By Every month, tenants run through the same routine: find out which bills to pay, keep tabs on who has to pay those bills and make sure the bills are paid on time.
Now, however, roommates can avoid the confusion by managing household bills all in one place – on a computer.
A new and free online app, called Zenrow, allows roommates to sign up and invite others to join their “home base,” which is the layout of the app. Bills and rent can be added to the home base and settled by sending a secure payment through PayPal. A house picture, nickname and a whiteboard for house notes can also be added to the home base, Zenrow co-founder Luke Langon said.
“Our new home base brings all of this together so that roommates can get everything done in one place, from anywhere, at anytime,” Langdon said. “The standard process and subsequent headaches really aren’t necessary.”
The idea for the app came from personal experiences of the app’s founding team, who tried to solve these problems for themselves.
“[We] had a deep-seated need for Zenrow,” Langon said. “At a certain point, every roommate gets fed up with the long process of handling rent and bills between each other. We were tired of reminding [roommates] repeatedly through text and email and waiting weeks or even months to get reimbursed.”
The app’s home base displays the outstanding bills between roommates, Langon said. Once a bill has been paid, it moves to the account history so that users can reference the past payments. Roommates who have paid are marked as green, which makes it easier to keep track of who pays for what, according to Langdon.
Chris Jewers, a junior English major at Cal State Long Beach, said it’s hard to keep track of what he and his roommates owe each other when splitting the bills. He said that he found the app easy to navigate because of its step-by-step process and basic format.
“[Zenrow] is a clever yet simple way to keep track of bills,” Jewers said. “It’s also personal; you can add a picture and leave notes for each other as reminders. I will definitely use it, as it will lessen the hassle of paying each other back and make it easier to keep track of what we owe.”
Alexander Montoya, a junior engineering major, said the app is a great tool to both manage and pay bills.
“[Zenrow] is ideal. It’s simple and straight to the point,” he said. “It can be awkward to remind friends of money that needs to be paid, and [using the app] would prevent those awkward moments.”
Langon said the community of roommates using Zenrow is growing every day. The app is available online at www.zenrow.com, and a mobile version of the app for iPhones will be available in the Apple App Store in a few weeks.
