A fine has two prices. The date on the letter decides which one you pay.
Most penalty notices offer a large discount if you pay early — and quietly double if you miss the window. Photograph the notice, or forward it, and the app reads the deadlines printed on it and reminds you 7 days, 3 days, 1 day before, and on the day itself. Any country, any language, on the free plan.
Information, not legal advice — check the notice itself, and a lawyer if you plan to contest.
A fine deadline tracker reads the dates printed on a penalty notice — the early-payment discount window, the final due date, the deadline to appeal — and reminds you before each one expires. Split The Bill does this from a photo of the notice in any country and any language, on the free plan, and never states a date the document does not contain. For Italy, Spain, France and Germany it additionally computes the deadlines from the statute, flags any disagreement with what the notice printed, and explains the consequences the notice leaves out, with a citation and a verification date on every rule.
How a notice becomes a set of reminders
- 1
Photograph or forward the notice
A photo of the paper letter, a screenshot, or the PDF the authority emailed you. The app reads it in the language it was written in — you do not translate anything first.
- 2
It reads the dates the notice prints
The early-payment date and its reduced amount, the final due date, the deadline to contest — whichever of them the document actually states. Nothing is computed from law at this step, so it works for a notice from anywhere.
- 3
You confirm what it read
The dates and amounts are shown next to the notice so you can check them against the paper before anything is scheduled. A misread date you correct once is a deadline that stays correct.
- 4
Reminders land before each deadline
Seven days out, three days, the day before, and on the day — for every deadline the notice carries, not just the final one. The discount window is usually the one that matters, and it is usually the one people miss.
What the tracker does
Any country, from day one
Reading the dates a notice prints needs no legal ruleset, so a fine from a country nobody has researched yet is tracked exactly as well as one from Rome. This is the whole feature for most people, and it is on the free plan.
It never invents a deadline
If the notice does not print a date, the app does not claim one. A confidently wrong deadline is worse than no deadline at all, so a value it could not read is shown as missing rather than guessed.
Four countries get a second opinion
For Italy, Spain, France and Germany the app also computes the deadline from the statute and compares it with what the notice printed. When the two disagree it says so — a mismatch is usually a typo on the notice or a misread scan, and either way it is worth a look before you pay.
What the document does not tell you
In those four countries the app also surfaces the consequences the paperwork tends to leave out — most importantly that in several of them paying the discounted amount waives your right to contest the fine at all. Every such rule cites the law it comes from and the date it was last verified.
Put the next fine on a timer
Photograph the notice once and stop keeping the date in your head. Free plan, no card.
Create a free accountInformation, not legal advice — check the notice itself, and a lawyer if you plan to contest.
When this actually saves you money
A parking ticket found under the wiper abroad
You are driving home the next day and the notice is in a language you do not read. Photograph it at the car: the app pulls out the discount deadline and the reduced amount, and reminds you while the window is still open rather than after you are back home.
A speeding fine that arrives weeks after the trip
Notices are often posted long after the event, and the discount window runs from the notice, not the drive. The reminder arrives on the clock the letter actually sets, which is rarely the one you would have guessed.
Deciding whether paying early costs you the appeal
In several countries the discount and the right to contest are mutually exclusive — taking the reduction ends the argument. For Italy, Spain, France and Germany the app says so before you pay, which is the moment the decision is still yours to make.
Several notices across a household or a fleet
Two cars, two drivers and three tickets with different dates is exactly where a deadline slips. Each notice carries its own reminders instead of living in someone's inbox.
Why a photo beats a calendar entry
The discount is the whole point
Missing an early-payment window is not a small penalty — on a typical notice it is the difference between the reduced amount and the full one, and it is lost silently, with no second letter to warn you.
No transcription, so no transcription error
Copying a date out of a foreign-language letter into a phone calendar is the step where the year gets typed wrong. The app reads the document and shows you what it read, next to the original.
Free, because a missed deadline is not a premium problem
The reminders are on the free plan. A deadline alert that only protects paying users fails the person it is there to protect; only the AI reading of the document draws on the shared monthly scan allowance.
Rules you can check, not rules you must trust
Every statutory rule the app applies names its primary source and the date it was verified. Where a country's law could not be confirmed, it is simply not offered — Serbia and Croatia are written up but deliberately left out for exactly that reason.
A fine notice, handled two ways
What changes between keeping the letter on the kitchen table and photographing it once.
| A fine notice, handled two ways | ✗ | ✓ |
|---|---|---|
| Finding the deadline | Read a legal letter in a language you may not speak, and hope you spotted every date in it. | The printed dates are pulled out and shown next to the notice for you to confirm. |
| Remembering it | A calendar entry you make once, if you remember, for the one date you noticed. | Reminders at 7, 3, 1 and 0 days for every deadline the notice carries. |
| Catching a wrong date | A mistyped date on the notice goes unnoticed until the discount is gone. | In Italy, Spain, France and Germany the statutory date is computed and any disagreement is flagged. |
| Knowing what paying costs you | Pay the smaller number and find out later that it ended your right to contest. | Where the law says so, you are told before you pay — with the statute cited. |
| A country nobody has researched | No help at all. | Full reminders from the printed dates — the ruleset only adds the second opinion. |
Questions about fine deadlines
- Which countries does this work for?
- The reminders work for a notice from any country — reading the dates a document prints does not depend on knowing that country's law. Italy, Spain, France and Germany additionally get the deadlines computed from the statute and cross-checked against the notice, because those four have been verified against primary sources.
- Is it free?
- Yes. Tracking deadlines and receiving the reminders is on the free plan. Reading the notice uses the same monthly AI scan allowance as receipt scanning, so a free account can add notices within that allowance; you can also enter the dates by hand, which uses none of it.
- What if the notice does not print a deadline?
- Then the app does not show one. It will not fill the gap with an estimate — a date that looks authoritative but was guessed is the one genuinely harmful thing this feature could do. For the four verified countries it can often compute the date from the law instead, and it labels it as computed.
- What happens when the computed date and the printed date disagree?
- Both are shown, along with the fact that they differ. Neither is silently preferred. In practice a mismatch is most often a mistyped date on the notice or a misread scan, and seeing the two side by side is what lets you catch it.
- Does paying the reduced amount stop me contesting the fine?
- In several countries, yes — the discount is offered in exchange for accepting the penalty. This is the single most expensive thing a notice tends not to spell out, so for Italy, Spain, France and Germany the app states the position explicitly, with the statute cited, before you pay.
- Why are Serbia and Croatia not supported?
- Because their rules could not be confirmed to the standard the others met. Serbia's governing article could not be read in its official text, and Croatia's statute contradicts the figure we would have used — it leaves the key window to be set by the notice itself. Both are written up and both stay unsupported rather than shipping a rule we could not verify. They still get the full printed-deadline reminders like everywhere else.
- Can it tell me whether to contest a fine?
- No — that is a legal judgement and this is not legal advice. It can tell you the deadline to do it, and for the four verified countries it surfaces the grounds the notice omits, such as an authority having missed its own notification deadline. What to do with that is between you and, if it matters, a lawyer.
- Do I have to trust the app's reading of the letter?
- No, and you should not have to. Everything it read is shown next to the notice so you can check it against the paper before any reminder is scheduled, and you can correct any value by hand.
