Groups

The Groups tab is where the actual expense tracking happens. Each group is a self-contained shared history: its own members, its own expenses, its own balances.

Creating a group

Tap + on the Groups tab, give the group a name, and pick its currency.

Creating a group needs a storage backend, because the group's encrypted log has to live somewhere the other members can reach. If you haven't configured one, the Groups tab shows a notice — tap it to set one up without leaving the screen.

A group that has no backend behind it still works on your own device and is marked Local only in its header. You can log expenses in it, but nobody else will ever see them.

The person who creates a group is its owner (marked with an Owner badge) and provides the storage it lives in.

Adding members

Open the group and tap the members icon in the header, then choose:

• Add a known friend — anyone already confirmed in your Friends list is added immediately, no link needed.
• Invite someone new — FEN mints an invite link you can share however you like (message, mail, in person). The link expires after 24 hours; mint a new one if it goes stale.

The invite link carries the group's encryption key inside the part of the URL that never reaches a web server. Treat it like a key: anyone who opens it can join the group.

Someone who receives a link taps it to join. If tapping doesn't work — the link arrived in an app that mangles it, for instance — they can copy it and use the paste-invite button on their Friends tab.

Adding an expense

Tap the + button and fill in:

• Amount and currency — any currency, not just the group's.
• Group — pre-filled when you start from inside a group.
• Description — what it was for.
• Date — defaults to today.
• Paid by — defaults to you.
• Category — see Categories.
• Split — how the cost is divided.

Splitting

Three split modes sit behind the small icons above the member list:

Icon	Mode	What it does
=	Equal	Divides evenly between the members you tick.
%	Percentage	You give each member a percentage; they must total 100.
123	Exact amounts	You type each member's share; they must total the expense.

FEN handles the rounding for you — when an equal split doesn't divide cleanly, the odd cents are distributed rather than dropped, so the shares always add back up to the total.

Receipts

The camera icon on the amount row attaches a photo of the receipt. Photos are downscaled on your device before being encrypted and stored, and their location and camera metadata are stripped. Tap the icon on a saved expense to view the receipt.

Editing and deleting expenses

Tap any expense in the feed to open it, then edit or delete it. Deleting keeps the entry in the group's history as deleted rather than erasing it — that's what lets every device agree on the outcome.

Who is allowed to change an expense is a per-group setting, under ⋮ › Who can edit expenses:

• Everyone — any member can edit or delete any expense.
• Only the person who added it — everyone else can look but not touch.

Balances

The group screen shows what you're owed and what you owe. Tap through for the full Balances screen, which lists every outstanding debt in the group, including ones you're not part of.

Balances are kept per currency. FEN does not silently convert money: if the group has expenses in euros and francs, you'll see a euro balance and a franc balance. Nothing is merged unless you supply exchange rates.

Simplify debts

Simplify debts works out the smallest set of payments that clears everything — instead of five people paying each other in a circle, maybe two transfers settle it all.

It's a suggestion, not a change: the balances are untouched until you tap Record these settlements, which writes every suggested payment at once and leaves the group settled.

Settling up

Each debt row has a Settle button. It opens a screen where you confirm who paid whom and how much, and Record settlement writes it to the group.

A settlement is a record of a payment that happened in the real world — FEN never moves money. Any member can record one, which matters when the person who paid isn't the one holding the phone.

Multiple currencies and exchange rates

The rates icon in the group header opens Exchange rates, where you enter a rate for each currency pair the group actually uses. Any active member can set them, and rates are display-only: they change how totals are presented, never the amounts that were recorded.

When you add an expense in a foreign currency, FEN offers to load the rate for you. Until a rate exists, the group's per-currency balances simply stay separate.

Categories

Every expense can carry a category (groceries, transport, and so on), which is what makes the report useful. ⋮ › Categories edits the list for this group; new groups start from your personal defaults in Settings › Expense Categories.

Uncategorized always exists and can't be removed or renamed.

Report

The chart icon in the header opens Report: spending broken down by category, as a pie chart plus a list.

• Payer filter — a scrollable row of members; tap one to see only what that member paid for.
• Currency handling — by default each currency gets its own block. If the group has complete exchange rates, the toggle in the top right combines everything into a single chart in the group currency.

Exporting expenses

⋮ › Export expenses produces a CSV of every expense in the group and hands it to the normal share sheet.

The file has one row per expense — date, description, category, who paid, currency, total — followed by one column per member holding that member's share as a plain number. Summing a member's column gives exactly what they were charged, so the file drops straight into a spreadsheet.

Managing the group

All of these live in the group header:

• Rename group — tap the pencil beside the name.
• Remove member — ⋮ › Remove member. The group's encryption key is rotated afterwards, so a removed member cannot read anything added after their removal.
• Leave group — ⋮ › Leave group. You stop being an active member; the others find out the next time their devices sync. Your own copy stays on your device as a record. Settle up first if you can — FEN warns you if you leave with an open balance.
• Close group — ⋮ › Close group, when the trip is over.

Closing a group

Closing ends the group: no further expenses can be added, and it stops syncing. Closed groups are hidden on the Groups tab until you switch the filter to show them.

:::warning Set your save folder before closing A closed group is exported to your local save folder as an archive. If no folder is configured, there is nowhere to write it — and the copy on the backend is only kept for about 30 days, after which those expenses and receipts are gone for good.

The app warns you about this in the close dialog, and the Groups tab shows a banner listing closed groups still waiting to be saved. Configure the folder and the pending saves are written automatically. :::