Bote keeps a group's account when they get together for something (a weekend, a dinner, a holiday flat): who puts in money, what they spend it on, how it splits and, at the end, who pays how much to whom with the fewest possible transfers. No account or internet: each phone keeps its own copy and they pass the event between them.
"My events" is the list of your events. Each card shows the photo, the title, the number of attendees and the total spent, and whether it is Pending settlement or Settled.
+: create a new event.When you pay your share of an event, it disappears from your list; the creator keeps seeing it until everyone has settled and it reaches zero.
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Photo (optional) | An avatar to recognize the event at a glance. |
| Title / Description (optional) | "Weekend in the mountains", plus a note if needed. |
| Date | The day of the event (required). |
| Location (optional) | Address or place; can later be opened on the map. |
| Mode | Restricted: only you (creator-admin) modify and add entries. Collaborative: anyone in the group can. |
| Sync | How the event travels between phones: Local, Default or Other (see below). |
Attendees: add them From contacts or By hand (name and, optionally, phone and email). Each gets an avatar with their initials and a fixed color. You appear as Me.
If you add a person when the event already has expenses recorded, Bote asks: do they take on the costs from the beginning or only from now? "From the beginning" (in solidarity) puts them in the split for everything so far, as if they'd been there from minute one. "Only from now" sets their tab to zero and they only enter what's recorded from that point on — handy for the one who joins on day two. You don't need to understand the formula: you just decide whether they chip in for the earlier stuff or not.
An entry is one thing paid for by a single person (the meal, the lodging, the fuel…) and later split among whoever is due to share it.
| Field | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Concept | What it is: "Saturday dinner", "Fuel". |
| Who pays | The attendee who put the money down out of pocket. |
| Category | Restaurant, drinks, gift, supermarket, lodging, fuel, substances, cash or other. Drives the icon and the report breakdown. |
| Budgeted (optional) | What you expected to spend; just a guide. |
| Spent (required) | What it actually cost. |
| Paid | How much of that entry has already been settled. Must be complete to "close" the entry and, ultimately, close the account. |
| Receipt (photo, optional) | Photo of the receipt to check amounts. Stored only on your phone; it does not travel in the sync. |
At the bottom you choose how that entry is divided:
=): mark who takes part and it splits evenly among them.%): each participant has a fader
(slider). The pin 📌 locks their percentage so it won't change; when you move
another fader, Bote splits the rest only among the open ones. That way you can say "Marta pays a
fixed 40% and the rest split evenly" without doing the maths.In Settings you can turn on "your money or your life" mode. When it's on, a button appears
in the report that drafts the collection message on its own for each person who owes
you money, from a template you edit. It uses the placeholders {name},
{amount}, {event} and {phone} (yours, so they can pay you) and
Bote fills them with the real data. It doesn't charge or send anything by itself: it just leaves the
text ready to send over WhatsApp. A joke with a purpose: it saves typing "hey, you owe me €12.50"
fifteen times.
For the group to have the same account, the event has to be passed between phones. Bote merges it entry by entry, so it doesn't matter who records what on their phone: when you bring them together, nothing is lost or duplicated.
Each entry has a unique identifier and a timestamp. When you import an event, Bote doesn't overwrite it: it compares entry by entry and keeps the most recently modified version. "I've paid" marks are never lost, and if someone deleted an entry, it doesn't "come back to life" on sync (a tombstone is kept remembering it was deleted). The activity log also merges without repeating lines. In practice: everyone records their stuff whenever they like, and when you sync the account ends up complete and consistent with nothing to redo. Receipt photos are the only thing that doesn't travel.
Bote can sync on its own over the internet, but you provide the server: there's no central account and no one who sees your data. Someone in the group creates a free project on Supabase (or uses any PostgREST of their own), pastes in a table and copies two things (a URL and a key). From then on the event uploads and downloads on its own, but the merge is still local (the same logic as the QR); the server is just a mailbox.
The convenient part: only the event's creator configures it, and that configuration travels inside the event when shared. Everyone else, on importing by QR or file, ends up connected without typing anything. Each group can have its own server. Honest warning: whoever has the key can read that table, so only share it with your group.
In Settings → Payment detector you can give Bote access to read the phone's notifications. What for? When a notification arrives from your bank that looks like a purchase (a charge with an amount and a merchant), Bote offers to record it as an expense with the amount and merchant already filled in: you just choose which event it goes to and confirm. It's optional and off by default. For your peace of mind: everything is processed inside your phone, nothing is sent to any server; it simply saves you typing in the amount of what you just paid by card. It requires Android's notification access, which you can revoke whenever you want.