Writing
Ideas, tutorials, and updates from our team.
Every Panel Should Have a URL: Opening a Shared Expense Without Losing Your Place
A detail panel that lives in the URL survives a refresh, works with the Back button, and can be sent to someone. Here is how HiBill's side panel for expenses and people works, and why it isn't a modal.
Whose number is it, once someone has claimed it?
Sharing a bill hands a piece of it to other people. Taking it back is a decision about consent, not a toggle — which is why "stop sharing" no longer does it quietly.
One QR code, seven people, zero group chat
Circles solve the one genuinely good thing about groups — connecting everyone at once — without inheriting the ledger that comes with them.
What we learned reading thousands of receipts
Receipts are a hostile document format. Notes on tax lines, thermal paper, service charges, and why we always show you the draft before saving it.
Two kinds of transaction is all you need
Expenses, loans, paybacks, settlements — four objects that turned out to be two. A note on collapsing a data model until it stops lying.
Why we rebuilt HiBill around people instead of groups
Every expense app starts with a group. We deleted ours — and the app got simpler, smaller, and closer to how people actually think about money between friends.