Internal transfer for joint participant expenses (SIL/Group expenses)

Managing joint expenses and payments for groups of participant's has always been a really hard proposition. SpendAble makes it easy to have accurate joint expenses, flexibility and instantly be ready to pay. 

In this article we will run you through an example of group spending between John, Alicia and Stephanie that all live together at High St SIL. They all need to contribute $35 to an electricity bill. 

What are joint expenses? 

Joint expenses are when multiple participants need to collectively pay for something with a single transaction. They often can't be split up or are inconvenient to pay with multiple cards. Some examples are: 

• House Groceries
• Utility bills
• Maintenance
• Furniture
• Cleaning products
• Food delivery (UberEats, Menu log etc)
• Subscriptions (Netflix, Disney etc)

What is an internal transfer? 

An internal transfer is when you send money from one wallet in your organisation to another wallet. It creates a transaction record for accounting and reconciliation purposes and allows you to pool the funds into a single wallet to make a joint purchase. 

To learn how to make an internal transaction read this article: 

What is the flow of money for this? 

The flow of money is: 

1. Money is deposited to the participant account/wallet
2. Finance internally transfers funds from the participant wallet to the joint wallet
3. The joint wallet/card is used to pay for the joint expense

In our example this would look like: 

1. Each participant deposits money to their wallet
2. Finance receives the $105 electricity bill
3. Finance internally transfers $35 from each participant wallet to the High St wallet
4. The house staff can use the card to pay the electricity bill

What else can be done?

• Finance can upload the bill to the internal transfer as evidence
• Participants can view the bill and their contribution in their account
• Families/Guardians can view the bill and the contribution

What if the bill is not paid by card? 

You can still use a SpendAble If the bill is not paid by card. This way you still get to track the joint expenses and get reimbursed for funds you spent as a provider that weren't on SpendAble. 

The process for this is: 

1. Provider pays bill
2. Finance internally transfers $35 from all participants to provider clearing account
3. Finance gets reimbursed the money from their provider account

Read more about a clearing account

If you want to learn more about clearing accounts go to this article about clearing accounts.