Best app to track money you have lent
Bill-splitting apps need everyone to participate. A receivable in your own ledger needs nothing from the other person at all.
In short
The short answer
The best tool for money you have lent holds an amount with a remaining balance that drops as it is repaid, requires nothing from the other person, and sits alongside your actual finances. Bill-splitting apps solve a related but different problem and need everyone to participate.
How we judged
- Does it hold a remaining balance, so partial repayments are represented properly?
- Does the other person need an account for it to work?
- Does it sit in the same books as your spending, or in a separate silo?
- Can you close something as an expense when it is clearly not coming back?
- Does it handle reimbursables and informal loans, not only split bills?
expenie is our own product, so treat its inclusion accordingly. Every pick below states what it is bad at as well as what it is good at.
The picks
1. Best for receivables inside your own ledger
expenie
A receivable loan holds the original amount and a remaining balance that drops as they repay, so partial settlement is represented properly. It works for informal loans, client reimbursements, and unsettled splits alike, requires nothing from the other person, and sits beside your expenses and budgets so the amount affects your actual position.
Trade-off: It will not split a bill across six people or calculate anyone's share. For active group settlement in a shared house, a dedicated splitting app does that job better.
2. Best for groups where everyone participates
A bill-splitting app
For a shared house, a recurring trip, or a friend group with constant back-and-forth, a shared ledger between people resolves the who-owes-whom arithmetic in a way one-sided tracking cannot.
Trade-off: Needs everyone to use it, and it is deliberately disconnected from your real finances — it knows nothing about your income, budgets, or whether you can afford to be out of pocket.
3. Best for a single informal loan
A written message and a note
For one loan to one person, a message stating the amount, date, whether interest applies, and a repayment expectation covers most of what goes wrong. Informal loans fail on ambiguity, not dishonesty.
Trade-off: No running balance, so partial repayments blur. And nothing prompts you to review it, which is how amounts get quietly forgotten by both sides.
4. Best for many small receivables at once
A spreadsheet
If you are tracking a lot of small amounts across many people — a landlord, a club treasurer, someone running a group trip — a sheet handles the volume with less ceremony than per-item records.
Trade-off: Disconnected from your actual books, so the money owed does not show up in your financial position, and nothing reminds you to chase.
Why a note is not enough
Informal loans go wrong through ambiguity rather than dishonesty. Two people genuinely remember different amounts, both sincerely, six months later.
Partial repayments are where it breaks down fastest. Two payments happened, neither was recorded, and now nobody is sure what is left. A note stating the original amount does not survive that, which is why a remaining balance is the minimum useful structure.
The second failure is that nobody wants to raise it. The borrower feels awkward, the lender does not want to seem grasping, and silence compounds. A list you actually look at converts "I think they still owe me something" into a specific amount and date, which is a much easier conversation.
The participation problem
Bill-splitting apps work best when everyone involved uses them. That is reasonable for a shared house and unreasonable in most other situations.
- A client reimbursing a cost you fronted. They are not joining an app to settle it.
- A family member you lent money to informally.
- A colleague who owes you for lunch and tracks nothing.
- An insurance claim you are waiting on.
- Anyone who simply will not install another app.
In all of these you need a record and the other party does not need to be involved in keeping it.
Why it belongs beside your spending
A cost someone will repay distorts two months when logged as an ordinary expense — this one shows spending that was never your cost, and next one shows income you did not earn.
Modelled as a receivable, the money genuinely left your account and someone owes you that amount. Both months stay honest, and your category budgets are not blown by a cost that was never yours.
Keeping it in the same books also means "what am I owed" sits beside "what did I spend" — which for anyone freelancing or frequently fronting costs is an equally important question that most consumer apps do not answer at all.
Closing the ones that never come back
Some money does not return. A client disputes a cost, a friend never settles, an insurer declines part of a claim.
Do not leave those open indefinitely. An inflated "owed to me" figure is its own dishonest bookkeeping — it makes your position look better than it is and keeps a grievance alive without resolving anything.
When you decide something is not coming back, close it and record it as the expense it turned out to be, in the month you accepted that. Your books stay accurate, and over a few years you get a genuinely useful signal about which arrangements cost you money.
Decide in advance
The most useful habit here has nothing to do with software: decide before lending whether you would be genuinely fine never getting it back.
If you can afford to lose it and value the relationship more than the money, consider gifting a smaller amount rather than lending a larger one. A gift has no ledger, no awkwardness, and no slow erosion.
If it genuinely is a loan, treat it as one — a written amount, a rough repayment expectation, and a tracked balance. The middle ground, where it is nominally a loan but nobody behaves as though it is, produces the worst outcomes of both.
FAQ
- Does the person who owes me need an app?
- Not with a receivable in your own ledger. It is a record in your workspace, so it works for clients, family, and anyone who will not install anything.
- How do I record a partial repayment?
- Against the receivable, so the remaining balance drops. A single expense line cannot represent "they paid half," which is exactly why the balance structure is worth the extra step.
- What should I do about a loan that is clearly not coming back?
- Close it and record it as an expense in the month you accepted that. Leaving it open inflates what you think you are owed and keeps a grievance alive without resolving it.