Faness Share login credentials!? As someone who works in Software / InfoSec and knowing the threat landscape today, sharing of creds is the worst suggestion for accessing any platform. Although YNAB doesn't share account numbers, the data available is enough to identify account holders through their spending trends and other metadata available. Additionally, if you were to expand your platform in the future to, let's say, offer an audit trail / history of transaction changes, a shared login would prevent being able to see who did what.

Hi Forest Green Lobster !

As we consider future features, such as an audit trail, we understand that improvements to multi-user budgets have to come first. Our team is currently looking into the best way to address these changes before moving forward.

My above post was from a year ago, before we began offering the option to connect your YNAB account to your Google logins through the My Account setting. While that doesn't fully address your concerns here, I did want to mention it as an alternative option.

We're going to keep working on this and we'll be sure to announce those changes once they're ready! :)

Faness thanks for the response! I did have my spouse setup the second login using Google SSO, after reading through the evolution of this thread. That'll work for now. Looking forward towards your audit trail features.

Faness Thanks for reviewing this, please please please make this an urgent feature request. Sharing credentials is horribly insecure and doesn't constitute a feature. Advertising on the feature page that the platform allows for collaborative budgeting suggests that multiple users can collaborate, not just log in with the same credentials. Until users can truly collaborate this should really be removed from the feature list.

Ryan Bridge Our team is working on improvements in this area! Stay tuned. 😉 For now, if you'd rather not share a password, you can enable Google or Apple login methods in your Account Settings. 

Nicole looking forward to hearing news on this! I’d love a true collaboration feature.

The currently proposed “workaround” is basically just a side effect of how credential sharing works, not a feature.

Nicole I have used YNAB4 for years with my now ex-wife. We share a budget for our kids and in YNAB4, I just share the single Dropbox file for the Joint budget using Dropbox permissions so that she can only see that one budget.

Is there no way to share a single Budget with someone in the new YNAB?

If not, I don't think I can subscribe to the new YNAB because I do not want to share my login access to my private budget information with my now ex-wife.

Any help much appreciated. I don't mean to sound angry but I need our private finances to be kept separate due to our financial agreement.

Alice Blue Wildcat This is definitely something we're working on, but we don't have a release date to announce yet.

Matthew Nicole Guys, I agree with Ryan Bridge it's not honest to put the badge "Budget Together" on your advertisement page. In fact YNAB has NO that feature. When I read this advertisement first time, I was thinking that feature is available and signed up immediately. Then I realized  that it's not and I feel myself deceived now. 

Eugene Smirnoff The vast majority of YNABers have one budget and want to share it with one partner, and we support that situation very well. And you don't have to share credentials in order to share your budget—that's why we support Google and Apple for sign-ins.

If you have a more complex situation—like, you have multiple budgets and only want to share one of them—that's what we don't yet support. I'm really excited about the work we're doing there, and we'll announce it loud and proud when it's ready. If YNAB isn't going to work for you without those features, I totally understand, and you're welcome to come back for a new free trial when they're ready.

Matthew I think the big concern is that there is no distinct account in use by the other party. It’s only a hair better than sharing credentials because it’s keys to the same account.
 

The feature page is extremely deceptive in the way that it suggests collaboration when really the feature doesn’t exist.

We aren’t trying to be rude, but honestly it’s false advertising and we just want visitors to the site to not be mislead. Once a collaboration feature exists feel free to market it.

Ryan Bridge 

Agree totally.  F A L S E   A D V E R T I S I N G !!!!!!

Matthew   

Be honest.  I was given that same line 2-3 years ago.  AND you are still working on it.  Suppressed laughter!!  SMH  !!!

Nicole How do people add multiple Google or Apple logins? Say that a couple both have Apple accounts and want to share their family budget. From your previous responses to people in this thread it sounds like you're saying that the couple should both be able to add their Apple IDs to the YNAB account for logging in. However, I do not see an option for that. I see where we could add an Apple or a Google login but not multiple of the same type.

I must say, as someone testing out YNAB to see if I'll purchase this is a huge security issue that involves peoples finances. The budgeting features seem nice but recommending people just share a single account by either sharing their credentials or sharing log in methods to a single account, borders on NEGLIGENT practices at this point, in my opinion! 

Hey Powder Blue Thunder ! You're correct, at the moment it is one of each Single Sign-On type. You can add a Google login, an Apple login, and/or use credentials (with Two-Step Verification for an additional layer of protection). Our Product team would love to hear your thoughts on what you'd like to see.

Hi DrYou !

Currently, YNAB is intended to be a household product - meaning users within a household should use the same account. While it's possible to create a separate business budget in that same account, we suggest only members of your household having access.

If you intend to share with a third party, we'd suggest either exporting your budget for the third party to view that information or maintain a separate YNAB account just for business purposes. I'll pass along your idea for a full business product to our development team for further consideration! :)

Faness I've been saying this since pre-launch over two years ago... User Access Control.

The budget owner must have an active subscription, but can give Admin settings, Read, Write permissions to other registered users. Add in the ability to transfer a budget between users (like when a kid moves out and needs to own their budget).

I mean really, it's pretty basic account permissions stuff.

nolesrule Thanks for weighing in! I'll pass this along as well! Having details for our development team to consider is a great help! :)

nolesrule Second this.  It really needs to be a priority.

Faness but still, it makes sense for each person to have their own login. I'm loving this app for our household budget, but I also have a personal budget for just my portion, which I might not want to directly share with my partner (like if I want to budget for a big surprise).

Cyan Lobster I completely understand! I budget with my husband and we've had to get creative with surprises. There's the "Don't look at that" approach, but I get how user permissions or separate logins would simplify this. 

Erin or my husband... who might change our budget for wine;)

Erin Have you considered sitting down and talking with them about it as an alternative. They probably don’t need to see it day in and day out, but explaining it to them and reviewing it with them might suffice until they have their own incoming and expenses. 

Sky Blue Motherboard not everyone has the bandwidth or desire to micromanage every member of the household. By letting them have different levels of access, then EVERYONE is responsible for being aware and staying on budget without putting extra effort solely on the budget "manager".

Sea Green Robot 100% agreed!

Hi Sam Aaron !

I completely understand and I appreciate you weighing in here! A YNAB subscription is meant to be a household subscription. I used to think of this as a "If you don't trust them with your password, they should probably have their own account", but I've been swayed by all of the cases brought up in the forum!

I can't make any promises, but I can say this has been brought up with our development team and they've discussed some alternatives. :)

Faness I'm glad you're being swayed by the cases brought up in this forum. Budgets are definitely not just for households. I've got four budgets and I want to share three of them with three different people (business partner, non-household co-parent, household partner). Sharing a login would not make sense. Hope this features is added soon.

Faness  This is great to hear!

Faness Has there been any progress on this in the last 6 months?

Hi Cadet Blue Nomad !

There hasn't been any movement on this option yet. While it has been brought up, there are a number of details that haven't been addressed or ironed out. I can't say for certain, but this issue isn't on our What’s Up Next list so it most likely won't be an option in the near future.

Faness Is there a process for getting things on this What's Up Next list that works?
I've seen a number of issues being requested by a lot of people and the development team instead comes up with emoji's or something that's not exactly a functional benefit.
Is there an opportunity for the community to vote up/down upcoming features or is this a closed doors process?

Cadet Blue Nomad Submitting a Feature Request is the best way to make your opinions known. That information goes directly to our development team and is then coded for future analysis. The What's Up Next list is created using that information. 

Faness done.  Wish me luck.

Cadet Blue Nomad I think we just have to keep submitting the same idea, but from different users. 

Faness Any news on this? I just submitted a feature request to. My partner and I have been looking at using YNAB for our budgeting, but not having this kind of a feature is a deal breaker for us. We want to have a joint budget for the things that we pay for together, but we also want to keep separate individual budgets for anything above and beyond that.

Adam Liter You can have multiple budgets. It's just that you can't hide them from your other authorized people on your account. If you need that kind of separation, you need multiple accounts.

Adam Liter This is exactly what I currently do. My husband and I have His, Hers and Ours budgets. One for me, one for him and one for our joint accounts and expenses. I dont care if he looks at my budget and vice versa, though it's rare we have a need or reason to.

Til Debt Do Us Part and @bevocat Thanks for the suggestions. We're not concerned about being able to see one another's budgets. Neither of us mind either, but we'd nonetheless like to keep our own budgets separate. Your suggestion of one account but multiple budgets might work for us, but then how do you handle which financial accounts are tied to which budget? Do you have joint accounts for the "Ours" budget, and do you only spend out of those accounts for joint expenses? I think this is something we'd prefer not to do because of (i) credit card rewards and (ii) whether something is a joint expense for us can be an evolving thing, so if we purchased it with a personal account but later decide it should have been a joint expense, it becomes a headache to track, if I correctly understand how this would work.

Adam Liter We paired our credit cards according to what we use them for. Our Amex gets 6% back on groceries, it's a joint account and in our joint budget for grocery spending. If I buy something and decide it's a shared expense, husband transfers the money to my account. It shows in his budget like he bought half of whatever the expense was and I'm reimbursed for his half in my budget. It's easier than it sounds.

Adam Liter Sorry I don't have any advice to offer on the details of the mechanics. I don't use the feature myself; I just knew of its existence.

"If you don't trust them with your password, they should probably have their own account"

Faness that's a terrible attitude to have A) everyone is entitled to their own comfort levels of personal privacy, B) it's not necessarily about *trusting* someone or not with your login, but rather you may not want to share EVERY budget with EVERY person (eg: surprise Disney vacation budget, household budget, and pay off personal debt budget could have very different access levels for each household member).

Faness or heck, even so that y'all have different names in these forums. I just realized that this account is linked to my partner's login, which means it looks like him speaking not me. y'all REALLY should prioritize this.

Hi Cyan Lobster !

This is an older forum thread and I was swayed from that way of thinking a year ago, when discussing the possibilities with other users here. I understand how having options for user permissions would be helpful and our development team is looking into improving the multi-user experience with YNAB.

I can't give a time frame for those improvements, but they're on our radar! :)

Hi Diver4242 !

We recently launched a Google Single Sign On option which allows users to link a second email address to their account. That might not be exactly what you're looking for, so you can send any feedback directly to our development team by submitting a Feature Request. :)

Faness Linking a second email address to an account is a tiny step, but it doesn't solve the problem for people who want different users to have different levels of access to various budgets. Again, this feature did exist in the old YNAB.

Hi Coral Wildebeest !

This feature was able to exist in YNAB 4 because it wasn't a cloud based program. Since the file had to be manually adjusted, that file could be made available in different areas (usually through Dropbox). There's no physical file to alter in the web based version of YNAB which makes things a little trickier.

You can share any ideas you have directly with our development team by submitting a Feature Request.

Faness I hate to bring up your competitors, but this is a tool that Quickbooks and Quicken have each incorporated for a number of years. You can create multiple user accounts, including different types, such as administrator, accountant, read-only, etc. And this, they do in the cloud. So to say that it can't be done because your new version is in the cloud is not completely fair. 

Cadet Blue Saxophone I never meant to insinuate it can't be done, just that it's a tricky thing to accomplish - not only because of cloud-based access, but also determining the approach to take. As you mentioned, Quicken has account types. If we decided to follow that method, our development team would need to build in those access limitations for each type. We also have to determine how to maintain a household subscription that can be shared outside of the household. I understand your point, it's just the details we have to get ironed out and then execution. :)

You can let our development team know what you'd prefer to see by filling out the form linked above! 

Faness It's all about the money

Peace_Lover This is a great idea to implement while they work on the more complete solution. shouldn't be too difficult to get into the coding.

Hi Khaki Pony ! You bring up some great points. If you haven't already, would you mind submitting a Feature Request to let our developers know?

Earlier this year, we launched the ability to sign up, and sign in, to YNAB using Google Single Sign-On (SSO), and link a secondary account. You can find more about that here!

Nicole at YNAB Oh, I see the SSO thing probably solves this (for people who use google auth). In any case this is something your security champions should be adamantly pushing for so you have a more secure and trusted thing, rather than something you are waiting for some random concerned user to log a Feature Request for.

Khaki Pony They are absolutely looking into it and weighing the options! Google SSO was the most recent addition to this aspect of YNAB—but we're always looking to improve.

Feature Requests are just one way we track user feedback, as we decide what comes next. Here is our security policy, if you're curious!

Nicole at YNAB This gives them access without a password.
But it gives them the same access as if they had the password.
Which is kind of the point about not handing out your password - because it gives them complete access to everything and sometimes you don't want to do that -- especially when they are new and you don't really want someone "playing" with a mature budget until they have some familiarity.

This overall topic is now ~8 months old based on what I can find on this forum.
I guess I'm now curious if anyone is actually planning on doing anything about this request.  8 months is a lot of development time.

Cadet Blue Nomad 

it feels like they are iterating it the right direction.  First separate access, then individualize permissions.  And the Google SSO is a better security approach to be sure.

Beige Mask They don't have separate access yet.  Well, I guess they do if you use Google SSO but then they have a separate access to everything as Admin.  Might has well give them your password and login credentials for all the good it does you.
At the very least, they need to have the ability to create a budget that you can show/hide from others as necessary in a household.  I would desperately love my kids to use this, but not have access to all my spending and be able to modify it as they see fit.

Hi Magenta Violin !

To answer this question, I want to start with a bit of history. YNAB started as a computer program (actually, a spreadsheet, and then a computer program). For the desktop version of YNAB, there was no login requirement. It was a desktop program, downloaded to a computer, only accessible from a computer with the program installed. This allowed for Household use. YNAB could be downloaded on the family computer in the living room and accessed, as needed, by any household member with access to that computer. 

We wanted to keep that same Household approach with the newer version of YNAB. Anyone in a home could potentially log in with the same email address and password, and maintain their own personal budget (since multiple budgets are allowed in the same account). The Google SSO allows for more than one email address to be connected, but it still accesses the same account. Since separate log ins don't change the account itself, sharing a password was a simpler approach.

That's not to say everyone should be sharing your account. If you're not comfortable sharing your budget with someone, it's probably best they have their own account. My husband and I have a number of shared accounts, and we know the login credentials for those accounts - I trust him to have access to our budget because he knows the inner workings. However, if I wanted to share my budget with someone who wasn't my husband (or other relative in my household), I'd take the information I wanted them to see and send it to them by either exporting my budget, sending screenshots, etc.

We've learned, as voiced in this thread, that not everyone shares this opinion. Some users want the option to share an account with someone, while keeping their budget private, and we're working on how best to move forward with that in mind. :)

Magenta Violin It's really not as deep as you're making it out to be. You are really reaching if you think a shared sign-on is the same thing as dehumanizing someone. It has nothing to do with control over someone else or trying to take away agency. How many people would anyone want to share a personal budget with? In most households, it is most likely going to be the adults (husband & wife, husband & husband, wife & wife, etc). If you cannot share one password with a significant other, then you have other problems. If you are starting to add in kids, it still shouldn't be a non-starter either. You aren't handing over any information other than what's in your budget. 

And if you really do value your email address that much, why not just create a new family address that you only use for things like YNAB where you will be sharing the log-on? Gmail is free; it's what I did with my husband for our banking apps and such. That way you aren't giving out your real email address (which doesn't do anything anyway. Unless you are also handing over the password to said email). 

And no, wanting different access levels is not the same as turning people into sixties-era housewives. There are a lot of perfectly reasonable explanations for wanting it. In my house, for example, my husband leaves most of the budgeting and figuring to me. I have the better head for numbers and money, so he likes it better when we discuss our goals and expectations and then I take care of making it happen. He will use YNAB to make sure there is money in a category he needs to use and then log his transactions, but he doesn't like to touch much else for fear of messing things up. He would love it if we could lock his access down more so he can feel assured that he isn't throwing categories out of whack.

I think you're trying very hard to find some evil conspiracy where there is none to be found. 

Coral Battery That's pretty complicated.  I'd be happy if I could tag a budget as read or read/write to another login identity.  You've set it up as a rather complicated bureaucracy.  I don't have that many people in my house.  

Cadet Blue Nomad 

I would be happy with Full Access or No Access on a per budget basis.  Honking as a programmer, that seems MUCH easier than fine tuning pieces of the interface to be read only.

Beige Mask It would be the first step.  Read-only would also be trivial as this entire system is based on a rather good database.

Forest Green Lobster Coral Battery just create a new subscription tier called “Family” and you can invite up to 4 users to your billing account. Then you can assign budgets to these new users

Not really sure if increasing revenue and market share is in the product roadmap

Aquamarine Banjo Netflix earned over $500 million last year.  I don't think this is the same.
Not knowing what YNAB does make, I'm willing to guess they don't have a net earnings of this magnitude and could benefit more by focusing on adoption of the product rather than maximizing returns for their stock holders.
Even so, Netflix and others still allows multiple devices to connect and they are still able to make this much in a year.  Not sure how big of a problem this really is.

Sky Blue Saxophone HoneyDue looks like the right idea.
I think they would accomplish a lot if they simply had an option to have a limited number of unique people (using something like Google SSO) to access the account, with the owner deciding what each SSO ID can see or not see.  Of course the next option will be to allow for read-only but still limit the accounts to allow a household to develop the habits.

Til Debt Do Us Part  This. Is. Amazing.   😍 It's about time!!!👌  Thankful that there are brilliant people out there who can create extensions like this... Thank you!

Til Debt Do Us Part Would you know if this can support a split of budgets where A has read/write to one and read-only to another while B has the reverse?

Til Debt Do Us Part Yes it can and this is a pretty great start to addressing the stodgy development teams problems.

S-R I'm glad it helps! Just want to be clear I am Not the brilliant mind that came up with it, just wanted to share! 😁

Khaki Lobster The difficulty with this kind of feature request is it tends to reduce the immediate cash flow of the company.  They have a 34-day promo but it's hardly enough for most people to really understand how to use it.  But the annual price after that is too much for most of my friends.

Had they been given access for a longer period of time, they might have gained a higher perceived value but I'm not their business analyst.

Tan Pony if you shared a bank account with a spouse or significant other, do you share your login information so you each have access to a shared resource?

adriana01 our bank has separate login accounts, as it should.  Both our login accounts have access to each of our shared checking and savings accounts.  We also each have individual accounts that the other person has no access to.  Again, exactly as it should be.  Mine, hers and ours.

Tan Pony your bank clearly has a more advanced online system than my parent's small-town bank!

You will want to check out how to set up Google authentication for YNAB:

https://www.youneedabudget.com/google-single-sign-on-for-ynab-no-password-required/

adriana01 I'm already using Google for authentication. I'm not sure how that helps me. 

Tan Pony I see you posted about this on another thread, and we recommend that if you want to share your budget you connect your accounts via Google: You can connect your individual Google accounts in My Account (https://app.youneedabudget.com/settings).

Chrissy Okay, I see the "secondary".  That's really a weird workaround but might be acceptable.  Thanks.

Gray Wizard 

If you prefer not to share your YNAB credentials, you can connect your YNAB account to your Google logins in My Account. That way, you can both access YNAB and make real-time changes! :)

Hi Khaki Zebra !

Currently, there isn't an option to make certain budgets unaccessible when logging into YNAB. Another user in this thread mentioned Family Budgets, an API extension that Works with YNAB so that users can only see or interact with certain budgets, but it doesn't provide the layout or full features of YNAB.

If you create a separate budget for your business it wouldn't be included in your family budget, but anyone who accesses your YNAB account will have the option of opening the business budget.

You can submit a Feature Request to our product team for further consideration! :)

Faness Ok thanks for the update