How to track travel expenses with an event
Track travel expenses with an event by creating it before the trip, adding the people coming, filing spending against it, and archiving it afterwards.
Create the event
To track travel expenses with an event, first create one under Events. Creating it asks for a name, an emoji if you want one, and a description. No dates to fill in. The start date is read off the earliest spending filed against it, so a brand new event has none at all.
Make it before the trip rather than after. Spending can only be pointed at an event that already exists, and reconstructing a fortnight of receipts afterwards is exactly the work you were trying to avoid.
Add the people coming
Open the event, choose Edit Event, then the Ownership tab, and use Add User under Members.
Only someone who has already accepted a connection with you can be picked, so send the connection request first if you have not. They join with their invitation pending, and they can accept or turn it down from their own events list or from the event's page.
File trip expenses against the event
An event is attached to the expense rather than to the payment as a whole. In the add-transaction form the picker sits under Show more options; on a transaction you already have, it is inside the expense you are editing.
A meal on the trip is therefore still Eating out: the event sits alongside the category rather than replacing it, and the spending stays in your ordinary breakdowns as well as the event's. Everyone in it sees everything filed against it, and its Statistics tab totals that up with a breakdown by category and a spend-per-day chart. What that tab will not tell you is who paid for which row.
Hand over ownership
The owner can pass the event to somebody else from the same Ownership tab: choose them under Transfer Ownership and confirm. You become an ordinary member and they take the owner's controls.
Anyone you have invited can be picked, including someone whose invitation is still pending.
Archive the event afterwards
When the trip is over, open Edit Event and go to the Archive/Delete tab, which sits alongside Edit Event and Ownership rather than inside either. You are asked to type the word archive to confirm. That is the only friction.
The event then drops off your list and out of your event pickers, while the spending keeps its amounts, categories and budgets and the event's own pages still open. Restoring it takes two steps rather than one: Restore, then confirming in the dialog that opens. Nothing to type that time.