Splync 1.15 Enables Project Cloning

Splync is designed to help couples and friends manage shared budgets and split expenses with less stress and more clarity. Over time, I noticed that many users were not only creating one-time projects for trips or events, but also repeating the same kinds of projects every month for living costs. Before version 1.15, recreating those projects meant setting up the same currency, decimal digits, members, categories, budgets, and split ratios again and again. With this update, users can now create a new monthly project from an existing one much more easily, making repetitive budgeting faster, smoother, and more practical in everyday life.

Everyday life itself runs on a monthly rhythm, with rent, groceries, utilities, and other recurring costs returning again and again. Our early observations also suggest that consistent budgeting works best when people can repeat the same structure over time instead of rebuilding it from scratch each month. In that sense, good shared budgeting is not only about calculation, but also about repeatable habits. That is why this update matters. Splync is not meant to be just another bill-splitting app. Its broader vision is to help couples and families share visibility into their budget, make better decisions together, and reduce financial stress, and easy monthly project recreation is an important step toward that goal.

In version 1.15, we introduced a simple left-swipe action for cloning projects directly from the project list. When you swipe left on the project you want to reuse, tap the clone button that shows up. The new project creation screen opens with the original project’s currency, decimal digits, members, categories, budgets, and split ratio settings already filled in. From there, you can simply enter a new project name and save it, or make small adjustments if your new month or situation requires a few changes. Compared with creating the same project from scratch, cloning makes the process much faster and can usually be completed in less than a minute.

You might notice that we use the term “clone” instead of “copy” when describing this feature. While both words may seem similar, they carry slightly different implications. “Copy” often suggests duplicating everything exactly as it is, including its contents and history. In contrast, “clone” is more commonly used in software to describe duplicating the structure of something while allowing it to evolve independently afterward. This aligns with how project cloning works in Splync, where the setup is reused but the new project starts clean, without past transactions. In that sense, “cloning” better reflects both the intention and the design behind this feature.

While cloning makes repetitive budgeting much faster, it was equally important to make sure the new project starts clean and stays private. From a product design perspective, the key idea was to copy the structure of a project, not its history. In Splync, cloning carries over settings such as currency, decimal digits, members, categories, budgets, and split ratio rules, but none of the original expense records are copied. In other words, the cloned project begins as an empty project with no past transactions inside it. Members can also be added, removed, or replaced during setup, and if the member list changes, people from the previous project who are no longer included will not have access to the new one. This keeps monthly budgeting consistent without carrying over old data or exposing new project information to unintended recipients.

While monthly budgeting is the most common use case, project cloning can also be useful in many other situations where a similar structure is reused. For example, users can duplicate a past trip project to plan another journey with a similar group, or reuse a shared event setup such as a birthday or gathering without rebuilding categories and budgets from scratch. It can also help when testing different budget scenarios or adjusting spending strategies while keeping a familiar structure. I recently used Splync for my own wedding, but hopefully I will not have another occasion to clone the same project settings again in the future. Splync is built to help couples and families manage money more openly, more calmly, and ultimately more happily together.

As mentioned in the previous article, one of the next areas to improve in Splync is the project deletion flow. In version 1.15, a left swipe on a project shows only the clone option, but in the future, it may also include a delete action. From a SwiftUI perspective, adding the swipe action itself is not especially difficult, as it can be introduced quite cleanly with a UI modifier. The harder part is deciding what should happen behind that gesture. Unlike cloning, project deletion needs to be handled with much greater care because a project contains members, expenses, budgets, and other connected information that should remain logically consistent even after removal. For that reason, it should be designed and implemented carefully rather than rushed. For now, I hope version 1.15 makes recurring projects much easier to manage and helps users share better together month after month.