How Bachelor Point works

A mess is a group of people who cook and eat together and split what it costs. The arguments always come from the same place: nobody can remember who ate how many meals, who paid for the chicken on the 9th, or whether last month's electricity was ever settled.

Bachelor Point keeps one shared record of all of it. Members log their own meals. Whoever does the shopping records the bazar. The supervisor records the bills and the cash people hand over. The maths is done for everybody, the same way, every month — and it always adds up to the paisa.

There are three kinds of account, and they see different things.

Member

Logs their own meals, records bazar they bought, comments on entries, and sees exactly what they owe. A member belongs to one mess at a time.

Supervisor

Everything a member can do, plus: invites and removes people, records bills, takes payments, decides the cost types and how the meal rate is worked out, approves past-meal changes, and closes the month.

Admin

Runs the site itself — approves registrations, manages roles, sets how long a past-meal unlock lasts, and can look at any mess.

The three roles are the starting point, not the whole story. A role decides what someone can do by default, and an admin can then bend it for one person without touching anybody else. Open Admin → Users → Permissions on any account.

Every permission sits in one of three states. Role default means it follows the role and keeps following it — promote that person later and their access moves with them. Allow hands them something their role does not include. Block takes something away that it does. Where the two disagree, Block wins.

A read-only member

The Read only preset blocks every action that writes and keeps everything the role can see. They can follow the meals, the bazar and their own balance, but cannot change any of it. Useful for a housemate who has moved out but still owes for last month.

A trusted member

Allow a single extra permission — recording payments, say, or managing bills — without making them supervisor of the whole mess.

A supervisor with one thing removed

Block just that one permission. Everything else about the role stays exactly as it was.

Signed out, you can still read this guide, the front page, the sign-in and register forms, and now the Community room too — you just cannot post in it. What stays private to your mess is meals, money and mess comments: none of that is visible without signing in and joining a mess.

Sign in and the Dashboard becomes your home. It shows a different thing to each role, because each role has a different question to answer.

A member asks: what do I owe?

Today's meal rate, the rate for the month so far, your meals, and what you owe — in that order, big enough to read at a glance on a phone. Under it: your full balance broken down, last month for comparison, where the mess's money went, and the whole roster so you can see you are being treated the same as everyone else.

Whoever is cooking asks: how many plates today?

A whole-mess total for today — breakfast, lunch and dinner counts added up across every member, not just your own — sits right below your own numbers so the chef never has to open the meals page and add it up by hand.

A supervisor asks: is my mess on track?

Group count, members, spend so far and total outstanding dues across every mess you run, then a row per mess with its meal rate and what is unpaid, who still owes, and your longest-staying members.

An admin asks: is the site healthy?

Registrations waiting for a decision, how many members and supervisors exist, active and inactive groups, and a shortcut into the admin tools. Admins see no money — a mess belongs to its supervisor.

Every month follows the same five beats. Nothing here needs a spreadsheet or a group chat argument — each step is a page in the app.

1. 1Register with your name and email. Depending on how the site is set up, your account is either usable straight away or waits for an admin to approve it.
2. 2A supervisor invites you to their mess. The invitation shows up in your notification bell and in your email.
3. 3Accept it, and you are a member from that moment. Your joining date matters — it is what the app uses to work out how much of the month you were actually there for.
4. 4Want to run your own mess instead? Open Your role on your profile, ask for supervisor access, then create a group once it is granted.

Your Profile page holds your name, phone number, photo and password, plus anything waiting for you — invitations, and the switch for unlocking your own past meals.

Forgotten your password? Use the Forgot your password? link under the sign-in form. Put in your email and we send a one-time link. It expires quickly, it works once, and asking for a new one kills the old one. The reply is the same whether or not we know the address — that is on purpose, so nobody can use the form to find out who has an account here.

Setting a new password signs you out of every other device but keeps the one you are using. Changing it from your profile works the same way, and there you have to type the old one first.

Each member logs their own meals on the Meals page: how many breakfasts, lunches and dinners they had on each day. Today and any upcoming day are always open to edit. Days that have already passed are locked — see changing a past meal.

If you eat roughly the same way every week, set a meal plan instead of typing the same numbers daily. Say "lunch and dinner on weekdays, nothing on Fridays" once, and the app fills your days in for you. You can always override any single day by hand.

The page opens on the days around today rather than the whole month, because on a phone the day you came to edit is almost always this one. A bar above the list says which days you are looking at and how many are hidden; Show the whole month brings back every day, and the button flips to take you back. Your totals never change — they are always the full month, whichever view you are in.

Nobody wants to open an app to say "yes, I am eating today". So the mess asks you instead. Once a day you get a message with two buttons — Yes, count me in and No meals. Tap one from your phone and your meals for that day are recorded. There is no sign-in, no typing, and no app to open.

Yes fills in your usual meals for that weekday, taken from your meal plan, so someone who never eats breakfast is never charged for one. Tap Choose meals instead if today is different from usual. Changed your mind? Tap again — the link keeps working until the day starts.

Every mess has its own thread, and it lives on the Members page as a collapsible Mess comments section — open it, and the whole conversation is there. It sits with the roster on purpose: the people and the talk about them belong on the same page.

Anyone in the mess can post, and anyone can reply to a post. Type @ and a name to pull one person in, or @everyone to reach the whole house — either way they get a notification linking straight back to what you wrote.

There are two places to talk, and they differ by who can read you. Mess comments, a section on the Members page, is private to your mess. The Community room is the other one: everybody on Bachelor Point, in a single place. You are in it automatically from the moment your account is approved — there is nothing to join.

Use it to ask a question no one mess can answer, to welcome the people who just signed up, and to catch the pinned What's new cards whenever a feature lands. Type @ to pull someone into a message — they get a notification, exactly like in a mess thread.

Anyone can read the community room, even without an account — it is one of the few pages, alongside this guide, that does not require signing in. Posting, reacting and getting notified about new messages still need one.

The bell in the header is the app tapping you on the shoulder. It carries a count of everything unread and opens a short list; Notifications has the full history, with an All / Unread filter and a Mark all read button.

You get one when something genuinely needs you, and not otherwise:

Someone mentioned you

In a mess comment, a reply, a bazar note or the community room. The notification links straight to the message.

A past meal changed

When a supervisor edits a day that has already passed, every member is told what changed and on which day — in the app and by email.

A decision on your request

Your past-meal change was approved or declined, or your request for supervisor access was answered.

An invitation to a mess

Invitations sit in the bell too, with Accept and Decline right there — you never have to go looking for them.

The meal rate is what one meal cost to put on the table. It comes only from bazar — groceries and cooking supplies. Rent and wifi are not part of it, because someone who ate nothing this month still lives in the flat.

Everyone is charged the same way, no matter what: your cost is always your meals times one flat rate — total bazar so far divided by total meals eaten so far. Supervisors can also switch on a day-by-day breakdown for reference.

The rate that charges you

All the bazar so far divided by all the meals eaten so far. This single number is what you are actually charged — your cost is always your meals times this rate, whichever day you ate on.

A rate for each day, for reference

Switch this on and the meals table also shows what each day's own bazar worked out to per meal, so you can see which days were expensive. It never changes anyone's bill — it is shown for reference only, right next to the flat rate that does the charging.

You do not have to hunt for the number. At the top of the Meals page, Your meal rate leads with the flat rate in the largest type on the screen, with your own meals and what they cost you underneath. Below that is a day-by-day list — for reference only — showing the last week with the rest one tap away.

The same rate is on your Dashboard too, labelled Today's rate and This month so far. They are always the same number — the running total, up to and including today.

Bazar is the daily shopping. Whoever went to the market records it on the Bazar page — the date, the items and what each cost, and who paid.

Recording who paid is the important part. That person has put their own money in, so it is credited against what they owe. Buy ৳595 of groceries and your bill for the month drops by ৳595.

Anyone in the mess can comment on a bazar entry to query a price or add context, and can mention someone with @name to pull them into it, or @everyone to notify the whole mess. The mentioned people get a notification. Every edit to an entry is kept in its history, so a changed amount is never silent.

Bills are everything that is not day-to-day food: rent, electricity, water, waste, the cook, wifi, a gas cylinder. Supervisors record them on the Bills page.

The list of cost types belongs to the mess, not to the app. A supervisor can add whatever their house actually pays for and remove what it does not. A type already used by a real bill is hidden from the dropdown rather than deleted, so old bills keep the label they were filed under.

A bill is split one of two ways:

Split equally

Divided evenly across everyone currently in the mess.

Selected members

You choose who pays and how much. This is how you handle a shared room paying more rent, or a bill only some people are on.

The Payments page is where the month adds up. Every member gets one row, and the row reads left to right as a sentence: this is what you owe, this is what you have already put in, this is what is left.

Four statuses can appear against a row:

Settled

Nothing owed either way.

Partly paid

They have put something in, but not all of it.

Unpaid

Nothing has come in yet.

Refund due

They put in more than their share — the mess owes them.

Past days are locked by default, and for good reason: changing an old meal changes the rate for everyone, not just for you. But people do genuinely forget to log a day, so there is a way to fix it honestly.

A member ticks Edit my past meals on the meals page. That unlocks past days for a short window — five minutes by default, though an admin can set anything from a few minutes to no limit at all. When the window runs out it locks itself again; you do not have to remember to close it.

Anything you change in that window is a request, not a change. The meal table keeps its old numbers until your supervisor approves it. Approve or decline, either way you are told.

When a supervisor edits a past day — theirs or anyone else's — it applies straight away, because they are the one accountable for the numbers. In exchange, every member of the mess is notified in the app and by email, saying exactly what changed and on which day.

When everyone has settled up, the supervisor closes the month. Closing snapshots every member's figures so a later edit to an old expense cannot quietly rewrite a month people have already paid on.

Whatever is still unpaid does not vanish — it opens the next month as that person's brought forward balance, right at the front of their row. Supervisors can turn this off per mess if they would rather settle each month strictly on its own.

A close can be dated any day of the month, and can cover the whole mess or just the people you pick. That is what makes a mid-month departure clean: settle the person leaving on the 12th, mark that they are going, and everybody else's month carries on untouched.

There is nothing to download and no app store to visit. Bachelor Point runs in the browser, but it can also be installed to your home screen, where it opens full-screen with its own icon and no address bar — the same thing a normal app does.

When your phone supports it, a bar appears at the top offering to install. Dismiss it and it stays dismissed. If you want it later, use your browser instead:

Android — Chrome

Menu (⋮) → Install app, or Add to Home screen. Accept the prompt and the icon appears.

iPhone — Safari

The Share button → Add to Home Screen. Safari is the only browser on iOS that can do this, so use Safari rather than Chrome for the install.

Desktop — Chrome or Edge

The install icon at the right-hand end of the address bar opens it in its own window.

Where did the Comments tab go?

It is now a Mess comments section on the Members page — open it and the thread is there, unchanged. Old links and mention notifications still work; they take you straight to it. The Community room, which everyone on the site shares, is separate and still has its own tab.

I forgot my password.

Use "Forgot your password?" under the sign-in form. A one-time link comes by email, expires quickly, and works once. If nothing arrives, check spam — and note the page says the same thing whether or not the address is registered, so a missing email does not mean the link failed.

The meals page is only showing me five days.

That is deliberate — it opens on today plus two days either side so you are not scrolling a month on a phone. Show the whole month brings all of them back. Your totals are always the full month either way.

Why does today look like yesterday just after midnight?

It should not. The app decides which day is "today" in your mess's own time zone, not the server's, so a meal logged at 1 AM lands on the right day. If it ever looks wrong, tell your admin — it is one setting.

My photo will not upload.

It is either the wrong kind of file or over the size limit. PNG, JPEG, WebP and GIF are accepted, and the profile page prints the current limit right under the photo. Your admin sets that number and can raise it.

A page vanished from my menu.

An admin has blocked that permission on your account. Roles decide this by default, but a single person can be given more or less than their role. Ask an admin — it is two clicks to put back.

I bought the groceries. Do I get that money back?

It is credited against what you owe, straight away. If it comes to more than your share, your due goes negative and shows as a refund the mess owes you.

I was away for two weeks. Am I still charged?

Not for meals — you are only charged for meals you actually logged. Bills are a separate question: rent and wifi are usually split across everyone regardless, because the flat is still yours. Your supervisor can use a custom split if your mess agrees otherwise.

Someone joined halfway through the month. Is that fair?

Their meal share only covers days they ate. Bills recorded before they joined keep the split they were saved with, so they are not charged for a bill that was already agreed without them.

Can the supervisor change my meals without telling me?

No. Any change to a past day sends a notification to every member of the mess, in the app and by email, naming the day and what changed.

Somebody left owing money. Where does it go?

Close the month for them on the day they leave. Their outstanding balance is frozen on the record with their name against it rather than being absorbed by everyone else.

What happens to a mess that shuts down?

The supervisor closes the group. It disappears from the everyday group list and stops accepting new entries, but its history stays intact and can be brought back into view any time.