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Walkthrough 1 — Planning a Wedding
The best way to learn Revel Tally is to plan something with it. Let's build “Emma & Liam's Wedding” from scratch — a $25,000 budget in Asheville, NC, split three ways — and touch every major feature along the way.
Step 1 · Create the event
Tap ＋ on the home screen, choose the Wedding type, and fill in a name, budget, location, and cover emoji. Event type matters — it colors the app, groups your home screen, and unlocks the right budget template in the next step.
Step 2 · Start from a budget template
A brand-new event's Expenses tab offers “✨ Start from a Wedding template.” Tap it and you get a checklist of the line items a wedding usually needs — venue, catering, photography, flowers, cake, and more — each with a sensible starting amount you can edit later.
Pick the line items to add — untick anything you don't need
…and your Expenses tab fills in instantly
Re-open it any time. The template screen remembers what's already on your budget and marks those items “Added” so you never create duplicates. There's also a “Clear all & re-add” option to start over.
Step 3 · Bundle the venue (included expenses)
Real venues often quote one price that already covers the DJ, photographer, and flowers. You don't want to pay for those twice. Open the Venue expense, tap “Includes other expenses → Add”, and pick the items its price covers. Revel Tally asks whether you have a per-item breakdown (keep each amount as a sub-line) or the items are simply included (shown with no separate cost).
Pick what the price includes
Keep the breakdown, or mark them “included”
Included items nest under the Venue
Why it matters: bundled items are excluded from every total — your budget, the per-person split, and settle-up — so a $5,000 venue that covers a $1,200 DJ counts as $5,000, never $6,200.
Step 4 · Add the people splitting
On the People tab, add everyone sharing the costs and give them a role (bride, groom, bridesmaid…). Anyone marked Splitting is automatically included when you add an expense.
Emma, Liam & the organizer — all splitting
Step 5 · Vendor payments vs. collecting from people
Revel Tally tracks two separate things so they never get confused:
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Paid to the vendor
Money that's left your hands — a deposit, an installment, or the full bill. Set it with a payment schedule or the “Mark paid to vendor” toggle.
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Collected from the group
Money your friends have paid you back for their share. Tracked per person and via settle-ups.
On an expense you'll see a Vendor payment section (has this been paid out?) and a Payments section (how much has been collected). The Catering expense below has a deposit paid; the Includes card sits right at the top.
Expense detail — Includes, Vendor payment & the split
Statuses at a glance: Paid the whole bill is settled, Partial a deposit is down, Unpaid nothing yet.
Step 6 · See the budget & who owes what
The Overview tab is your headline: how much of the budget is committed, how much has gone to vendors, what's collected from the group, the per-person split, and a category breakdown. Notice the bundled DJ/photographer/flowers don't appear as their own categories — they live inside the Venue.
Overview — budget, collected & by category
Split tab — your own share, expense by expense
Step 7 · Settle up
Tap View Full Breakdown for the Split Summary. The Settle Up list computes the fewest transfers to square everyone up — instead of six awkward paybacks, maybe just two. Tap Mark Paid when a transfer happens; it updates every screen and lands in Payment History (with an Undo).
Fewest transfers to square up + per-person cards
Settle-Up History & “Where Everyone Stands”
Where Everyone Stands shows each person's net after what they fronted and any settle-ups — so someone who paid a big deposit up front clearly reads as owed, not owing.
Step 8 · Get paid back in one tap
Add your payment methods once — Profile → Payment methods takes a Venmo handle, Cash App cashtag, and/or PayPal.Me name (paste them in any form; the app tidies them up). From then on, every Settle Up transfer owed to you shows Pay with Venmo / Cash App / PayPal buttons that open the pay app with the exact amount and a note pre-filled. After paying, a prompt offers to Mark Paid right there, so the books stay square.
Profile → Payment methods — add your handles once
Settle Up — one-tap pay buttons on each transfer
Good to know: buttons only appear when the person being paid has added payment methods (their transfer shows a gentle hint otherwise), and Venmo/Cash App only appear on USD events — PayPal covers other currencies.
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Walkthrough 2 — A Group Trip
The same tools plan any group cost. For “Napa Group Trip” we picked the Group Trip type and its template — accommodation, flights, food & drinks, activities, transport — then let everyone chip in.
What's different from a wedding?
- Nothing structural — same Overview / Expenses / People / Split tabs.
- The Group Trip template pre-fills travel line items instead of wedding ones.
- Costs usually split evenly across everyone on the trip.
- Link related events (a bachelor + bachelorette + the wedding) for a combined budget — see the Linked Events section.
Any event type works the same way: bachelorette, bridal shower, birthday, corporate, or a plain “other.” Pick the type that fits and the template + colors follow.
Napa Group Trip — same Overview, travel categories
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Inviting & Sharing
Every event has a ⋯ menu (top-right) — its control center for sharing, linking, exporting, going public, and wrapping up.
The ⋯ menu — invite, link, export, complete & more
Invite people to view your event (organizer)
Choose Invite Attendees. Add someone by email or SMS — if they already have a Revel Tally account the invite appears in-app; otherwise they get an email. SMS opens your device's own Messages app with the link pre-filled (nothing is sent from our servers).
Add invitees by email or SMS
Guests tap 🎟️ on Home and enter the code
Guests see a read-only view — the budget, expenses, and their own share under the Split tab — but can't edit your event.
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Linked Events & Notifications
Planning a wedding and its bachelor / bachelorette / bridal shower? Link them for one combined budget. When an event has links, they appear right under Per Person Split on the Overview, with a combined total across all of them.
Overview — the linked bachelorette + combined budget
Linking your own vs. someone else's event
Linking two events you own is instant. To link with a different organizer — say a bridesmaid who's planning the bachelorette — the target event's owner first makes it searchable (⋯ menu → Make Public). The other organizer sends a link request, and you approve it from Manage Linked Events. Everyone keeps ownership of their own event; you just share the combined view.
Combined total, linked events & a request to Approve / Deny
The 🔔 bell — link requests & updates land here
Export your attendee list
From the ⋯ menu, export attendees (names, roles, contact info, and split status) — handy for seating charts, thank-you cards, or a mail merge.
Mark an event complete
When it's all over, archive the event from the ⋯ menu. It dims on your home screen but keeps every record for reference.
