Quick start

SILWise turns a house’s rent, food, and other shared costs into a fair calculation for each participant, then produces a PDF - a document you can download, print, or email - for you to send out. This page maps the shortest path from an empty account to that first saved calculation. Each stage below is one job with its own full guide; come here for the map, and to the guides for the detail.

If your account is new, your dashboard shows a Set up your first house card listing these same four stages, with a button that always jumps to whichever one you are up to.

1. Set up your cost centres

A cost-centre set is the list of shared costs a house pays for, such as electricity, food, and lawn mowing. Every house needs a set attached before you can add it, so this is the first thing a new account needs. Building the list yourself, one line at a time, is the normal way to start; a benchmark template is there as an optional head start if you would rather begin from published figures and adjust them as your own invoices come in.

A cost centre with no price yet is fine to leave as it is: switched off, it charges nobody and never blocks a calculation. Only a line that is switched on with no price causes a problem, and both this page and the calculation page will name it for you if that happens. See set up cost centres for the full walkthrough.

2. Add your house

Adding a house starts on a Cost centres for this house screen: pick an existing set and select Use for this house, or create a new one. Once a set is chosen, fill in the house’s details, its cost inclusions and its participants on a single form, then select Save house. See add a house for what each field means.

3. Set any custom splits

Saving the house takes you straight to its Custom splits page, where every shared bill defaults to an even split across the participants living there. Leave a participant’s box blank and they keep an even share. Type 0 and they pay nothing while the rest of the house covers it. Switch a participant off the line and the provider covers their share instead. See set custom splits for the full picture.

4. Run and save your first calculation

Select Run the calculation to work out what each participant owes for rent, food, and other costs on a chosen date. If anything switched on still has no price, a red bar at the top names every line that is blocking the calculation, and each name is a link straight to where you fix it. Once the breakdown is clear, type a name in Scenario name and select Save scenario to turn it into a permanent record. See run a calculation and save a scenario for how the figures are worked out and locked in.

What you get

Saving your first calculation also builds its PDFs, and opens with a You’re set up card confirming what to do next: download the schedule, add another house, or come back and run this house again once costs change. See download PDFs if a PDF is not ready yet or you need to retry one.

Repeat stages 3 and 4 whenever costs change: adjust the splits if needed, rerun the calculation, save a new scenario, and download fresh PDFs.