A ski trip has a money problem that most group trips don't. The biggest cost, the condo, is booked for the whole group, but the whole group almost never arrives together. One person gets in Friday after work. Another can't leave until Saturday morning and shows up a night late. The condo cost the same either way.
Split it evenly, and the person who came a night late pays for a bed they never slept in. Split it any other way without agreeing a rule first, and somebody ends up doing math in the group chat on the drive home.
Here's how to split the condo by the nights each person stayed, what to do with lift tickets, rentals, groceries and gas, and how to settle up at the end with one amount between each pair.
Start with the nights. Count every night the condo was booked, and for each one write down who stayed. That night's cost is shared by the people who slept in the condo and by nobody else. Whoever arrived a night late simply isn't in the first night's share.
Add up each person's nights and you have their share of the condo. Whoever put the booking on a card is then owed everyone else's share, and nobody has to argue about who deserves what.
A night nobody stayed still gets paid. Say the whole group is stuck at work until Saturday, but the booking began Friday. Nobody slept there, and the condo charged for it anyway. Everyone shares that night, because the booking had to be paid whether or not anyone made it.
Weekend nights can cost more. Plenty of condos charge more for a Friday or a Saturday than for a Tuesday. If yours did, give those nights their own price and let the other nights share what's left of the total. The method doesn't change. Each night is still shared by whoever stayed it.
Lift tickets look like a shared cost, and they usually aren't. Everyone is on the same mountain, but not everyone bought the same ticket. One person skis all three days. Another skis two and sleeps in on the third. Somebody's knee gives out at lunch and they buy a half day.
That's why an even split is usually wrong for tickets. The fair way is to settle them as exact amounts, each ticket in the name of the person who used it, no matter whose card paid at the window. If one person bought every ticket for the group, that's fine. Each of the others owes back the price of their own.
If everyone truly bought the same ticket for the same days, split it evenly and move on. A simple bill doesn't need to become a project.
Write the days down before anyone buys. A three-day ticket for one person and a one-day ticket for another are two different costs. Say so up front, and nobody is surprised by the number later.
Skis, boots, poles, a helmet, a locker at the base lodge. Rentals belong to whoever rented. They're personal costs, the same as a lift ticket, and the cleanest way to handle them is to keep them off the group tally altogether. Each person pays for their own at the counter, and nobody has to explain their budget to the rest of the group.
There's one exception. If a single person pays for everybody's rentals on one card, it becomes an expense like any other, shared by the people whose gear it was.
People who own their skis bring their own, and that's their business. Nobody owes a rental fee for gear that was already in the garage. What's worth deciding together is the shared stuff, like a boot dryer or a spare pair of gloves, and the group trip packing list covers who brings what.
A condo has a kitchen, and the kitchen is where a ski trip saves money. Breakfast, coffee, the first night's pasta, the snacks that end up in everyone's jacket pocket. Send one person on one big shop for the whole group, and have them keep the receipt.
Groceries are the one cost that's fine to split evenly. People eat about the same, and working out who had which egg takes longer than the eggs are worth. Someone who got in late and missed dinner will eat the leftovers at breakfast.
Drinks are the exception. If one person's drinks are a big part of the receipt, ring them up on their own and let that person cover them. If it's a six-pack, skip the paperwork.
Gas is a shared cost for everyone who rode. Split it among the people in the car, or among all of you if you took turns driving. If two cars went up, each car's gas is split among the people who rode in it.
Tolls and parking at the mountain work the same way. Mountain lots often charge by the day, and that's the one people forget, so write it down when you pay it.
The person who drove. It's their car and their hours behind the wheel. The usual deal is that the driver's gas and tolls are shared by the people who rode along, and the driver doesn't pay a share of their own. Agree on that before you leave, not at the pump.
Here's one ski weekend, start to finish. Ana, Ben, Cass and Dev book a condo for three nights. Dev can't get away in time and misses the first night. Ana pays for the condo, Ben does the grocery shop, and Cass buys the lift tickets.
The condo is $900, so each night is $300. Here's who stayed, and what each of them pays for the night:
| Night | Who stayed | Each pays |
|---|---|---|
| Night one | Ana, Ben and Cass | $100 |
| Night two | Ana, Ben, Cass and Dev | $75 |
| Night three | Ana, Ben, Cass and Dev | $75 |
Add each person's nights together. Ana, Ben and Cass owe $250 each for the condo, and Dev owes $150.
Ben's groceries came to $120. Split evenly, that's $30 each.
Cass's lift tickets came to $340. Ana, Ben and Cass skied all weekend, so each of those tickets is $100. Dev missed the first night and skied one afternoon, so Dev's ticket is $40.
That's three costs, $1,360 in all, paid by three different people. Nobody needs to pay everybody back for each one. For each pair, what they owe each other cancels down to a single payment:
Six payments, and everybody is square. Ana gets back $520, the condo bill less Ana's own $380 share of the trip. Dev's whole weekend came to $220, and Dev pays out exactly that. Every line is between two people who shared a cost, so every line has a reason you can point to.
You don't have to build any of this by hand. For the whole group, a free ski condo calculator does the nights and the rest. Put in check-in and check-out, uncheck the nights each person missed, and add the groceries and lift tickets as expenses. It shows who's owed what. A weekend night that cost more gets its own price with “Set a different price for a night”. It's free to use, you don't need an account, and what you type stays on your phone.
Count the nights each person stayed, and share each night's cost among the people who slept in the condo that night. Whoever arrives a night late is left out of the first night's share, and everyone else carries it. In the example, the late arrival owes $150 for the condo and the other three owe $250 each.
Everyone shares it. The booking still had to be paid, and nobody has a better claim to that night than anybody else.
Only if everyone bought the same ticket for the same days. Otherwise settle what each person actually bought. In the example, three tickets are $100 each and one is $40, and those exact amounts are what get settled.
Whoever rented. Skis, boots and a locker are personal costs, so they stay off the group tally unless one person paid for everybody's at the counter. Then it's an expense like any other, shared by the people whose gear it was.
Usually. Groceries are shared by everyone who ate, and gas by everyone who rode. In the example, Ben's $120 of groceries comes to $30 for each of the four.
Add up what each person paid and what each person owes, then work out one amount between each pair who shared a cost. Everyone settles once with each other person, not once per receipt. In the example that's six payments, the smallest $30 and the largest $220.