In Chit, a split isn’t final because one person says so. You send the receipt to the people on it, and each of them sees the original photo, every line and their own share, then confirms it or comments on the line they disagree with. It replaces the usual photo-in-the-group-chat and “are you sure that’s right?”.
Sending a receipt
A new receipt is visible only to you. When it’s ready, you send it to the people on it. To do that you need a free account, and so do they: you add each other as friends by username, and once they accept, the contact you made for them is linked to their account. Chit never reads your phone’s address book.
When you send a receipt, its photos are uploaded so the others can see them. Receipts you keep to yourself stay on your phone, photos included. Chit updates when you open it, when you come back to it, or when you pull down to refresh, and while it’s open it picks up changes others make.
For people without the app, see share cards instead.
Everyone sees the same receipt
Being able to check is what makes agreeing easy. Everyone on a sent receipt can see:
- the original photo, or photos for a long receipt;
- every line, with its name and amount;
- how each line is split, and everyone’s share;
- comments, and the history of changes.
Your home screen shows the receipts that involve you, with your own share, and the ones waiting for you to check.
Confirm, or comment on one line
Each person looks at their share and taps to confirm it. If something’s wrong, they don’t have to reject the whole receipt: they can comment on the single line in question, such as “not my wine” or “I only had half of this”. The receipt’s owner can mark a comment as resolved once it’s been dealt with.
Re-confirmation when amounts change
A confirmation is tied to what the person actually saw. If a line, the split or the amounts change after someone has confirmed, and their share is different as a result, Chit shows that they need to confirm again. If someone tries to confirm a version of the receipt that has just been changed, the confirmation doesn’t go through, so nobody ends up agreeing to something they haven’t seen.
Who can change what
The person who creates a receipt chooses, for that receipt, how much the others can change:
| Setting | What the others can do |
|---|---|
| Only me | View, confirm, and comment on lines |
| Participants can change the split | Change who has which line, but not the items or prices |
| Everyone can edit | Change the items, prices and split |
These rules are enforced on the server for every request, not just hidden in the app.
Change history and settled receipts
Every change to a sent receipt is recorded: who made it, when, and what changed. Anyone on the receipt can look back through it, so a figure never changes without a trace.
Once a receipt is settled, it’s locked. Nobody can change it, not even its creator, until the creator unlocks it. Settling up in Chit is a record, not a payment: you pay each other however you normally do, and Chit keeps track of what’s been paid back.
Privacy
A sent receipt is visible only to the people on it who have an account linked to yours. Card numbers in the recognised text are cut down to their last four digits, but the photo itself isn’t edited, so check it before sending. The privacy policy has the details.
Related: see how splitting by item works, and share cards for friends without the app.