Fuchsia Cap they don't care.

They think they know better.

Hi Fuchsia Cap !

Currently, there are two options to share your YNAB account with another person - you can share your credentials or use the Google Accounts option. We understand if you don't prefer those options. If you have a moment, would you mind submitting a Feature Request to let us know what you'd like to see? Those go straight to our product team for further consideration. :)

Faness how many requests have already been submitted and rejected on this matter?  I've seen several.

I've never understood that part of the development process.

Hi Cadet Blue Nomad !

We don't discard feature requests. Our designers have a great process for digesting feedback, quantifying how it relates to the YNAB Method and how it might help YNABers reach their goals. They prioritize projects using that data as a guidepost, and keep the requests coded for reference.

While I can't make promises in regards to future features, the feature requests submitted are used to help guide future decisions. 

Cadet Blue Nomad Unfortunately, it is a black box for us users.

Superbone We agree and we're working on changing it to a less "black box" feeling! :)

Faness  Cadet Blue  Hi all, 

I've seen that this has been a request for a while now and I just want to say that I joined the group voice by sending a feature request through the google form. What I need is for my wife to be able to enter the transactions and nothing else. 

Thanks in advance.

Hi Steel Blue Horn !

Thank you for taking the time to submit a feature request! We want to take a look at making YNAB easier for multiple people to use in the future, but it will take us some time to get there. In the meantime, we're collecting ideas and feedback for how YNABers would like to see an option like this function, so thanks again for weighing in! :)

Hi Cadet Blue Nomad !

We're always looking for ways to improve the YNAB experience. When the online version of YNAB was launched, the only way to share an account was to also share your login credentials. Since then, we've added the option to connect Google accounts as an alternative, so you can share an account without sharing login credentials.

We understand that some YNABers would like to see more options here - multiple logins for a single account, the option to password protect certain budgets inside of an account, and so on - but we haven't yet decided on our next steps for account accessibility. The Feature Request form lets our development team know what you'd like to see, but there's still a process for deciding on what features to implement and how to do so.

We're still looking into how best to improve here, but it may be a while before any changes are made.

Faness   Hi, I will submit a feature request but would simply like to weigh in here as another user wanting subordinate accounts.  Read only access etc. for other family members.   This is most likely a marketing and pricing exercise with the company so I'd also like to add that the only reason I did not end up paying for this product was because these features were not available.  I'm now looking at it from my google login but this does not offer such access.  Simply put, if this had subordinate accounts...I would pay.

Hi Tan Hammer !

Thank you for weighing in here! We appreciate you submitting a feature request to let us know what you'd like to see moving forward! In the meantime, have you seen the Family Budgets API integration? It doesn't give YNAB features to the users you add, but it does let them see certain budgets and/or categories. Some YNABers have found it to be a very useful add-on! :)

Faness my concern with this is the third partys investment in security of the application. As a contest app, I anticipate a focus on does of delivery taking priority over security.

How does the third party security compare to the security emphasis of the YNAB development teams?

Cadet Blue Nomad That's a great question! As part of the contest, our development team did take a look at the integrations to make sure they followed our API Terms of Service and worked to our standards. Our Terms of Service forbids certain security risks (such as storing credentials), but since we don't provide support for those integrations, we aren't able to help if something goes wrong.

Slate Gray Clarinet Ah, I found the Google SSO, which mostly solved my problem: we're now both logged in to YNAB, but also now jointly logged in to Gmail and everywhere else!  So untangling that will be fun. 

May I make one more suggestion?  On the FAQ pages about budgeting jointly, there was nothing about the Google SSO--I had to come here to find that info, then follow a couple more links.  Thanks all.

Hi Slate Gray Clarinet !

Thank you for letting us know that Google SSO information wasn't so easy to find. I'll pass this along to the rest of the team to see if we can't improve things there.

You should be able to add your partner's Google information just to YNAB, so that you're jointly signed into the budget but from your own devices so as not to confuse Gmail and anything else - sorry for the trouble there!

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask!

Faness The latter is Google's problem, not YNAB's necessarily: the SSO screen logs the secondary user into all accounts managed by Google on that browser.  There is no option not to do this.  It is then possible to log the secondary out of all of the other services while remaining logged in to YNAB.

Here's the scenario I think Google was not anticipating:

I logged in to YNAB through my Safari browser on my laptop.  I then navigated through YNAB to get to the My Account screen, where I could click on Secondary.  But now Google wants the username and password of the secondary right away (alternatively, it could send some kind of request to the secondary to answer on their own computer or in a different browser, but it doesn't).  So my husband types in his username and password in the pop-up window; there is nothing in the pop-up window to click explaining the extent of what he is logging in to, or to change that extent.  So now, on my personal laptop, he is logged in across Google; this was quickly confirmed by opening tabs with Gmail and Google Photos, and seeing his account logged in instead of mine.  I was able to toggle back and forth between his account and mine in Gmail without yet being asked to type in his password again.  Whoops on Google's part.  

I think the SSO structure was setup by Google anticipating something more like what I have with my work Gmail and my personal Gmail accounts, which I toggle back and forth between on the same computer all of the time.

Slate Gray Clarinet Thank you for explaining - I understand what you meant now and I've experienced this a few times myself (though, less troublesome since it was on a shared computer anyway). It would be nice for Google to allow you to choose just a tab to log into instead of the entire browser.

In other news, my colleague let me know they were already working on revamping that documentation and it should hopefully be easier to navigate soon. :)

Gold Battery Interesting. That doesn't happen to us. We have a joint email address that we use solely for YNAB. We have multiple budgets but have no problems being logged in simultaneously whether looking at the same budget or different ones. When you get an answer from Faness it would be good to know what the issue was.

Hi Gold Battery !

Sorry fo the trouble! You should be able to log in to multiple YNAB devices at a time. By chance, do you have 2FA in place for the account? If so, you'll need to go through the steps listed on our Two-Step Verification Help Doc to enable it for two people. 

I see Matthew responded to you via email. If you're still having trouble, please let us know!

Hi Spring Green Clarinet !

We're looking into ways of improving expanding access to multiple users. Currently, you can either share your credentials or connect your YNAB account to your Google logins in My Account, in order to give your wife access. 

This is on our radar for the coming year, but I can't say for certain when or how this will change.

Hi Faness ,

Sharing credentials is not an option.

Not sure I understand how i can give her access when I connect my account to my google account, can you elaborate on this?

At the moment, my login credentials to YNAB are separated from google.

Thanks

Spring Green Clarinet If you click on My Account, there's an option to Connect to Google. You can connect your wife's Google account and when she opens YNAB on her phone, she can select to log in using Google. That will allow her to log in without using your credentials.

Faness Except that the Google login never works on any of my devices or computers. A clean, no extensions boot of the browser always gives me this:

Unable to connect to Google. If you are using a popup blocker, temporarily disable it to try again.

Since I have no popup blocker enabled, this is indicative of some other problem.

casner Are you using Google Chrome and logged into your Google account? If so, it should connect without issue. I sent you a quick email to get a screenshot of that error so our Bugs Team can take a look! :)

Faness Thanks! will do it!

Blue Tiger Thank you for weighing in here! We plan on taking a closer look at how to improve YNAB for use between partners in the future. If there are any details you'd like to pass along to our Product Team, please submit a Feature Request. :)

Oh, and I'm not submitting a Feature Request.  Not trying to be mean, but I've been around way too long to be sold on that being worth my time.  I did a whole bunch in the early days (2016) and, shyeah.

Hi Annieland !

I know this feature has been a long time coming, but our team is currently looking into the best way to approach improvements for multi-user budgets. I know this may sound like an empty promise now, but we're working on it and I'm hoping we'll have something to show for it in the not so distant future. :)

In the meantime, it sounds like your son is of high school age and would qualify for our Student Program. Granted, once we've made multi-user budgets more friendly, you may want to move him back to your account, but this would give him his own account to get started in for the time being.

Hey Faness ,

Just out of curiousity, can you give us a rough estimation of this feature?
I've been following this post for more than a year now, but nothing concrete has even been answered ...

By the way, I'm not asking for a specific release date, but more like would it be for example in the third quarter of 2020, the first of 2021 ... something like that.

YNAB is a truly great tool, but the more time passes, the more the lack of this feature is becoming a real deal-breaker ...

Sea Green Case I don't have a definitive roadmap that I can share. We still have a ways to go with design, implementation and testing and each step will vary in length. It is something that's at the top of our radar currently but I can't say for certain how long this feature will take to complete. We try to add features to our What’s Up Next page as they near completion.

Annieland I just gave our 11 year old a budget in my account. But him now being able to see mine made me doubt a little.... 

I talked to him about not sharing with anyone else. That would feel uncomfortable. He’s clever enough not to mess things up. And reliable in general. Still.. fingers crossed....

different log ins would indeed be so much better!

Powder Blue Pony My eight year old has a budget on our account and she likes to add categories during her quiet time on the weekends. I've never considered what would happen if she switched over to our budget, I may have to talk to her about that, lol. She could do some damage.

Ruth Elizabeth when setting it up, it was so clear that if I understand how to switch between budgets, he certainly will too, that I thought I’d better talk about it.

I wouldn’t even mind him nosing around in it a bit. Might make him aware of how much things he takes for granted cost. 

If your daughter is already used to the way she uses YNAB now, she won’t mess things up, will she?

Financial upbringing turns out to be more of a thing than I thought ‘tell now. Good luck both of you Annieland Ruth Elizabeth

Powder Blue Pony Usually she sees me on the laptop looking at the budget and wants to see her budget. She looks over the household budget with me and then I'll switch over to hers. She could probably switch back to the household one if she tried. 

I'm really hoping to help establish some healthy financial habits in our children while they're still home.  

Faness I'd recommend at least putting together a minimum viable product, especially given the demand for this feature. You can give the ability to add user and give only read only as MVP then gauge the feedback and go from there.

Coral Chef More power to you! Creating a budgeting app may not be that hard. The automatic imports I think will be extremely difficult. Judging by the way YNAB has you login to the bank, it seems to be a mixture of web scrapping and API calls. Not to mention they have a 3rd party partner that handles all direct import functionality. Best of luck!

Salmon Cobra Our team is currently looking the best way to improve the multi-user experience. Access is one part, but other pieces to support it and improve visibility are being considered too. We don't have a timeline to share—but it is being worked on. Our Product team would love to know more, if you'd like to share your thoughts.

You may be interested in this blog post, which recommends a set-up that can work for couples in a similar scenario using three budgets. My husband and I followed a similar approach before we got married and combined finances.

Nicole This is a topic that the team is looking to improve since years and still is not placed in a shared Timetable... 

Is any development roadmap available for User to see and understand what the team is working on?

Orange Captain  Helping partners share budgets & budget together is an area we're focused on right now. We don't have a public roadmap, and specific details aren't ready to share yet—but it is one we're excited about. I've asked if we can update to our Up Next page to reflect that!

Alice Blue Harp if they choose not to implement collaboration that’s fine. But I don’t think people should accept what appears to be false advertising.

Account sharing is not a collaboration feature, it’s a security vulnerability.

You are right and I accepted it: I stopped using YNAB and I am moving to a different solution.

If using sticky tape to patch features into the app the design philosophy for YNAB, then adding an option to have a "PIN" or security number to each budget should be an easier implementation — similar to the likes of Netflix. Sharing of budgets where security is similar to the likes of google sheets is no longer necessary.

Then one can share the same account but each user needs a PIN to access 'secured' budgets.

Hi Byrrus !

Sorry for the delayed response here! This feature is on our radar, but hasn't made it to the Up Next page just yet (the Up Next page is reserved for features that are already scheduled for future release). We're working on improving sharing YNAB with a partner, but we need a bit more time to figure out the best way to implement those changes. :)

Faness With Simple Bank closing, I was looking at budget alternatives and decided to give YNAB a try again since it's online based now. After getting my budgets straightened out for myself, and separately my joint account with partner (which I call our operating account for all things house related), I was pretty livid that there was no way to share the "shared budget" without sharing login credentials. I looked everywhere in the settings to find out how to "share" since this was explicitly advertised on the webpage and then sought help online and found this page with other complaints. How are we supposed to budget surprise gifts and other items on our own budget without opening up that information to our partner? This seems to be the ultimate in false advertising at this time and you should at least add an asterisk to *budget together* portion of your webpage indicating that users must share login credentials to do so and open up all their finances to the partner they're sharing with. A typical customer would assume that there would be separate logins (or some restriction) and the ability to share certain budgets and not others. Deeply disappointed right now and will likely seek alternatives without continuing my trial. It doesn't appear, based on the prior comments, that this is a substantive priority at this time.

Gold Wrench if I trust my partner enough to have joint accounts, I would also trust them enough to see (and help develop) the plan for the money in that account.