Share an Account With Your Partner

The Problem

You and your partner run one household out of two logins. The usual fixes are both bad. Share the bank password and you lose any record of who did what, and the credential now lives in two places. Copy the numbers into a shared spreadsheet and they are stale the moment you save, so every conversation starts with "is this current?"

What you want is narrower than either: one set of numbers, two people, and no shared password.

Access Is Per Account, Not Per Login

You do not share your budget. You share specific accounts. Everything else — your other accounts, your tags, your settings — stays invisible.

Each person you invite gets one of two levels:

You stay the owner. Only the owner invites people, changes their level, removes them, or deletes the account. Nobody you invite can pass that access along.

The Invitation Is Mail, Not a Password

When you invite someone, the app emails them a link. That link:

• is a single-use token — once accepted, it stops working
• expires seven days after you send it
• is bound to the exact address you typed, so it cannot be forwarded and used by somebody else

If your partner does not have an account yet, the link takes them through signup and drops them straight into the share.

Try It: Invite Your Partner

Use a real address your partner can open. If you are practising alone, use a second address you own.

1. Navigate: Accounts
2. Click: "Primary Checking"
3. Click: "Share"
4. Verify: the Manage Account Sharing page shows three sections — Invite a User, People With Access, and Pending Invitations
5. Type: Email — your partner's email address
6. Select: Access Level — View Only
7. Click: "Send Invitation"
8. Verify: a message reading "Invitation sent to" your partner's address appears, and the invitation is listed under Pending Invitations with the date you sent it and the date it expires

Start at View Only even when you expect to promote them. Raising the level later costs nothing, and it means the first thing your partner does in your account is look, not type.

What Your Partner Sees

Their side is three steps, and you cannot do it for them:

1. They open the email and click the link.
2. The app shows which account they are being given and at what level, and asks them to confirm with "Accept Invitation".
3. The account appears under Shared With Me in their sidebar, badged with their access level and labelled "Shared by" your email address.

You get an email when they accept. From that moment you are both reading the same transactions.

Try It: Take an Invitation Back

Sent one to the wrong address, or changed your mind before it was accepted? Cancelling invalidates the token immediately.

1. Navigate: Accounts
2. Click: "Primary Checking"
3. Click: "Share"
4. Verify: the invitation you sent is listed under Pending Invitations
5. Click: "Cancel" on that invitation's row
6. Click: "OK" in the confirmation dialog
7. Verify: a message reading "Invitation cancelled" appears and Pending Invitations now reads "No pending invitations."

Once an invitation has been accepted it is no longer an invitation — that person moves to People With Access. That row is where you change someone's level or remove them, and removing them emails them to say so.

Choosing the Level

• View Only is the right default for a partner who wants to see where the money went, for a teenager's card you are watching without taking over, and for an advisor who needs your spending patterns and nothing else.
• Full Access is for the household where both of you actually enter and categorize spending. It is transaction power, not settings power: they still cannot rename the account, add a statement, or re-share it.

Key Takeaway: Share one account at a time, at the lowest level that does the job. The invitation is a single-use, seven-day, email-bound token — not a password — and you can cancel it before acceptance or revoke access after it, from the same page, at any time.

Check Your Understanding

1. Your partner has View Only access and spots a transaction filed under the wrong tag. What can they do about it?

   Answer: Tell you. View Only can see the account, its transactions, and budgets that include it, but cannot change anything. If you want them fixing categories themselves, promote them to Full Access from People With Access.

2. Why does an invitation expire after seven days?

   Answer: It limits how long a forwarded or intercepted link is worth anything. The token is also single-use and tied to the address you typed. If it lapses, resend the invitation to issue a fresh one.

3. You gave your partner Full Access. Can they share the account with your accountant?

   Answer: No. Only the owner invites people, changes access levels, or removes them. Full Access covers transactions and transfers in that account — not sharing, not account settings, not deletion.

4. You revoke a partner's access to an account they had built a budget around. What happens to their budget?

   Answer: It stays theirs; it just no longer includes your account. They are emailed to say access was revoked, and you can re-invite them later if that changes.