A shared spreadsheet feels like the obvious solution for a group trip: everyone already knows how to use it, it's free, and you can add any column you want. The problem starts once the trip actually gets underway.
- Someone edits a cell by accident and nobody notices.
- There's no single "correct" version — everyone opens a different copy, or forgets to refresh.
- Expenses happen on a phone, but the spreadsheet only lives on a laptop — so they get written down "later" and forgotten.
- There's no automatic calculation of who owes whom — you have to do it manually at the end, which is exactly the moment it's easiest to get wrong.
Not "more columns" — one single source of truth that updates in real time for the whole group, and that works from a phone the moment an expense happens.
Instead of a separate tab per day, a live itinerary everyone sees at the same moment — including last-minute changes.
The moment you pay, you don't "add it to the list to remember to enter into the spreadsheet tonight" — you open your phone and log it. That's the difference between capturing everything and discovering at the end of the trip that half the expenses vanished.
No more "hold on, let's do the math" at the airport. Who paid, who owes, and how much — calculated automatically, in the minimum number of transfers.
TUlon is built around exactly these three problems: a shared itinerary the whole group sees and edits in real time, expense logging from a phone in seconds (including a photographed receipt the app reads on its own), and automatic settlement at the end of the trip. No tabs, no conflicting versions, no "who last updated this" — and completely free. Full details on our group trip planner page. And once the trip is actually underway, see our guide to managing expenses in real time throughout the trip itself.
Because it has no real real-time sync, no easy way to log an expense from a phone the moment it happens, and no automatic calculation of who owes whom. All of that requires manual work that's easy to get wrong.
A dedicated app that combines a shared itinerary and expense management in one place, like TUlon — so you don't need to maintain a separate tool for each.
Not currently, but starting a new trip in TUlon takes under a minute — easier than importing a messy spreadsheet.
Yes, there's no limit on the number of people in a trip.