Upcoming redesign

Ryan has been hard at work for over a month redesigning the SplitTheRent expense tracker. We’re hoping to launch it sometime over the next few weeks. Here’s a preview of the current draft:

Let us know what you think of the design by email: redesign-thoughts@splittherent.com

The most noticeable changes are the two-column format, the buttons on top, and the look of the main table layout. But the biggest changes aren’t visible from the screenshot. Here are the new features we’re most excited about:

• A system to input recurring expenses, like cable bills, that recur monthly, weekly, yearly, or fortnightly.  (Rent will be converted to a modify-able recurring expense so that users with weekly or fortnightly rent – for instance, in Australia – can use the rent system.)
• Categories for different kinds of expenses, so you can organize your expenses and keep track of your utility and grocery spending. We plan to add pretty graphs and such, but that’s further down the line.
• Support for percentages in the way things are divided, so you don’t have to do any mental math.
• Multiple payers on the same expense.  For instance, if you have a bar tab where one person paid $20 in cash and the other person paid the rest of the bill, but the tab was intended to be split equally.
• Lightning quick apartment creation.

We know there are many other features that people would love, and we are trying to hit the biggest ones first.  Our design philosophy is that we don’t want to do things unless we can do them well, and we’re doing our best to stick to that. Please, let us know how you feel or request new features by emailing support@splittherent.com or using the “Contact Us page” and we will get back to you with the status of that feature.

Speaking of which: we’ve heard reports of some annoyances with the reminder system, so as of 1pm today we have temporarily disabled recurring email reminders EXCEPT for the reminder to pay the rent and square up.  This should keep your apartment from over-nagging you. If you would like to disable the rent reminders as well, that can be changed from your apartment settings page.  If these changes causes you any inconvenience, let us know.

Thanks for trying (and helping us improve) our public beta – we’re having a blast developing it for you, and we hope you enjoy using it!