Why we're building Tabful, a bill-splitting app with a different idea about trust
Splitting a bill between friends sounds like a solved problem, right up until the trip is over and three people are still unsure who paid for what. The apps that solve this are genuinely useful — and also genuinely tired, visually and functionally, of a category that hasn't changed much in a decade.
Tabful is our attempt at that category: the same proven core (groups, friends, splits, settle up), built with a distinct look and one feature we think matters more than another chart.
Splitting bills is simple. Remembering who owes what isn't.
The actual maths of splitting a bill is trivial. What's hard is the memory problem that follows: who settled up, who's still owed, whether a payment "happened" the way both people remember it. Every dispute we've seen in a shared-expense app comes down to a fuzzy record, not fuzzy arithmetic.
That's the problem Tabful is built to solve first — not another calculator, but a clear, shared, permanent record of what actually happened.
What's real and working today
Tabful is an Android app in active, visible development — not a concept. The core loop works end to end: add an expense, split it equally, by exact amount, by percentage, by shares, or itemised item-by-item, and settle up. Settling up hands off to a real UPI payment through whichever app is already on the phone, rather than pretending to move money itself.
Groups, friends, a searchable activity feed, CSV export and import, recurring expenses, and a full set of account and security screens are built and working. What isn't built yet is a backend — today, everything lives on the device, and there's no sign-in that actually authenticates anyone.
The feature we haven't seen anywhere else: the Timeline
Buried in Settings is a feature called Timeline — an optional, password-protected, permanent log of everything that's happened on the account: payments, changes, deletions, from the day you start using the app to the day you delete it. Once an entry is written, there's no edit button and no delete button anywhere in the app for it — the only way to clear it is deleting the account entirely, which the app is built to genuinely do, including emailing you the full log first.
We built it this way on purpose. In an app that exists to settle disagreements about money, a record you can quietly edit later isn't much of a record. Timeline is our answer to "can I trust what this app says happened" — and it's live in the current build, not a roadmap item.
What's still ahead
The honest next step is a backend — accounts, real sign-in, and data that survives a lost phone, which today it doesn't. That architecture is designed and documented; building it is the current priority. After that: a Play Store release (the listing is already prepared), and eventually more platforms.
We're saying this plainly because a bill-splitting app with no backend yet is a real, working thing — just not the finished one. We'd rather tell you where it actually stands than dress up a work in progress as a launch.
Follow along
Tabful's site is live and tracks the app's actual current state, honestly — including a plain "no backend yet" note rather than a vague promise. If bill-splitting apps annoy you as much as they annoy us, it's worth a look now and again as the build moves forward.
It's also a small, real example of how ARTH builds its own products: in the open, in stages, without shipping a claim the app can't back up yet.
Questions we hear a lot
Is Tabful available to download yet?
Not yet as a public release — it's an active build with a working core (add, split, settle, export) and a live marketing site. A Play Store listing is prepared; there's no public launch date yet.
Will Tabful be free?
The plan is a free app with an optional paid tier for removing ads and unlocking extra features, behind a trial — the same shape as most apps in this category. Nothing is billed yet since there's no backend to support it.
How is it different from Splitwise or other split apps?
The core split-and-settle loop is intentionally familiar, since that part already works well across the category. The real difference is Timeline — a permanent, tamper-proof local log of account activity — plus a visual design built from scratch rather than borrowing the blue-and-teal look most split apps share.
Is my data private if I use it now?
Right now, yes by default — everything runs on the device with no backend to send it to. That will change once accounts and sync ship, and we'll be explicit here when it does.
When is Tabful launching?
There's no fixed date. The best way to know is checking tabful.designedbyarth.com, which reflects the app's real current state rather than a projected one.
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