About Mess Ledger
Mess Ledger is for people who share a kitchen and split what it costs — a mess, a hostel, a PG, a shared flat. It keeps the daily meal count and the shopping, and turns them into a number everyone can check.
The problem it solves
Where people eat together, someone keeps a notebook. Meals get counted one page, groceries another, and whoever went to the bazar is owed money nobody wrote down. At the end of the month the two pages do not agree, and the argument is not really about money — it is about nobody being able to see how the number was reached.
The arithmetic itself is simple. Divide the month's grocery spend by the number of meals everyone ate and you have the meal rate. Multiply that by one person's meals and you have what their eating cost. The difficulty is never the formula; it is keeping thirty days of small entries in one place that everybody trusts.
How it works
Each member records what they ate, or sets a standing plan so ordinary days fill themselves in. Whoever shops records the trip, itemised if they want — five kilos of rice, a kilo of fish, what each cost. Rent, bills and fines are recorded separately, because rent does not get cheaper when somebody skips dinner, so those are split per head and stay out of the meal rate.
At month end the settlement shows the rate, what each person ate, what they paid in, and the difference — with the arithmetic beside every figure rather than a total you have to take on faith. A month can be closed, which freezes it so the numbers cannot drift afterwards.
Money someone spent from their own pocket is marked as such and credited back to them, but only once a manager has approved it. A credit a member can grant themselves is not a credit, and that approval is what makes the rest of the ledger worth trusting.
Bangla and English
The app is written in both, including Bengali numerals, and the language is one tap away wherever you are. It was built for messes in Bangladesh first, which is where the word and the practice come from, and it works the same way for shared living anywhere the food is shared too.
What it costs
Nothing. There is no card field, no trial, and no paid tier at the time of writing. If that changes, existing messes will be told before anything about their account changes.