One friend organizes it, everyone chips in by card toward one visible total, and the group buys one real gift — the grill, the espresso machine, the piece of furniture — instead of five candles. The collection is on the record, so nobody wonders who was in or what it bought.
Housewarmings default to small separate gifts because coordinating one big one is annoying — someone has to collect, track, front, and chase. So the new homeowners get five candles and a plant, when the same total money could have bought the thing they actually wanted. The gap between those outcomes is purely organizational, which means it's fixable.
Real collections rarely land exactly on the price tag. A visible goal makes both directions easy: if the group blows past it, the extra is on the record for a gift receipt upgrade or a housewarming dinner; if it falls short, the group sees it early and either trims the pick or gives it another day — instead of the organizer quietly topping it up at checkout, which is how it ends when nobody can see the number.
The organizer holds the money the whole time — it lands with them through Stripe, and TableCash is the visible record. The same shape works for every occasion where friends go in on one thing: group gifts, family collections, and office send-offs.
Free on the App Store · 18+