Big birthday trips
A big birthday trip planner for the person who is not meant to be organising it
Plan a 30th, 40th or 50th birthday trip for a group of friends. A shared itinerary everyone can edit, dietary needs checked, and a fair answer on who owes who.
A milestone birthday trip has a specific problem: the person it is for should not be running it, and they are usually the only one with the full picture of who is coming, who cannot eat what, and who cannot afford it.
One shared plan solves the handover. Everyone on the link can see the weekend, change it, and see what it costs — and the money settles itself at the end rather than landing on whoever booked the house.
What actually goes wrong
Not the trip — the admin around it. These are the failures specific to this kind of group.
The birthday person ends up organising their own party
Because they are the only one who knows the group. The plan needs to be handed over cleanly, with the constraints in it, so somebody else can run it.
The guest list spans twenty years of friendships
University friends, work friends, people's partners. They do not share a group chat, they do not share a budget, and they have never met.
One person books the house and waits six months
A big house for twelve needs paying for in one go, months out, by one person's card.
Nobody wants to be the one who says it is too expensive
Especially not to the person whose birthday it is. Visible per-head costs let that objection arrive as information rather than as a complaint.
What the app does about it
Hand the whole plan over with one link
Everyone on it can edit, so the organising stops being one person's job and the birthday person can stop running their own weekend.
A per-head number people can react to
Every item carries a guide price and the plan keeps a running per-person total, so the cost is a visible fact rather than a surprise at the end.
Everything checked against what the group can eat
Across twelve people there is usually at least one real dietary requirement. State them once and every restaurant on the plan is checked against what the venue publishes.
Vote, rather than defer to whoever is loudest
Suggestions are voted up and down in the app, which is how a group who do not all know each other reach a decision without a chat spiral.
The house, the dinner, and the people who only came for one night
Log the house against whoever paid it and split it between whoever slept in it. Split the big dinner between whoever ate. Leave the two people who came for the Saturday off everything else. The app nets it all down to the shortest set of transfers that settles the group, which is usually far fewer payments than anyone expects — and, importantly, it is arithmetic rather than one person's judgement about what is fair.
Questions people ask
- Can somebody else take over organising partway through?
- Yes — everyone on the trip has the same editing rights, so there is no owner to transfer. Changes are attributed by name so the group can see who did what.
- How do we handle people who only come for part of it?
- Put them on the splits for the parts they were there for. Each expense carries its own list of people.
- Can we keep it a surprise?
- The plan is only visible to people you send the link to.
- Does it suggest anything beyond restaurants?
- It plans the whole day — mornings, afternoons, meals and travel between them — and links bookable activities through to the supplier for your dates and party size.
- What does it cost?
- Planning is free. Where an activity is booked through a supplier link we may earn commission from the supplier, which does not change the price you pay.
Plan it in about a minute
Four questions — where, when, who with, and anything the group can't eat. You get the whole trip back, day by day, and a link to send the others.
Start planning