About Grouptuity
Grouptuity is a mobile app (currently supported for Android) built to handle group bills when dining out. Splitting a bill among several people seems simple, but with everyone paying what they actually owe, split dishes, group discounts, and a mix of cash and credit cards, it can quickly become an ordeal.
The app works as an advanced bill split calculator that takes into account all these complexities. It requires entry of who's dining, chosen from phone contacts, and the prices and splits for each item ordered. From this, it produces itemized bills for each person. To settle the bill, Grouptuity supports electronic payments through Venmo, IOU emails, and instructions for how much to pay with cash or credit.
Why Grouptuity?
We made Grouptuity to simplify the chaos of group dinner bills. Even a meal with 2 people can get complicated if they pay what they actually owe. We tried to think of everything that makes group bills difficult, from shared entrées to coupons to different payment types, and designed Grouptuity to tackle them all.
What are payment methods?
These are the methods by which diners are paying for the meal, such as by cash or credit card. In the "Review Bill" screen in the app, you can set the payment method for each diner on your group bill, which will adjust the displayed payment instructions so you know exactly what transactions you need to do. The different payment methods and their effects are given below:
- Cash: Pay your personal bill by cash.
- Credit Card: Pay your personal bill by credit card. Your payment instructions will show the tax and tip that should appear on the diner's receipt
- Venmo: Another diner is covering your personal bill, and you will pay him or her back using Venmo. You can use this option even if neither you nor the other diner have Venmo accounts. The receipt email will include links to complete the transaction and make accounts. Your payment instructions will indicate a Venmo payment to the other diner, and his or her instructions will show an increased amount owed to the restaurant and his or her designation as the recipient of the Venmo payment.
- IOU Email: Another diner is covering your personal bill, and you will pay him or her back later somehow. Your payment instructions will indicate the debt, and his or her instructions will show an increased amount owed to the restaurant.
What is Venmo?
Venmo is an online payment service that lets you send and receive cash to and from friends. It's perfect for settling bills when some people don't have cash, and we let you use this as a payment method in our app. In fact, you can use Venmo in our app even if you or your friends don't already have accounts. A receipt email can be generated at the end of the bill calculation that contains links for creating accounts and completing these transactions
Venmo's Website
What app permissions does the Android app use?
Network accessThis permission lets the app access the internet, which is used for integration with Venmo for handling payments between diners electronically.
Read your contactsGrouptuity loads your address book contacts to let you easily choose who is dining. Doing Venmo username lookups and processing Venmo payment requests will send the email addresses and/or phone numbers for those diners on your bill to Venmo's servers, but we never store this information outside your phone. You can disable the use of Venmo entirely in the app settings if you prefer.
Read phone status and identityThis permission lets Grouptuity read your phone number, which is used to identify you on Venmo.
Who’s behind Grouptuity?
Grouptuity was created by Greg Johnson and Drew Regitsky. If you’d like to get in touch, email us at support@grouptuity.com.
What does "Grouptuity" mean?
Fundamentally, the app is a group gratuity calculator, hence the name "Grouptuity."