If you’ve ever borrowed an item from a friend or family member, you know how frustrating it can be to have it returned without any notice. Here are a few tips to help make sure your borrowed item is returned safely and without any hassle:

  1. Make sure to track the item’s progress. This will help you understand where it is and who has it.
  2. File a claim with the lending institution as soon as possible. This will ensure that your borrowed item is replaced or refunded in full, if necessary.
  3. Be prepared for potential delays in getting your loan back. Make sure to have all of your documentation ready, including proof of purchase and original receipt(s).

In this article we will cover two simple tracking systems: ReturnMyPants to keep track of your personal inventory and IOWEYou to keep track of money.

Tracking Your Personal Inventory with ReturnMyPants

ReturnMyPants is a dead simple personal inventory tracking system that help you keep track of items that you lend or borrow.

ReturnMyPants uses a simple form to let you record the details of the items you lent or borrowed from your friend.

Your friend will receive a friendly email from ReturnMyPants to let him know that you are tracking his loan.

He can then login to the website to see a list of items that he borrowed from you.

Tracking Your Money with IOWEYou

IOWEYou is a similar service to ReturnMyPants designed to keep track of money that you borrow or lend among your peers.

Note: We advised our readers to use BillMonk to track their expenses earlier today. One of our reader, Richard, pointed out that BillMonk has been pretty much abandoned so we decided to introduce IOWEYou.com instead.

We need to start a group before we can log any expenses.

IOWEYou will present a simple group editing form to list the people that you are sharing the expenses with.

Let’s say you paid $75 for sushi dinner yesterday…

You can keep a record in IOWEYou that you paid for the bill and split the bill among your friends.

Your friend can see how much they owe you in their IOWEYou account.

You may also checkout IOWEYou help page to have a better understanding how the service works.