How To Use Splync — Settle a Project with Splync v1.8

When a project is created, its status is set to active by default. In an active project, members can add new expenses, edit existing ones, and continue updating the shared ledger as life happens. Before the v1.8 update, the end of a project was a little ambiguous. Project members typically discussed things outside the app and archived the project only after reaching a mutual agreement. An archived project becomes read-only and is usually hidden unless the user turns off the active-only filter. Once archived, nothing inside the project can be changed. It felt a bit unfinished — as if a group had climbed a mountain together, only to turn back without pausing to take in the view at the summit. There was room for the app itself to support that moment of culmination in a more intentional, tangible, and shared way — something that feels satisfying to everyone involved. Splync v1.8 introduces a buffer phase between “active” and “archived” to make the conclusion of a project clearer and more structured. This new status, pending, gives members a shared moment to review the final numbers before the project is officially closed.

You can review a project’s expenses at any time, regardless of its status. As the entries accumulate, the data starts to feel more mature — budget balances make sense, bar and pie charts form recognizable patterns, and the overall picture of the project becomes clear. When you feel that every member has already added the expenses they want to claim, you can move on to the settlement preview. Here, Splync automatically drafts a settlement request and assigns a provisional PIC — the person in charge of settling payments. A set of bar charts shows who owes how much to the PIC based on each member’s total recorded amounts and their allocated shares. You can still change the PIC at this stage. Choosing a different PIC instantly updates the figures and adjusts the bar lengths, revealing a new pattern of who pays what and who receives what. It’s a moment where the app shows its strength: all the numbers, in perfect sync, rebalancing themselves in real time. A list of all the expense details follows the bar chart.

Once you’re satisfied and confirm the PIC, you can tap “Send Settlement Request.” At that moment, the project status shifts from active to pending. The other members receive a notification from the sender. Here, the sender may be different from the PIC, who was selected by the sender. Tapping the notification navigates to the settlement request page, where they can review the final numbers — which are temporarily locked on the interface. If someone realizes they forgot to add an expense or finds an error in an existing entry, they can reject the settlement request. Doing so immediately returns the project from pending back to active, allowing the members to correct the records. This back-and-forth can be repeated as many times as needed until everyone feels the numbers are accurate. Once all payments have been confirmed and the members agree that the project has truly reached its end, they can manually archive it again, just as in earlier versions of Splync. In the future, we may introduce a clearer, more automated transition from pending to archived in a systematic way. For now, this three-step lifecycle — active → pending → archived — forms the foundation of the settlement process in Splync v1.8.

Settlement is, in many ways, the emotional climax of every Splync project. Whether the project was a shared household budget, a holiday trip, or a casual one-day event, the small moments lived by the members are distilled into numbers — and those numbers become preserved digital memories. Once a project is archived, it can always be revisited. Spending patterns, category totals, and budget consumption rates often become valuable hints when planning your next project. Because settlement is such an important stage, we want to keep improving the features and design around it. Strengthening export options for snapshot-style summaries, providing more flexible analysis tools, or even adding features such as approving a settlement request or confirming receipt of payments once the PIC has collected them — these are all ideas we are exploring. Splync is still growing. We look forward to hearing your great ideas as we continue shaping what shared expense management should feel like. We keep learning from the lifecycle of our own projects — and hopefully, becoming a little happier together along the way.