General Frequently Asked Questions

How much does billQ cost?

billQ comes in two versions. The first version of billQ is the Free version. This obviously doesn't cost a thing, but it has some feature limitations. The second version, billQ Plus, costs $5/month or $50/year and gives you access to a number of advanced features. For more information, visit the Pricing & Signup Page.

What information does billQ collect?

For a billQ account, all you need is a valid email address, a user name (can be whatever you'd like) and a password (which is stored encrypted in our database). Once you're a member, you can start creating bills, which require you to give the bill a name, an amount and the date the bill is due. We don't collect any private information like account numbers or pin numbers. Additionally, when signing up for the paid version of billQ, we will need your credit card number and expiration date, along with your billing address. Your billing address is not stored on our servers, it's just used upon signup for fraud prevention.

Is my information safe with billQ?

Your security and your privacy are of the utmost importance to us. We would never share your information with anyone or use your information inappropriately. Please view our Privacy Policy for more details.

What browsers does billQ support?

billQ supports most modern browsers that use Javascript and Cookies (which must be enabled in order for billQ to work properly). These browsers include Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 1+ (and any Gecko browser), Safari 2+, Opera 9+, and Netscape 8+. For the security reasons, it is important to update to the latest version of your browser anyway. So don't go pulling out Netscape 4 on us, billQ won't cooperate.

Does billQ use SSL?

The free version of billQ does not use any encryption over a SSL, but the paid version, billQ Plus, does come with full 256-bit SSL encryption. If this type of security is important to you, we would encourage upgrading to billQ Plus.

What if I don't know the exact amount of a bill?

We typically recommend that you put in a guess-timate for the amount of a bill when you don't know the exact amount. You can always edit the bill in the future when you know the exact amount. A good practice would be to enter the exact amount right before you mark it paid. This will ensure that your payment history in your reports is accurate.

Can billQ remind me when my bills are due?

Yes, reminders are one of the more useful features of billQ. To have billQ remind you that bills are due, go to your Settings page and click on the Default Reminder Settings. From here you can have billQ send you email and/or SMS reminders starting as early as 30 days before your bills are due. You will then get a reminder every day until you pay or delete the bill. Additionally, you can override the default reminder settings for specific bills. To do so, just edit the bill and enter the custom reminder settings.

Frequently Asked Questions about Schedules

What are Schedules?

Schedules are created for any bill that is due more than once. For example, if you have Rent that's due every month on the 1st, than this bill is considered part of a schedule. You will find all of your schedules on the Schedules page.

What's the difference between the Schedules page and the Bills page?

The Schedules Page is home to the overall schedule, while the Bills Page is home to any upcoming bills. For example, lets look at Rent again. If you have rent due monthly on the 1st, that schedule will show up on the Schedules Page. But instances of that schedule, say the July 1st, or the August 1st bill, will show up on the Bills page. The schedule just tells billQ when to create the bill instances.

How does editing Schedules work?

Having bill Schedules show up on the Schedules Page allows you to easily edit and delete a schedule. It works like this: If you want to change Rent to be due on the 2nd of each month instead of the 1st, and you want to change the amount due to $950.00 from $900.00, all you need to do is edit the schedule once from the Schedules Page. This change will apply to all current and future instances of this schedule. So, if the Rent bill for the current month already shows up on your Bills Page, the changes you made by editing the schedule on the Schedules Page will be reflected.

The one exception to this rule is this: If you edit an instance of a bill before editing its schedule, your changes will not be overwritten. So, if for some reason only this month's Rent is $5 more than normal, and you edit this months Rent bill on the Bills Page to reflect that, and then you edit the schedule from the Schedules Page to have rent be $25 more a month for all future bills, your changes to this month's rent will not be overwritten.

What happens when I delete a Schedule?

Deleting a schedule will delete all upcoming and unpaid bills for that schedule. So if you have Rent due on the 1st of next month, but you delete the schedule, Rent for next month will be deleted as well.

All previously paid bills will not be deleted. They will still show up in your Paid Bills history and throughout your Reports Pages and data exports.

Frequently Asked Questions about Groups

What are Groups?

Groups allow you to organize bills that have shared expenses. For example, if you have Rent that is split among 2 roommates, you could create a group called "Apartment", and then invite your roommate to the group. This will allow you to assign a share of the Rent to each person and keep track of each of your payments.

You can also use groups to organize similar expenses. For example, if you have a bunch of magazine subscriptions you could create a group called "Magazines". Since this isn't necessarily a shared expanse, you could just leave yourself as the sole member of the group. This is especially helpful when you're looking at your reports to see exactly where your money is going.

How do I add people to my Group?

If you want to invite people to your group, you can invite them as you create the group, or you can add them later on. Just click the Invite New Members button to do so. You also have the option of leaving the person's email address blank if you don't want them to receive an email invite to billQ. This allows you to create "placeholder" member for your own organizational purposes. So, if you split a bill with your Mom, but she doesn't use billQ, you can still add her and have that expense sharing accurately reflected in your reports.

What happens when I delete a Group?

When you delete a group, you are no longer a member of that group, and you no longer have access to any of the bills in that group. If you want to delete a group, but you'd also like to have access to the bills in that group, you first need to edit the bills so that you remove the group affiliation. If a bill that belongs to the group is based on a recurring schedule, you'll need to edit its group affiliation on the Schedules Page.

All previously paid bills that belong to that group will not be deleted. They will still show up in your Paid Bills and throughout your Reports Pages and data exports.