Tom often found it difficult to split the bill when he headed out with his pals, Dick and Harry. It could get a bit awkward because Harry liked to order more drinks, which tended to rack up the bill, and Dick could be a bit of a himself when it came to adding enough cash for the tip.

Then, one day right out of the blue, Tom received an e-mail from the developers of Billr, which claimed that one app could solve all of his financial and friendship related awkwardness. According to the copy, Billr was specifically designed to quickly and efficiently split the mangled mess of meals and margaritas into ordered, colour-coded tabs that dictated exactly what each person should pay. What’s more, the app could scale nicely to accomodate smaller gatherings of, say, three friends, or even gargantuan groups of 16 people.

So it was that Tom decided to try the $0.99 Billr app out on his next outing with his friends. He launched the app when the cheque arrived, entered the number of people in his party (3), and proceeded to assign items to the three colour-coded tabs that represented each of the party participants. Billr handled tax and tip together on a single screen, and even allowed for percentages instead of specific values (which Harry thought was a nice touch). Finally, Tom tapped through to the third screen in Billr, which displayed the totals for each person in the group, inclusive of tax and tip.

After the bill was settled, Dick commented that the app seemed to him to be a great success. Not only was it beautifully designed, he remarked, but it was also much faster than using a calculator to find out how much each person owed. Tom nodded his head in agreement and then, with a single tap of his finger, e-mailed an automatically generated screenshot to everyone in the party so that they could cherish the memory of their properly apportioned bill for years to come. As the three friends left the restaurant, Dick felt good enough to finally ask the others to please call him “Richard” from now on, as his current nickname made him feel like a bit of a jerk.

Billr was provided by Nicholas Shulman for review on iSource. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.

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