Feature

Settle your group with the fewest transfers possible

Dolio finds the minimum number of payments needed to clear every balance. No spreadsheets, no chains of payments — just the cleanest path to zero.

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The problem

Splitting expenses gets messy fast

On a trip, every meal, taxi, and grocery run creates a new debt between two people. By the end of the week, your group has dozens of tiny IOUs criss-crossing in every direction.

Settling them one-by-one means everyone makes 5–10 small transfers — half of which cancel each other out. People forget. Receipts pile up. Someone always ends up overpaying.

How it works

How Dolio minimizes transfers

1
Compute net balances
For each member, Dolio sums what they paid minus what they owe. The result is a simple list: who is up, who is down, by how much.
2
Match the largest creditor with the largest debtor
Dolio pairs the person owed the most with the person who owes the most. The smaller of the two amounts becomes a single transfer that zeroes one side.
3
Repeat until everyone is at zero
Each transfer eliminates at least one person from the list. The result is the minimum number of transfers — never more than (group size − 1).

Real example

Lisbon trip, 4 friends, 12 expenses

Alice, Bob, Carol, and Dan spend a long weekend in Lisbon. Over four days they log 12 expenses: meals, an Airbnb, taxis, museum tickets, and a wine tour. Each was paid by whoever had cash on hand at the time.

The naive way to settle: every person who owes money pays each person they owe — that’s up to 6 separate transfers. Dolio reduces this to just 2 transfers by netting out balances across the whole group.

Comparison

vs. settling manually

	Dolio	By hand
Number of transfers	Always minimum	Often 2–3× more
Who pays whom	Computed instantly	Negotiated in the group chat
Errors	Math is exact	Rounding, forgotten IOUs
Time to settle	Seconds	Days of back-and-forth

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How does Dolio decide who pays whom?

Dolio uses a greedy algorithm: at each step it pairs the largest creditor with the largest debtor and creates a single transfer that zeroes the smaller of the two. This guarantees no more than (group size − 1) transfers — the mathematical minimum.

Is the minimum always unique?

Sometimes there are multiple sets of transfers with the same minimum count. Dolio picks one consistently so the suggestion doesn't change between visits, but you can always overrule it by recording a different settlement manually.

Can I split transfers between more people?

Yes. Dolio's suggestion is the minimum, not a constraint. You can mark any partial payment as settled, and Dolio will recompute the remaining transfers automatically.

Does it handle multiple currencies?

Each Dolio group has a single currency — set when you create the group. Transfer minimization runs within that currency. See the multi-currency feature for details.