Here's a question that has ended friendships: who actually paid the deposit? Two years and one replaced housemate later, nobody's sure. The original tenants each put in "about six hundred", someone's replacement paid their share to a person instead of the agent, and the only evidence is a bank transfer labelled "rent stuff" from 2024. When the lease ends and the agent refunds one lump sum to one bank account, that person becomes the reluctant judge of who gets what.
It's the biggest single amount a share house ever splits — often thousands — and it's the one number most houses keep nowhere at all.
Why memory and group chats fail
The deposit's whole problem is time. Bills get settled within weeks; the deposit sits untouched for years while the house changes around it. Housemates swap. The person who "kept track" moves overseas. Chat history gets cleared. A spreadsheet, if anyone made one, lives in someone's personal drive — and says nothing about what happened when Dave left and Priya paid him out directly. By move-out, you're not calculating; you're excavating.
A ledger the whole house can see
FairMate's house shares have a dedicated Deposit & fund tab that treats the deposit like what it is: a long-lived shared ledger. Each housemate's contribution is recorded when it's paid — the standard amount is set once for the house, so a new person joining sees exactly what they're expected to put in. Replacements are first-class: when someone new buys out a leaver's share, both sides of that handover go on the record, so "I paid Dave directly" is a ledger entry, not a rumour.
Open your house share → Deposit & fund. The house sets a standard deposit amount per person; every contribution, top-up and refund is a dated entry with a name on it. Everyone in the house sees the same numbers — no single keeper, no single point of forgetting.
A worked example
| Deposit tracked — 4 housemates × A$600 | A$2,400.00 |
| Dave moves out · his stake | A$600.00 |
| Cleaning deduction on his room (photo attached) | −A$80.00 |
| Refund due to Dave | A$520.00 |
Dave's refund isn't a debate — it's his recorded A$600 minus one itemised, evidenced deduction. The three remaining housemates can all see the same two lines he can.
Deductions with receipts, not vibes
When someone leaves, deductions are itemised against their stake — cleaning, a broken door, unpaid bills — each with a note and a photo if you want the proof attached. The leaver sees the breakdown and the house approves it together, which is a very different conversation from one person announcing a number. The full move-out flow (deposit, final bills and the last month's rent in one settlement) is covered in the fair way to settle a share house on move-out.
And because the deposit ledger lives alongside your rent splits and monthly bills, joining the house means seeing the money you're stepping into — one link, one clear picture. That's a level of share-house record-keeping most splitting apps simply don't attempt.
Per-person stakes, or one shared pool
Houses hold deposits two different ways, and FairMate supports both. Per-tenant is the common one: each person's stake is their own — Dave's A$600 is Dave's, and his refund is his stake minus his deductions. A pooled deposit treats the whole amount as the house's: when someone leaves, their fair share of the pool is worked out at that moment, which matters when people joined at different times or a replacement bought in at a different amount. Pick whichever matches how your lease actually works; the ledger logic follows.
Already two years into a lease? Backfill it
The best day to start tracking a deposit was move-in day; the second-best day is a random Tuesday long before anyone's leaving. Getting an existing house onto the ledger takes about ten minutes:
- Agree the numbers now, while everyone's calm and nobody's packing — who paid what, and any handovers that already happened. This conversation is easy today and radioactive at move-out.
- Enter each contribution as a dated entry, including any "I paid the leaver directly" buyouts.
- Set the standard deposit amount for the house, so the next person who joins gets asked for the right figure automatically.
From then on the ledger maintains itself — and the next move-out inherits records instead of folklore.