A Flatmate Who Leaves Mid-Month: Final Accounts

The day someone packs their bags mid-month

It never ends well. Someone gives you notice on the 12th with a look on their face —job abroad, partner moving in together, parents offering to take them in for a while— and by the 23rd they've already packed. The room is left empty, the flat group is left short, and suddenly there's a pending settlement on the table that nobody quite knows how to tackle. Pro-rata days, bills straddling two line-ups, the deposit, shared fridges, common products. And, above all, the uncomfortable feeling that this is going to be argued out among adults who, until yesterday, were having dinner together on Wednesdays.

The usual mistake is waiting. "We'll square up when the electricity bill comes," people say. But the electricity bill comes forty days later. By then, the one who left has already changed cities, already changed priorities, and the flat's WhatsApp group has gone quiet. Collecting at that point becomes a mini long-distance chase, with awkward messages and figures nobody remembers well. Closing the settlement the day they leave, or the next day, isn't being strict: it's being sensible.

The other source of friction is the final figure. It's almost always small. Sixty euros here, thirty there, twelve left over from who knows what. And yet, those small figures are precisely the ones that go down worst, because you feel ridiculous arguing over twenty euros with someone you've shared a home with for a year, while at the same time knowing perfectly well that those twenty euros are owed to you. The way out of that bind is not to negotiate it emotionally: apply a method and accept the number that comes out.

Why settlements get done badly

The first mistake is not separating the items. People tend to do one single enormous tally —"I think you owe me about one hundred and twenty euros, more or less"— mixing pro-rata rent, utilities, common food, the deposit, and a couple of things they don't even remember. That total tally never matches the other person's total tally, because both are adding it up from memory and lines are slipping through. If instead the items are separated one by one, the calculation becomes trivial.

The second mistake is not agreeing on the pro-rata rule before applying it. Is the rent split by days lived or by days the room was reserved? The electricity that arrives three weeks after the departure, is it charged to the one who left for the days they were in the flat, or is it assumed they're already gone? Pending bills, how long do they stay "theirs"? Without clear rules, everyone applies whichever suits them best at that moment, and the settlement breaks down into a negotiation.

The third mistake is the deposit. If the deposit was put up by the one leaving and another person replaces them, the transfer should be between the two of them, not between the group. If the deposit was common, the refund to the departing tenant can only be made at the end of the contract, not before. This is often confused and creates unfair expectations.

The thirty-minute method

The fast way to close the settlement is to tackle the five categories in order, noting everything down on a shared sheet or in an expense tool.

1. Pro-rata rent

The cleanest rule: days lived in the month / total days in the month × the share of rent they owed. If the departing tenant lived in a room whose share of rent was three hundred and twenty euros and they left on the 23rd, they've lived 23 days out of 30, so they owe 320 × 23 / 30 = 245.33 euros. The remaining 74.67 are split among the rest of the flat or absorbed, depending on what you've agreed.

There's a classic debate here: if the departing tenant gives short notice, should they pay until the end of the month? The reasonable thing, unless the contract says otherwise, is for them to pay until the day they leave, but to accept some compensation for the short notice if the group can't cover their share the following month. A small extra contribution of fifty or sixty euros, agreed amicably, avoids resentment.

2. Straddling bills

This is the most confusing category. An electricity bill arriving on the 5th of the following month normally covers a period of one to two prior months. If the departing tenant was living in the flat during those months, they owe their share. The simple way to calculate it is to pro-rate by days lived within the bill's period. If the bill covers 60 days and the departing tenant lived 50 of those 60, they pay 50/60 of their usual share.

This is tedious by hand, but trivial when the bills are logged in a tool that understands arrival and departure dates. The rule is always the same: the departing tenant remains a "debtor" for the bills corresponding to the days they lived there, even if they physically arrive afterwards.

3. Deposit and security

If the deposit was originally paid by the departing tenant, two possibilities. If another person comes in to replace them, the deposit is returned directly by the incoming tenant, not by the group. If nobody replaces them and the contract continues, the deposit isn't returned until the end of the contract, when the landlord releases it. It's important to put this point in writing to avoid the emotional pressure of "pay me my deposit now." The clean thing is to give the departing tenant a note or an agreement stating that their share of the deposit is recorded and will be released in due course.

4. Common food and shared products

The fridge is the most absurd category and at the same time the most revealing. If you have a common fund for flat shopping, what the departing tenant contributed and didn't consume is returned to them proportionally. If you each buy your own and only share oil, salt, and a couple of things, the settlement is zero: nobody owes anybody anything. To avoid arguments, it's worth having a clear agreement from the start about what goes into the common fund and what doesn't.

Shared non-consumable products —cleaning supplies, toilet paper, light bulbs— usually leave a balance in favour of whoever contributed most. A simple way to close it is to estimate a reasonable balance rather than auditing every purchase: "we reckon you've put in about thirty euros more than the rest on common stuff." If everyone agrees, it's closed. If there's doubt, you check the tool where the purchases were logged.

5. Cleaning, maintenance, and repairs

If there were extraordinary expenses during the last month —plumber, electrician, replacing something broken— they're split the same way: pro-rata by days lived, or in full if the departing tenant was responsible for the damage. This line almost always gets forgotten and should be on the list.

The problem of the departing tenant who's slow to pay

Once the five categories are calculated, the departing tenant receives a final net figure. It can be positive (they owe the flat) or negative (the flat owes them). Here comes the classic problem: the departing tenant accepts the figure amicably, but doesn't transfer it on the spot. Days go by, weeks go by, and the account stays open. The only way to avoid it is to close the settlement the same day they leave and make the transfer immediately, before the context dilutes. If the figure is in the departing tenant's favour, it's worth paying them that day too; that creates a symmetrical commitment so they pay theirs when it's their turn.

If the final figure is small and the moment is lost, you have to assume it probably won't be collected, or will be collected grudgingly. This is unpleasant, but it's part of reality. It's worth keeping in mind when deciding whether it's worth chasing.

How to avoid the manual spreadsheet

Putting the settlement together by hand is feasible for a two-person flat with clear accounts. For a four-person flat with bimonthly utilities, common food, and shared products, it's hell. Any decent system should let you log arrivals and departures with dates, calculate automatic pro-rata on pending bills, keep a running balance per person, and produce a final settlement with a single net figure. ControlarGastos does exactly that, and it distributes the cents by largest remainder, not by truncation, so that nobody always pays the rounding. The difference between having this system and not having it is the difference between closing the settlement in half an hour with one transfer, and leaving it open for six weeks with three awkward messages.

The secondary virtue of having everything logged is that the flat's atmosphere doesn't sour. When the calculation is done by a tool, nobody feels "chased" by anyone. The figure is the figure, and the conversation loses its emotional temperature.

Conclusion: a clean exit shows a year later

A shared flat is measured as much by how you live in it as by how you leave it. A clean exit is recognised because two years later you still cross paths in the street and stop for a coffee. A murky exit is recognised because, when you run into each other, you both look at the ground. The difference between one and the other is rarely the money itself; it's the method by which it was resolved. Apply a system, separate the categories, close the accounts the same day, transfer the final figure without delay. Thirty minutes well spent that are worth any friendship that deserves the name.