT check this box if: you're using a publicly accessible computer, or if you share your computer with other people.
Note that even if you check this box and use BillMonk every day, you will need to sign in at least once every two weeks.
General: How are you integrated with Facebook?
We have written a Facebook App that can do almost everything that BillMonk.com does, but within the Facebook website. It's really convenient to add your Facebook friends to bills, and you can also choose to get notifications about bills as Facebook notifications. Just set your Facebook account as your primary contact.
You can also log in to BillMonk.com with your Facebook id. Just click the Facebook button on the homepage. This saves you from having to remember and type your BillMonk password.
General: What happens when I deactivate my account?
At any point, you can decide to wipe your personally identifying information, effectively destroying your account (do this from "Settings").
To prevent someone from using this feature to escape from debts, we will send a message to everyone with whom there is an outstanding balance. Then we remove all personally identifying information - name, email addresses, zip code, password, and so on - from our database. The account will still exist, but only as an anonymous entry in other peoples' bill histories.
While some potentially identifying information could linger in our log files or backup archives, it will eventually disappear into the ether.
General: What is a "tag"?
Tags are an easy way to categorize your expenses as you see fit. Anyone in a transaction can tag it. When you view a transaction, you see all the tags you and your friends have used.
For example, you could start tagging all your restaurant meals with "eating-out". If you go on a ski trip, you could tag all those expenses as "ski-trip". When you have a meal out on your ski-trip, you tag it as both "eating-out" and "ski-trip". Later, you can go to the history page and filter by one or both of these tags. See all your eating-out expenses ("eating-out"), ski-trip expenses ("ski-trip") or meals during the ski-trip ("eating-out" and "ski-trip").
Since you'll probably want to consistently use the same tags, we provide auto-completion.
Money: What if someone lies about how much they owe?
If someone doesn't know you, they can't see any information about you, view your bills, or create a new bill with you.
However, anyone who is part of a bill, loan, or payment can go back and change it. It is possible that someone could lie about how much they owe in a shared bill or make up bogus loans.
To prevent this, our approach has been to rely on transparency and user self-policing rather than elaborate systems of access control. Every change is publicly audited, and every user can see the name and contact information of anyone who makes a change that affects them.
It is unlikely that someone will act wrongly if they are neither anonymous nor invisible, and if they only affect people they know.
If you are having problems with another user, please contact us.
Money: How can my club or company use BillMonk?
Sometimes you need to track expenses between an organization and its members. For clubs, this may mean membership dues, reimbursing members, and for members to log out-of-pocket expenses to be paid back. For companies, this could mean tracking founder capital and expenses.
To do this, create a separate account for the institution with its own email address (e.g. drama-club@myschool.edu). Then you can create bills and debts to this user just like you would with any other. The person in charge of managing finances should be the one to control this account.
It's a great idea to use BillMonk for this purpose. Not only does it make it easy to track member account balances, but you can also categorize expenses with tags and download a spreadsheet for your accounting. Companies in particular can use this spreadsheet to help prepare taxes.
If you have any suggestions for how to make BillMonk better suited for club and company use, please contact us.
Money: What is the difference between an "open" and a "closed" transaction?
If a transaction between you and a friend happened after you two were last even, we call it "open"; otherwise, it is "closed". By default, we only show your open transactions with a friend.
We realize that people are inclined to think of repayment in terms of individual bills; for example, "I'm paying you back $40 for groceries and laundry". However, this works only if you ever pay back everything exactly, and are willing to correlate every repayment with every debt.
If we automatically picked which transactions were repaying other transactions, the results would often be confusing (e.g. "why did Bill Monk choose to close this transaction instead of that one?"). Worse would be forcing you to choose (e.g. "did last night's dinner cover 80% of the phone bill or 12% of rent?").
BillMonk keeps it simple and clear by using this fact: all debts are repaid - closed - once your balance with a friend hits zero.
This agrees with the purpose of social money: track the overall debt between friends so that you can even out. Your goal is to reach zero; if you owe your friend, pay them back or pick up the next tab, and vice-versa.
Money: Who can see comments?
Everyone in a transaction can view the comments attached to it. You can add comments, and you can delete the comments that you created. Use this feature like a public message board, e.g. "this includes the rice and beans," or "Joey, can you double-check your share of the phone bill?"
When we send someone an email about a transaction, it will include the comments for some additional context. This is especially useful for explaining why amounts have changed.
Money: Can I build applications on top my downloaded history spreadsheets?
We let you download spreadsheets (.csv) of your transaction history or your money flow history so you can have a backup copy of your personal data. The format is optimized for easy record-keeping, not for extracting structured data. The format may change. For all you developers chomping at the bit, please know that we fully intend to provide web services that give stable APIs for automated extraction of your data.
Money: Who gets the partial penny?
BillMonk does not divide pennies. When the pennies do not divide evenly between people, we randomly pick who gets a penny.
Money: Which currencies are supported?
We currently support over 30 currencies. Please let us know if yours is not on the list, or if it renders badly.
In addition to international currencies, we also support the virtual currencies of major online online games and communities like World of Warcraft and Second Life. We do this because gamers frequently exchange online virtual money between friends or within a guild, or pool resources to buy a large plot of virtual land or some artifact. Initially, we're including just the largest games:
Money: How do you look up currency exchange rates?
BillMonk offers a currency-conversion calculator. You start with an amount in one currency, tell us the other currency, and we'll do a real-time Internet look up to suggest the current exchange rate.
Money: How do you decide who the victim is?
There are two different ways we can perform this calculation, based on whether you tell us the amount of the bill or not.
If you don't specify the amount of the bill, we calculate who owes the most in your group of friends. We only take into account debt within that group. This is a decent way to pick victims, but it can get thrown off. For example, consider a group of friends that goes to lunch every day, but two of the people in that group are roommates who use BillMonk to split rent. The roommates will have large amounts of debt between them ($300 or more), which will make the system always choose them until someone else in the group has at least that much debt also. But this is not the best way to minimize the total amount of debt within that group.
If you do specify the amount of the bill (which you can only do through the SMS interface), we calculate which person would reduce the amount of debt the most if they paid. We can give better answers this way. It allows us to recognize that even if someone owes a lot of money to one other person, only a small portion of that debt will be cancelled for a small bill. A large debt like that should not unduly bias the victim choosing for small bills.
The moral of the story is: tell us the bill amount if you can, and we'll give you a better answer.
Money: How do I delete a recurring bill?
Go to the "Repeating Bills" sections of the Money page. The bills listed there are templates that generate the actual bills you see in your history. To stop new bills from being generated, click on the recurring bill template's name. From the repeating bill's page, click the "delete" button.
Money: How does debt shuffling work?
Imagine coming home from a trip where a bunch of your friends shared expenses. You shouldn't have to write a check to each one of your friends; if you simplify it down, you should only have to pay a few people. BillMonk does the math to make settling up as easy as possible.
Debt shuffling is a way to reduce the number of people you have to settle up with. Choose a group of people, and BillMonk will propose a way to shuffle debt around so that each person still owes the same net amount, but has debts with fewer people.
We also pay attention to who you know the best (based on how often you share bills with them). We try to eliminate debts with people you don't see that often, so that the debts that are left over after the shuffle are with people you can pay back easily.
Money: How do I know that debt shuffling is fair?
You can always check the math of debt shuffles yourself if you want. Debt shuffles are fair because each person gives and receives an equal amount of money. To check the math yourself, add up the "gives" and "receives" total for each person and check that they are the same.
Money: How does debt shuffling respect my privacy?
We were thinking hard about privacy as we were developing this debt shuffling. How do we make it useful without giving away information about your private debts? Our solution is: you get to see the effects of the debt shuffle on you and you get to see how money was shuffled around. What you don't get to see are the balances between your friends before or after the shuffle. This prevents people from using debt shuffling to figure out how much you owe your friends.
Library: Can I record that I'm borrowing something from a friend, even if it's not in their library?
Yes! In the "check-out" process, you can can add a new item to your friend's collection and borrow it. (Note that your friend must verify it before it's shown to everyone else).
Library: Can I record that I'm lending or borrowing with someone who doesn't use BillMonk yet?
Yes! In the "check-out" process, when we ask you "Which friend?" you can select the last option, "Other...", and type in your friend's email address. We'll email them an invitation, and then they'll be in our system.
Library: What does verified mean?
When you add an item to your own library, it is verified. If someone indirectly adds an item to another person's library, it is unverified. For example, if in the process of checking out a book from a friend, you find that they haven't yet added it to their collection, you can add the book to their collection and check it out at the same time; that book will be unverified.
The rule is this: unverified things are not public, and will not be seen by everyone. The owner must click on "verify" to make it public, or the owner can remove the item.
We do this because we don't want people adding potentially embarrassing stuff to one another's collections for the whole world to see.
The nice thing about this system is that it lets your friends add items to your library, but it still requires you to agree that this is really an item you own and are willing to share. If you don't agree, nobody but you two can see it.
Library: What if your friend loses your stuff?
The danger of lending your stuff out is that it can be lost or damaged. How you deal with with this issue is between you and your friend. Since BillMonk makes it easy to sell your stuff to a friend, you could convert lost or damaged things into monetary debts.
Library: How does selling an item work? Is BillMonk a marketplace?
You can sell your stuff to your friends. You tell us the friend and the price (we suggest the Amazon.com price if possible), and then we create a BillMonk debt and transfer ownership. If you like, you can opt to give the item to your friend as a gift.
To prevent someone from putting embarrassing things into a friend's public library, the things you sell to your friend won't be visible to all their friends until they verify it.
BillMonk does not currently allow a seller to mark their items as available to buyers. Since we do not match buyers to sellers, this is not a marketplace.
The buyer and seller are responsible for obeying all applicable laws regarding the taxation and sale of goods or services.
Money SMS: Why use BillMonk SMS?
When you're on the go, you don't want to have to carry scraps of paper for receipts and loans, but you don't want to forget, either. Record the essential information by sending BillMonk an SMS message from your phone, and at your leisure return to this website and fill out the details.
BillMonk SMS augments your mobile-social lifestyle; use it if it works for you.
Money SMS: How do I add my cell phone to BillMonk?
If you already have a BillMonk account, add your phone. Sign in and go to "Your Account: Contacts" for instructions.
If you don't already have a BillMonk account, just reporting a bill from your phone will create an account for you.
Money SMS: Which cell phone carriers are supported?
Our service is compatible with any carrier in the world that supports sending and receiving SMS messages as email. Almost all United States carriers allow this; Cingular, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and many others. Many carriers outside the United States also offer this feature.
Note that while most carriers usually deliver messages within a minute, sometimes a message may take as long as several hours to arrive.
Money SMS: How do I send BillMonk an SMS message?
To use BillMonk from your cell phone, send SMS text messages to the email address b@bmonk.com (on some phones, send as a Multimedia Message). Many phones allow specifying an email address as the receiver of an SMS message — you don't need a smart phone or anything particularly fancy.
Money SMS: Why do you use SMS email - wouldn't a number be easier?
Using email allows users from all over the world to send us SMS messages. It is also far less expensive, and makes it possible for us to provide this service for free. We eventually intend to set up phone numbers for SMS messages, both in the US and elsewhere.
The downside is that some phones make it hard to send SMSes to an email address, and some phones (older phones, many carriers outside the US) just don't support it.
About Us: What is your profit motive?
BillMonk is a free service of Obopay, Inc. Obopay is the leader in mobile payments, and makes its money from transaction fees. BillMonk encourages its users to settle-up using Obopay.
More broadly, BillMonk and Obopay are about the next generation of money management. Together, these (and future) services will serve the "social money" network for friends and family. BillMonk exists at the informal end of the spectrum, whereas Obopay manages real cash.
About Us: What did you use to build BillMonk?
We leveraged a slew of open source components: Ruby on Rails, script.aculo.us (AJAX), Apache, PostgreSQL, Subversion, and GNU/Linux, to name a few. We are very grateful to the open source community. There's no way we could have built this site without standing on the shoulders of the remarkably selfless giants who make such high-quality software freely (in both senses of the word) available.
About Us: What new features are you working on?
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BillMonk for developers. Several power-users have expressed interest in building applications on top of BillMonk, including a Java app for your phone. We think this is great, and are designing a web services API.
Other: How does BillMonk make you feel?
It makes us feel like writing eloquent poems that capture the poignancy of our feelings. (Have a poem? Send it our way!)
Money, rent, lost books
Friendships disintegrating
Please save us, BillMonk!
