This is a practical walkthrough of how to use TripKit to plan a group trip, from zero to trip day. I’ll use a hypothetical trip to Japan with five people as the example — but the steps are the same for any destination.
Step 1: Create the Trip
Sign in and tap New Trip (or go to /setup). Fill in:
- Trip name — “Japan 2026” works fine
- Base city — Tokyo (this is used for weather forecasts and as the map default)
- Country
- Start and end dates
- Default currency — set this to whatever most of the group will be spending in (JPY for Japan, or your home currency)
The trip is created instantly. You’re the owner, which means you control Settings, can invite people, and can delete the trip.
Step 2: Invite the Group
Go to Settings (the gear icon at the top right of the trip). You’ll find the members and invite section there. You have two options:
Invite link — Share the /join/[token] link with your group. Anyone who opens it and is signed in gets added as a member immediately. This is the easiest option — drop the link in your WhatsApp group and done. The link is regeneratable from Settings if you need to invalidate it.
Email invite — If you want to invite specific people by email, use the email invite option. They’ll get an invitation and join on their next login.
Once your crew is in, everyone sees the same trip in real time. Any change to the itinerary, checklist, or budget is immediately visible to all members.
Step 3: Build the Itinerary
Go to Itinerary. You can:
Build manually — tap the + button on any day to add an item. Fill in title, optional location, start/end time, and cost. Drag items to reorder within a day.
Use AI to draft it — tap the ✨ button and let the AI generate a day-by-day plan based on your destination and trip length. It’ll create a reasonable starting point that you can edit, reorder, or delete. The AI knows about your trip’s dates, destination, and group size.
Don’t aim for perfection upfront. The itinerary is a live document — the whole group will add, tweak, and remove things as planning progresses. Emoji reactions on items (🔥 🙌 ❤️ etc.) are a quick way for the group to +1 activities without turning it into a thread.
Export to calendar — once you’re happy with the plan, grab the .ics export link from the itinerary page. This works with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook.
Step 4: Build the Checklist
Go to Checklist. It has tabs — Packing, Tasks, or custom AI-generated ones.
Again, you can build it manually or hit the ✨ AI button to generate a starting list based on the trip type. For a Japan trip it’ll suggest: passport, Japan Rail Pass, power adapter (the plugs are Type A but the voltage is 100V), Suica card, and so on. Edit freely.
The priority tags (must, good, nice) are useful for group packing — if you’re deciding what to cut, the nice items go first.
Step 5: Track Expenses
Go to Budget. Add expenses as they come up (pre-trip or on the trip itself):
- Add expense — label, category (flights, hotel, food, transport, activities, etc.), amount + currency, and who paid
- Set splits — by default it splits equally across all members; you can customise who gets split in and how much
- Mark as paid — you can record the actual amount separately from the estimate (useful when you find out the meal cost more than you budgeted)
The Budget Summary shows each person’s net balance. The Settlement view calculates the minimum number of transfers to zero everything out.
Step 6: Use the Group Chat
The chat (/chat tab within the trip) is where the group’s daily coordination happens. A few things worth knowing:
- Read receipts — tick marks show who’s seen what (WhatsApp-style)
- @tripkit — mention the AI bot to get destination info, itinerary suggestions, local tips, or expense summaries. Works like a travel assistant that knows your specific trip.
- /vibe polls — type
/vibeto start a quick poll. Useful for group decisions: “Tsukiji or Toyosu for breakfast?” Vote, see results, move on. - E2EE — by default, messages are end-to-end encrypted. The server never sees the content. Note: the @tripkit AI is disabled on E2EE trips for this reason — it can’t read ciphertext.
Step 7: On the Trip — Live Map
Once you’re all in-country, the Map tab becomes useful. Each member can share their GPS location. The map shows everyone’s current position with name labels. Useful when the group has split up and you need to coordinate a meetup.
Locations are E2EE-encrypted on private trips — coordinates are encrypted on-device before they hit the server. Only members holding the trip key see them.
You can turn off your location sharing at any time from the map page.
After the Trip
When the trip end date passes, the Overview page shows the Trip Wrap — a swipeable 5-card recap: trip stats, most reacted moment, most active chatter, longest streak, packing score. Worth a look before the group disperses.
Old trips stay in your account under Past trips. The itinerary, expenses, and chat history are all preserved.
What TripKit Doesn’t Do (Yet)
Being honest about current gaps:
- No booking integration — TripKit doesn’t connect to Booking.com, Airbnb, Skyscanner, etc. You add bookings manually (or upload the PDFs as trip documents)
- No multi-trip budget view — if you want to see spending across multiple trips, the Stats page shows totals by currency but not trip-by-trip comparisons
- No offline map tiles — the map shows your cached positions when offline, but it doesn’t cache map imagery for areas you haven’t been to yet
If you run into anything that feels broken or confusing, open the Help page or drop an email to hello@gettripkit.com.