Guides · Settling up
The count is done and you know who owes whom. Moving the money is a separate problem, and it is the one that produces the awkward message three days later.
Fewer payments beats fair-looking payments
The instinct is for every loser to pay every winner a share. Six players can generate fifteen separate transfers that way, most of them for odd amounts, and each one is a chance for something to be forgotten.
Instead, net everyone out first, then pair the biggest winner with the biggest loser and work down. The result is the same money in the same pockets with far fewer movements — usually one payment per losing player, and often fewer transfers than there are people at the table.
Cash, if you can
Cash settles instantly and leaves nothing outstanding. Its problems are practical: nobody carries it any more, and change is awkward at odd amounts.
If your game runs on cash, keep small denominations in the bank specifically for settling. Being unable to make change is how a settled debt becomes an unsettled one.
Transfer apps
Most games have moved to transfers, which is fine and creates its own record. Two things worth knowing:
- Some apps have public activity feeds. Payments between friends can be visible by default. Worth a look at the settings if your group would rather their Friday night were not a matter of record.
- Send while everyone is still there. A transfer promised at the door is a transfer someone forgets. Doing it at the table takes thirty seconds and closes the night properly.
Whatever the app says in the note field, keep your own record of the actual buy-ins and cash-outs. The transfer shows a number moved; it does not show why, and in three weeks nobody will reconstruct it.
Rounding
At small stakes you will land on amounts nobody wants to transfer. Agree the convention once, in advance, rather than per payment: round to the nearest dollar, or leave the remainder with the host as a float for next time.
What does not work is rounding in whichever direction feels generous in the moment. It is unrepeatable, and the person who rounded in someone's favour last week remembers it when it happens the other way.
What is still owed
Sometimes somebody cannot settle on the night. Record it as a debt — who, how much, and when it is expected — and settle the rest of the table normally. An outstanding payment is a manageable thing. An outstanding payment nobody wrote down is a disagreement waiting to happen. There is more on handling a shortfall here.
Chase it once, kindly, and early. The longer an amount sits, the more it costs to ask about relative to what it is worth.
Keep one record, not four
The most common failure is not arithmetic — it is three people holding partial versions of the night on three phones. One ledger, visible to the table, agreed before anyone stands up.
The calculator produces that list: each payment, from whom, to whom, in as few movements as it can manage.