QuickAdvice: Use Your iPhone To Track "Deadbeat" Friends
Deadbeat ($0.99) by Eon Four is a minimal app to help you keep track of who is with you and who should pay for the next hangout festivities.
Going out with friends is something that we all love doing. But don't you ever get that one friend or a couple of friends that you think should contribute a bit more to the dinner or night out that you just had? Deadbeat helps you track who is the deadbeat.
You'll want to start adding in some friends that you hang out with on a regular basis when you first launch the app. The app will show a list that you can scroll through of all your contacts on your device, though I didn't really notice any kind of alphabetical order - it seemed to be a big, jumbled list.
When you start typing for a name, the list will automatically start filtering itself for your convenience. Tapping on a name will add it to the Participants screen. You'll have to keep repeating this process for each friend that you want to add to the list, so it's probably best to keep it to the friends you actually hang out with regularly.
Then, when you want to select some of your friends for when you are actually hanging out with them, you can just tap each name to select it. This will turn the name from gray to black, and give the selected person a button with a $ symbol on it.
This $ button allows you to enter the amount that person has paid. The more amounts you enter, the more the app becomes useful. When you enter a paid amount and go back to the list, you will see when the last time the person paid was and the total that they've paid and how many payments they have contributed to.
I mentioned already that the app becomes more useful the more you use it. This is because the app will use the data you enter to calculate who the "deadbeat" is and mark them by giving them a pulsating ring around the $ button. If you feel that's unfair, you can also shake your device to pick a random "deadbeat." Shaking the device will also let you undo a payment if that was the last action taken.
If you ever need help, there's simple help section designed to show you the basics of the app. There is a link to their support page, and a link for more apps from this developer.
The interface is minimal but nicely designed. Even though it's simple, the developers seem to have put a lot of attention to detail and made every symbol used in the app have a purpose. You can also remove people from the Participants list by swiping on the name, and you can reorder the names to whatever order you prefer (default is just whatever order you add them in).
If I were to offer any suggestions, I would want to see a person's paying history - for example, if I tap a person's name, I should be able to see each payment that person made before for records sake.
Despite this little nitpick of mine, I like the app and will be keeping it around to help keep track of sniffing out the "deadbeat" out of my group of friends I hang out with. If you want a way to track who should pay for your next meal, then Deadbeat is a pretty good way to go, especially since it will cost less than your cup of coffee (or tea, soda, whatever floats your boat).
