Moving out of a share house is three financial events pretending to be one. There's the deposit — paid years ago, half-remembered. There's the final month — rent and bills that need splitting for a person who was only there part of it. And there's the trailing stuff — the electricity bill that arrives three weeks after they've gone, the house fund they topped up in March. Houses that handle each one separately end up with three arguments; houses that handle none end up with a friendship-ending lump-sum guess.
The person leaving wants their money and their weekend. The people staying want to not get stuck with someone else's share. Both sides are being reasonable — they just have no shared set of numbers to be reasonable about.
Why "we'll sort it out later" never sorts it out
Later never comes with better records than today. Once the leaver's gone, every number gets harder to agree: the deposit deduction they can no longer inspect, the bill they never saw, the fund balance nobody wrote down. Chasing a former housemate for A$63 six weeks after they left is a job nobody takes — so the people who stayed just eat it. The fix isn't goodwill; it's having every number already on the record before move-out day.
One settlement, three parts, all itemised
In FairMate, a housemate leaving is a first-class event. They (or the organiser) give notice with a leave date, and the app assembles the whole picture from ledgers it's been keeping all along:
- Their deposit stake — from the Deposit & fund tab, with any deductions itemised, note-and-photo attached.
- Their final-month share — rent and bills split By days, so they pay to their leave date and not a night more.
- Their expense balance — whatever they still owe or are owed from the month's splits, netted in.
The move-out settlement shows every line to every housemate, and the refund only lands once it's approved by the house — the leaver included. It's a number everyone signed, not a number someone announced.
A worked example
| Deposit held | +A$600.00 |
| Cleaning deduction (photo attached) | −A$80.00 |
| Final-month expense balance (10 nights, By days) | −A$120.00 |
| Net refund to Dave | A$400.00 |
Three lines, each traceable to a ledger the whole house has watched all year. Dave approves, the house approves, Dave gets A$400 — paid directly, because FairMate never holds anyone's money.
The real trick: start before you need it
A clean move-out is mostly built months earlier — a deposit recorded on day one, bills split properly each month, the fund on a ledger instead of in a jar. If your house runs on FairMate already, move-out is genuinely just tapping approve. If it doesn't yet, the best time to start is a quiet month, not moving week. See how this compares to handling it with a generic split app on the comparison page — or just run your next month's bills through the calculator and see the difference.
The move-out checklist
- Give notice in the app with a real leave date. That date drives everything — the By days cut-off for bills, and when the deposit settlement is assembled.
- Land the last bills before locking the month. Chase the final power and internet reads early; an estimated bill entered now beats a real one arriving to an empty group chat later.
- Itemise deductions with evidence, together. Photos and notes on each line, entered while the leaver can still look at the carpet in question. Surprises are the enemy; line items are the cure.
- Everyone approves, then pay direct. The settlement waits for the house's approval — the leaver included — and the refund moves person-to-person, marked paid in the app.
One uncomfortable case deserves naming: sometimes the settlement runs negative — the leaver's unpaid share of bills exceeds their deposit stake. Painful, but far better discovered as an itemised number while they're still reachable than as a vague grievance after they're gone. The whole point of the ledger is that hard conversations get to be short ones: here are the lines, here's the total, tap approve — and part as friends who happen to have settled.