SlyTab — the manual
SlyTab keeps track of money shared between people who know each other. A trip, a household, a dinner someone put on their card. You record what was spent, it works out who owes whom, and you settle up.
Every screenshot here is generated from the running app against fixed demo data, so what you see is what the app currently does — not what it looked like when someone last remembered to update a manual.
Signing in
You can create an account with an email and password, or sign in with Apple or Google.
There is nothing to install: SlyTab runs in any browser, and there are iPhone and Android apps if you would rather have one on your phone. The same account works everywhere. In a browser it lives at slytab.com as well as at electricrv.ca/slytab — the same app either way, so use whichever you remember.
If someone has invited you to a group, sign in first and the invitation is applied automatically — you land in the group.
Home — where you stand
Home answers one question: across everything, who owes whom?
Each row is a person, not a group. If you and Alice share a household and a ski trip, you see one number for Alice — because when you settle up, you settle one number, not two.
Green means you are owed. Amber means you owe. "Settled" means exactly that.
The Add expense button is always in the bottom corner, on every screen where adding one makes sense. It asks which group the expense belongs to when you have more than one — skipping any that has been archived or locked for settling up, since neither takes new expenses.
People show up as their photo if they have set one, and as their initials if they have not.
If you are using one of the phone apps and a newer build has been released, Home says so and points at the download. Nothing updates itself behind your back.
On a narrow window the navigation moves to the bottom, the way it is on a phone.
Groups
A group is a set of people and the expenses they share. A ski trip, a flat, a recurring dinner.
Each card shows the group's emoji, its members, and where you stand in that group specifically.
Groups you have finished with can be archived: they collapse out of the way but keep their history, so old balances stay honest. Before that — while people are still paying each other — a group can be locked for settling up instead, which stops new expenses without stopping payments.
One-to-one splitting needs no group at all — you can split directly with one person.
A group's expenses
Every expense in the group, newest first, with what it was, who paid, and your share.
Search narrows the list. So do the category chips.
Tap any expense to edit it. Delete asks first, and can be undone straight afterwards.
In a group that has been locked for settling up, or archived, the add button is gone and the list is read-only — the numbers are being squared up and are meant to hold still.
Balances, and how to settle
Balances shows what each person owes within this group, and — more usefully —
the shortest set of payments that clears everyone.
If Alice owes Ben, and Ben owes you, SlyTab does not make Alice pay Ben so Ben can pay you. It tells Alice to pay you directly. Fewer payments, same result.
Tap anyone's balance to act on it. If you owe them, that is where you pay. If they owe you, that is where you write down what they have handed you — including a part of it, which is how money on a trip usually arrives.
When the spending is over, lock the group for settling up (group settings, the gear). Nobody can add expenses to a locked group, so the numbers stop moving while everyone pays up — but payments still go in, and you can remind someone what they owe. Anyone in the group can unlock it again when the receipt everybody forgot turns up.
If the group has spent in more than one currency, Show balances per currency breaks the same numbers down as they were actually spent, unconverted, for anyone who would rather settle each currency in its own.
Totals
Where the money actually went: by person and by category.
Useful mid-trip, when someone asks whether the group is overspending on restaurants, and afterwards, when you want to know what a holiday really cost.
Adding an expense
The fast path is three fields: what, how much, who paid. Everything else has a sensible default — today's date, an equal split, the group's currency.
When equal is not right:
| Method | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Equal | The usual case. Optionally exclude anyone who was not there. |
| Exact | You know each person's amount — a restaurant bill you have itemised. |
| Shares | Two of you had the double room and one had the single: 2 : 1. |
| Percent | A household splitting 60 / 40. |
| + / − | Split equally, then adjust one person up or down for the extra drink. |
More than one person can pay. If you put £60 on your card and Alice put £40 on hers, record both — the split and the paying are separate questions.
Scan the receipt instead of typing. Photograph it and the total, the date and the line items come back filled in. From there you can split by item, which is what you want when three of you shared the starter and one did not.
When the scan only half works, it says so. Some things — a card statement, a faded till roll — have readable lines but no total we can find. Rather than leaving the amount at zero, we add up the lines we did read and tell you that is what we have done, with the figure we got. Check it: anything we failed to read is missing from that number too. If nothing usable came back at all, it says that instead, and you can type the amount yourself or take another photo.
The receipt is read by a model running on our own server. No third-party service is configured, so receipts do not leave it. Location data is stripped from JPEG photos when they arrive.
Different currencies
Enter an expense in the currency you actually paid in. SlyTab keeps that currency on the expense and converts it to the group's home currency using the reference rate for the date of the expense, then stores that rate on the expense.
That last part matters. Nothing re-values your history in the background, so a balance you agreed on last month does not quietly become a different number this month.
The original amount is always shown; the converted one is secondary.
If your card gave you a different rate, override it — enter the rate you were actually charged. One caveat worth knowing: if you later edit that expense, re-enter the override, because saving re-reads the rate for the date.
Currencies without decimal places — Chilean pesos, yen, won — are handled properly throughout. A total of 88.930 CLP means eighty-eight thousand nine hundred and thirty, and SlyTab reads it that way.
Settling up
Either side can record a payment.
When you pay someone, record it and they are asked to confirm; the balance between you clears once they do. When someone pays you — cash at the table, an e-transfer that has landed — record it from their row on Balances, and it counts straight away.
!Recording money someone handed you There is nobody left to confirm it to: you are the person who would have. If you fumble the amount, either of you can delete it and put it in again.
Once a group is locked for settling up, the same sheet can remind someone what they owe: one email, saying what it is for. It will not send the same reminder twice in a few days, and it respects whatever that person has chosen to hear about — so the button sometimes tells you it did not send, and why.
SlyTab does not move money. It records that money moved. Your payment handles — Interac e-Transfer, PayPal.Me, Venmo — live on your profile so the other person can find them without asking.
Activity
Everything that has happened across all your groups, newest first, grouped by day. Who added what, who paid whom, who confirmed a payment, who joined, and who locked a group for settling up.
Useful when you open the app after a week away and want to know what changed.
Everything you have spent
The My expenses tab answers a question no per-group screen can: what have I been spending, across everything?
Two views:
- I'm in — every expense you hold a share of, whoever entered it. This is your money.
- I paid — the ones where your money actually went out.
Sort by newest, oldest, largest or smallest, search, and see a running total of your share — not the total of the bills, which would be someone else's number.
Profile and settings
- Your photo — set one instead of the initials badge. You choose the crop, and it is stored the right way up regardless of how your phone recorded it. People who share a group with you can see it; nobody else can.
- Theme — match your device, or force dark or light.
- Default currency — what your balances are shown in.
- Notifications — everything, important only, or nothing.
- How people pay you — Interac, PayPal.Me, Venmo handles.
- Devices — every signed-in session, with the ability to revoke any of them.
- How SlyTab works — this manual, from inside the app.
- Get the phone apps — the iPhone app through TestFlight, or the Android app as a direct download. Android will ask you to allow installing it the first time; that is your phone being careful about an app that did not come from the Play Store, not a warning about SlyTab.
- Your own server (phone apps) — SlyTab is self-hosted, and the apps can be pointed at a different SlyTab server than ours. Most people never touch this; it is here because "run it yourself" should mean it.
- Report a bug — goes straight to us with your app version attached, and you get an email when it is fixed.
- Delete my account — really deletes it. Your share of shared history is anonymised so nobody else's balances change.
Getting other people in
Three ways, in order of how little effort they take:
- People you already know — anyone from your other groups, one tap, no email needed.
- A share link — send it however you like. It works for seven days and can be revoked.
- By email — they get an invitation, and their share is tracked from the moment you add them, whether or not they ever sign up.
Moving from Splitwise? Import a group directly, mapping their members onto people you already know. Anything already in SlyTab is skipped rather than duplicated.
Leaving a group
Open the group, tap its name, then Leave this group. You are asked to settle up first if you still owe or are owed anything.
Your past expenses stay, so nobody else's balance moves.