BillMonk Enters Debt Sharing Web App Market With SMS Features
Amit Chowdhry | Tuesday September 26, 2006 | 703 views
There are so many of these debt sharing web applications popping up from the Web 2.0 sphere that it is hard to choose just one or not choose any of them and create your own invoices for frugal friends by using Excel or Word. MoochSpot and SpicyDigits are only a couple of examples that are out there. One of the newest to enter the market is BillMonk. BillMonk was founded by Seattle-based company, Code Monks, LLC.
Perhaps the reason that BillMonk is late to market is because of its SMS capabilities which is an expensive feature to add to any website. There is an SMS guide on the website that tells you how to enter a new shared bill, add a new IOU to your account with the amount that you owe, receive your balance, and calculate tips for a bill. Currently this feature is supported with any carrier that supports sending/receiving SMS messages as e-mail domestically and internationally. More information is in their BillMonk SMS page.
Like MoochSpot, BillMonk is accessible via Facebook API as well. Anyone with a valid e-mail address may join and can add friends to share debt accounts with by invitation of e-mail and Facebook accounts.
Below is a screenshot of what BillMonk looks like after creating an account. On the homepage, it displays how much you owe or are owed.
In the Friends tab, it would display which friends owe you money or what group debts need to be resolved. The money tab is the Transaction history page, and the Library page helps you keep tabs on what are the other items that you borrow from a friend or that a friend borrows from you such as books, CDs, movies, video games, clothes, or other miscellaneous items. These items can be added via searching Amazon’s item database and books can be added by inputting ISBN numbers.
Amit’s Thoughts:
Earlier in this post I mentioned that it is hard to choose just one debt sharing web app. If you were to choose just one, I would select this one because of its SMS advancements, clean layout, and lending options as well. Not everything that you give to friends to borrow is just money-related. I’m sure that many of the readers here want to get their books back from friends.
The only problem with this is that if you invite a friend to BillMonk who has borrowed your book, it feels as if you’re saying “Join this site so that you’ll actually remember what you owe me, punk! Now give me my Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus book back!”
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