How Convoy works

Convoy separates the things that stay the same from the things that change. The families and travellers are permanent — they're the address book, entered once. Everything else belongs to a single trip: the dates, the itinerary, the costs, the spending.

The trip switcher sits under the Convoy name in the sidebar. Whatever trip is selected there is the trip every other page is showing you. If a figure looks wrong, check which trip you're on before anything else.

Setting up the next holiday takes about a minute: go to Trips, add one, tick who's coming. Nobody re-types fourteen names.

Everyone is an adult, teen or child, and belongs to one group. The age label is just a label — it doesn't affect anybody's share.

Names are editable everywhere. Click a name, type over it, click away. It's safe: everything is stored against a hidden ID, so correcting a spelling never detaches anyone from the money they've paid.

You can't delete a group that still has people in it. Move them first — that's on purpose, so a stray click can't quietly orphan four people's costs.

The groups double as room allocations, and rooming is decided per trip. Somebody can sleep with a different group this Christmas and be back with their own next summer, without changing anything permanent.

A move can be marked provisional when it isn't settled. Provisional people show in both places — dashed in the room they might move to, greyed in the one they're leaving — so neither list tells you something untrue.

Where it matters, rooms show two headcounts: confirmed, and confirmed-if-the-move-happens. That second number is the one to book bedrooms against.

Flights, accommodation, car hire, transfers, insurance. Each one is its own line with its own amount, so you can see what the money actually went on rather than a single lump.

One person pays these up front, and everybody owes them. That person is named at the top of the page. Every line splits equally per head — children pay the same as adults, because the flights cost the same.

As people pay the payer back, log it as a repayment. Each group then shows three figures: what they owe, what they've repaid, what's still outstanding. That last column is the whole reason this page exists.

Meals, groceries, taxis, tickets. Log what you paid, who paid it, and how it splits. Separate from Booked on purpose: one is money owed before you fly, the other is money moving between people once you're out there.

The settle-up works out who pays whom, and does it by group by default — five or six transfers at the end of the week instead of fourteen people trying to square up individually.

The day-by-day plan, and a place to keep the operator's booked itinerary so there's one version of what was actually paid for. What you decide to do and what you were sold are two different documents — don't let them merge.

• Check the trip selector first. Almost every "that number's wrong" turns out to be the wrong trip selected.
• Forms are at the top of the page. Click Add and the box appears above the list, not below it.
• Everyone sees everything. There are no private notes — assume anything typed here will be read by the other thirteen. Don't put passport numbers in it.
• Editing is live. If two people change the same thing at once, the last save wins. Fine for names, worth coordinating for the itinerary.
• Deleting a trip takes its itinerary, costs and spending with it. It never touches families or travellers.

Reload the page first — the app saves as you type and an old tab can show stale figures. If a total doesn't add up, open the group breakdown: shares are rounded to the penny and the rounding difference lands on the largest share, so the parts always sum to the whole.