An outing with friends is always a pleasure indeed. The awkwardness comes into the picture once the bill enters the room. Splitting it can oftentimes take as long as the rest of the meal. To make things easier, Martin Guerrero has created the iOS app Fair Bill Split. This app splits your restaurant bill fairly and evenly for you. Alternately, you can also create separate bills for individuals according to their share of the meal.
There are three main features that this app boasts of. “Split Bill Evenly” divides the bill equally between a certain number of people. The second option- “Itemize Bill” can be done either manually or a receipt can be pasted. In the former, the app allows you to enter the total number of people, the tip rate, tax rate and the amount of individual items on the bill. Once these details are entered, the bill is split as per the orders made by different people. This way, each person pays exactly what he used.
The ‘Paste Receipt’ option for itemizing the bill allows you to paste the text on the receipt besides entering the rest of the details. To do so, you can the extra OCR app that converts a photo of the receipt into text. It requires you to click a picture, convert it to text using the OCR app, copy the output text from there and paste it into the app window. Once completed, the app will split up the bill for you. This process can get a bit tedious at times.
Besides just app functionality, the app has good design and a easy to use interface. In the itemize option, there are separate columns for each person. The top part has the individual amounts and the bottom has all the bill items. By clicking on each person’s or item’s name, the bill is itemized for that party. Once the complete itemized value nears the sum total, you know you have completely split the bill.
Editing options are quite handy too. It is quite easy to change the name of a certain person or a certain item on the ‘itemize’ screen. A click on the top most name or bill item will allow you to do so conveniently.
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The option of sharing the bill as per items ordered has been a fairly old concept. However, it has been dreaded since ages and has not been automated so far. We all have certain friends who eat a lot and others who eat very less. It is unfair to equally share the bill then. Also, with this app, you have the option of splitting or itemizing specific items only.
Fair Bill Split is an extremely handy app that can come to the rescue during an outing with friends. Not only does it save you the embarrassment of splitting the bill but also saves you the time required to do the same. It’s ease of use and simple features add to the oomph factor, making it an app worth downloading. It is available for free in the App store for iOS devices with iOS 7.1 or higher.
Good: Option to itemize the bill
Bad: Using the OCR app can make the process lengthy and tedious
