Nobody likes to bring up IOUs. Keeping track of cash spent on groceries, nights out and miscellaneous expenses is difficult if you happen to be sharing fees with friends or roommates. Even with the best of intentions, someone inevitably seems to get short changed.

With the recently updated iPhone app My Running Tab, co-creator and Syracuse University alumnus Stephen Fox aims to make sharing expenses a little bit easier.

“My Running Tab basically just makes sure that everybody is paying their fair share and everything is equal,” Fox said.

With the app, users can create IOUs with individual friends or groups showing how much they owe or are owed. These tabs can then be edited or paid back via PayPal or through the mobile payment app Venmo. Thanks to integration with Facebook, tabs can be created with anyone regardless of whether or not they have the app. If a friend downloads the app later, any existing tabs will be synced automatically to their account.

In addition to tracking regular expenses like grocery shopping and utilities, Fox sees the app as a way to take the pain out of splitting a check at the end of a meal.

“Rather than split the bill on multiple cards, or try to get change from the waitress, which as you know is annoying, one person could pay for it and put it into My Running Tab,” Fox explained.

At the next meal out, someone else could pick up the check, and the tabs in the app would be updated accordingly. For friends that go out regularly or plan to go on a trip together, it is easy to add those users to a group within the app.

Fox said he first came up with the idea for My Running Tab as a Kauffman Entrepreneurship Engagement Fellow and master student in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management in 2011. The idea became a reality later the next year when Fox’s brother learned iOS development and the two founded Fox Developers, LLC in 2012. The app was first released into the App store in May 2013.

Since its launch, the app has gone through a number of different iterations. The newest release, out in time for the 2013-2014 school year, includes major upgrades to the design and usability of the app.

“Before it was more for beta, and this is version one,” Fox said.

The Fox brothers are currently working on a feature that would allow payments to be made through the app by direct deposit. Long term, Fox would like to build out the social aspect of the app by allowing users to upload photos and write on one another’s pages.

According to My Running Tab’s official page in the App store, the app is perfect for almost every scenario, with one exception. “We just recommend not using it on dates,” the description reads. “Because you will look cheap.”

Published on September 15, 2013 at 11:48 pm

Contact Linda: lggorman@syr.edu