Six people, a long table, fourteen dishes on the bill. Two of you did not drink, one arrived for dessert, and one is vegetarian and did not touch the thing that cost ₹680. Splitting this equally is easy and slightly unfair. Splitting it properly means typing fourteen line items into an app while everyone waits.
Point your camera at it instead.
How it works
- Take a photo of the bill. A normal photo, on a table, in restaurant lighting. It does not need to be flat or perfectly framed.
- The app reads the line items. Each dish, each quantity, each price, plus tax and service charge as separate lines.
- Tap people onto items. Two taps puts the two beers on the two people who drank them. The biryani everyone shared goes to everyone.
- Tax and charges apportion themselves. Service charge and GST get distributed in proportion to what each person actually consumed, which is the correct way and the way nobody does by hand.
- Save it to the group. Balances update for everyone instantly, and the photo stays attached to the expense.
The whole thing takes about the length of time it takes the card machine to arrive.
This is free
Receipt scanning and item-wise splitting are both included in the free version of Splitify. In most splitting apps, including the biggest one, they sit behind a subscription.
What it handles
- Printed restaurant bills, which is the main use and the one it is tuned for.
- Supermarket and kirana receipts, including the long ones. Useful for separating the flat's shared groceries from your own things on a single bill.
- Screenshots from delivery apps. A Swiggy or Zomato order summary works the same way as a paper bill, which matters because a lot of shared food arrives that way now.
- Bills with service charge, GST and a discount applied. These are the ones people get wrong manually, because a discount applied to the total has to come off everyone's share in proportion.
What trips it up
Being straight about this, because a scanner that oversells itself just wastes your time.
- Faded thermal paper. The receipts that have been in a pocket all day and gone grey. If you cannot read it, neither can the app.
- Very cramped handwriting. Handwritten bills from smaller places vary enormously. Sometimes it works perfectly, sometimes not at all.
You will know straight away when a bill has defeated it, because the items and the total it pulls out will not match what is printed in front of you. Shoot it again with better light and the paper pressed flat, and if it still will not read, put that one in by hand. Worth pointing the camera at it first either way: on an ordinary printed bill it works, and that is most bills.
Why bother
The counter argument is reasonable: just split equally and stop being precise about ₹200.
For one dinner, that is right. Equal split is fine and precision is not worth the friction.
Across a year it stops being right. If you do not drink and your group does, splitting every bill equally costs you a real amount of money over twelve months, and you will not say anything, and that is the situation that quietly erodes a friendship. The same applies to the vegetarian at a table ordering seafood, and to the person who arrives at 10pm for one dish.
The point of making it take thirty seconds instead of five minutes is that the fair option stops being the annoying option. That is the entire argument for scanning.
Better scans
- Flatten the bill against the table with your hand and shoot straight down.
- Get the whole bill in frame including the total. If it is a long supermarket receipt, it is fine to shoot it in two overlapping halves.
- Do it at the table, before the receipt goes into a pocket and becomes unreadable.
- Glance at the total the app extracted against the printed total before you save. One check, two seconds, and you never have to revisit the expense.
After the scan
The image stays attached to the expense in the group. Anyone in the group can open it. This is more useful than it sounds, because the way most bill disputes end is somebody producing the actual bill, and in a WhatsApp thread that photo is forty messages up and nobody wants to look for it.
If you also track your own spending in Splitify, the scanned expense connects to the payment that leaves your account, so your share of that dinner lands in your food category and the ₹4,200 you fronted for the table does not. That connection is covered in the expense tracker guide.
Try it on tonight's bill
Scanning and item-wise splitting are free. No subscription, no ads.
Common questions
Is there a free app that scans a bill and splits it?
Yes. Splitify includes receipt scanning and item-wise splitting in its free tier. You photograph the bill, the app extracts the line items and prices, you assign items to people, and tax and service charge get apportioned in proportion to what each person consumed.
Does the scanner work on Indian restaurant bills?
Yes, including bills with GST and service charge listed separately, and bills with a discount applied to the total. It also reads supermarket and kirana receipts and screenshots of delivery app order summaries.
How does it handle tax and service charge when splitting item-wise?
In proportion. If your items came to 20% of the food total, you carry 20% of the tax and service charge. Doing this by hand is what makes item-wise splitting tedious, which is why most people give up and split equally.
What if the scan gets an item wrong?
Compare the total the scan produced against the total printed on the bill before you save it. That takes a couple of seconds and it catches the problem. If they do not match, retake the photo with better light and the bill flat, and if it still will not read cleanly, add that expense by hand instead. Faded thermal paper and heavily abbreviated handwritten bills are the two that most often need a second go.
Can I split a Swiggy or Zomato order?
Yes. Screenshot the order summary and scan it the same way you would a paper bill. The line items and prices are extracted the same way.
Does the receipt image stay saved?
Yes, attached to the expense in the group, where anyone in the group can open it. That is usually what settles a disagreement about a number weeks later.