Grad Student Site Tracks Shared Expenses

The developers of Buxfer, short for "bucks transfer," are seen from left, Amit Manjhi, Ashwin Bharambe and Shashank Pandit, at their office on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2006. Splitting a group dinner bill can prove challenging even to the mathematically inclined, but three Carnegie Mellon graduate students think they have designed a program that could make post-meal haggling a thing of the past.(AP Photo/Andrew Rush) (Andrew Rush - AP)

The program begs for additional features, said Michael Shamos, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who also specializes in e-commerce.

"Just keeping track of debts is nice," he said. "But wouldn't it be nice if you could also pay them. Right now there isn't any facility for doing that."

Buxfer's creators acknowledged that many users have asked for online debt settlement. They said they're exploring options such as working with an online payment service like eBay Inc.'s PayPal or a bank. Doing so might incur the site fees. Pandit said he and his friends are determined to keep access to the site free.

They would consider allowing ads on Buxfer to help defray any costs but are loath to adopt a two-tiered model where, for example, paying members might receive extra services like online debt settlement that nonpaying members would not.

"We really hate the idea of having premium features, it's just not fair," Pandit said. "Most (users) are not well-to-do. If we start charging them money, they'll just go back to pen and paper."

Shamos also questioned how the group planned to turn a profit.

"Of course these days you don't have to make money. There's YouTube after all," he said. "I think the plan for Buxfer probably is to build it up for nine months, get acquired for tens of millions of dollars and then move on to the next thing."

Buxfer's creators said that their studies are their primary concern. They have been approached by a venture capital firm but haven't decided whether to accept any outside funding.

Their current costs are only about $90 a month for hosting, $10 a year for the domain name _ and the time and effort it takes to attract new users while keeping old ones happy.

Just doing that is a challenge, they said.

"We have our own research work to do, so it's whenever we get some spare time," said Manjhi. "We have had some long days and weekends working on Buxfer."

The site might find a niche audience among some students, accountants, techies on a tight budget and "math-oriented people with a high sense of personal justice," said Dennis Galletta, a professor of information systems at the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business.