A plain-language walkthrough of joining a group, the shared pool, and your profile, plus, further down, everything a group admin can do. Nothing here is required reading; most people just start using the app and come back here when something's unclear. This page is open to anyone, you don't need to be signed in to read it.
GoPals signs you in with your Google or Apple account, there's no email/password option. The first time you sign in, GoPals creates your profile automatically from the name and email your provider gives it. There's nothing else to set up before you can join or create a group.
Some groups publish a public page at gopals.app/<group-name> with a bit of info about the group and a "Request to join" button. Tapping it (after signing in) sends a request to that group's admins, who can approve or deny it from their Admin screen. This path requires an admin's approval before you're added.
An admin can add you to a group just by entering your email address, no link involved. Nothing happens until you actually sign in with Google. The moment you do, if your Google account's email matches what the admin entered, you're joined to that group automatically and silently. You don't need to do anything to accept it.
Tap + Add Contribution, enter the amount and an optional note. If you're a regular member, your entry sits as pending until an admin confirms it happened before it counts toward any balance. If you're an admin, logging your own contribution counts immediately, since your confirmation is the confirmation.
Request Refund is self-serve, but capped at your own available balance, so you can't request more than you're actually owed. It goes to an admin as a pending request, same as a contribution, before it's paid out.
Every entry in the Pool Statement, contributions, refunds, notes, dates, and status (pending/approved/rejected), is visible to every member of the group, not just admins. There's no private view; if you're in the group, you can see everyone else's pool activity, and they can see yours.
Change your display name and photo from the top of the Profile screen. Below that, a Contact Card holds phone, birthday, emergency contact, medical notes, and home address, all optional, all edited by you, all visible only to your own group's members (never public, never to a group you're not in). Medical notes and emergency contact are the two most sensitive fields there; they're kept to that same members-only visibility.
You pick the specific person by typing their email address, and they join automatically the moment they sign in with that matching Google account, no approval step on your end beyond having typed the address. Full detail below in "Adding Members by Email."
Paste one or more emails (comma or newline separated) and tap + Add. Nothing happens until that person actually signs in with Google. The moment they do, GoPals checks their Google account's email against your pending list, and joins them automatically if it matches. No link, no token, no approval step on your end beyond having typed the address in the first place.
The match has to be the person's exact Google account email, typed exactly. GoPals does not currently normalize the address in any way before comparing it.
firstlast@gmail.com and first.last@gmail.com as the same inbox, but a person's actual Google account has one fixed, canonical email string. If you type the address with different dot placement than that canonical form, the match will silently fail to fire. Mail would still reach them either way, but GoPals' matching won't. This is a known, currently-unfixed gap, not something already handled behind the scenes. If someone you added never seems to join, this dot mismatch is the first thing to check: try removing or adding dots and re-adding the address.Adding an address queues a real invite email (sent via Resend) telling them they've been invited. If one didn't go out for some reason, or you're re-sending to someone who missed it, a Resend button on that pending row sends it again.
New groups default to a 50-member cap. It's checked at the moment someone would actually join: an admin approving a join request, or an email match firing on sign-in. Either of those simply fails with "This group is full" once the cap is hit. There's no in-app display of how close a group is to its cap today; you'd find out by hitting the limit.
The Member picker on the Add Contribution form is admin-only. Logging on behalf of another member counts immediately, no pending step, unlike a regular member logging their own, which waits for approval.
Every pending contribution or refund request across the whole group, from every member, lands here for you to Approve or Reject.
Made a mistake on an already-approved amount? Amend doesn't edit the row in place. It posts a reversal of the original plus a fresh corrected entry, both visible in the Pool Statement. Every member can see the full history of a correction, not just the end result.
No. GoPals only tracks who's contributed and who owes what. Any real payment (e-transfer, cash, whatever your group uses) still happens directly between members, outside the app.
A regular member's own contribution stays pending until an admin confirms it. Check the Pool Statement for its status: it'll say pending until an admin approves it, unless you're an admin yourself, in which case it counts the moment you log it.
Yes. The Pool Statement, including every entry's amount, note, date and status, is visible to every member of the group, not just admins.
Make sure you're signing in with the exact Google account whose email the admin typed in. If there's any chance of a typo or a dot placed differently than your real Gmail address, that's the most likely cause: GoPals doesn't currently treat differently-dotted Gmail addresses as the same account.
Yes, switch between your groups any time from the group name at the top of the sidebar (or the group pill on mobile).