
A really simple solution for multi user budgets
Ever since nYNAB came out, I've been requesting on all channels only one feature... the ability to share a budget with someone else.
Here is the thing: I have my own personal budget, my family budget that I want to share with my wife, and my business budget that I want to share with my partner.
I know there is some complication to achieve this, but this week something came to my mind which will solve this issue once and for all.
Ready? Here it is...
Allow us to set a password to enter a budget.
That way I can share my account with whomever I want and only with the password will they be able to access the budgets.
Seriously, I need a solution to this ASAP, I love nYNAB, but the inability to share the a budget really limit how I'm using it. It's excellent for personal budgets, but when there's more than one person in it, nYNAB is not really reliable.
Even more, we used to have this feature back in YNAB4, but lost it in the all new, all better nYNAB.
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Or to password protect the primary budget but not secondary budgets. I still think the solution that is going to work is one that protects YNAB's interests as a company. Even Amazon, with all its capital, has made it so that sharing Prime with other people exposes those sub-accounts' credit cards to control by the primary account, as a way to discourage indiscriminate sharing of Prime benefits. The solution for YNAB is probably something like sub accounts with one-way transparency. So your Uncle Bob would want his own YNAB account because he wouldn't want you to be able to see his, but you wouldn't need to give access to the whole household budget to give your thirteen year old a budget. (And before the choir starts about whether or not you should give a thirteen year old access, YOU COULD. The issue is just that some people would prefer not to, and it's okay to feel both ways about it. I don't even have kids but I can see benefits to both sides.)
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Hey Gray Pegasus this is a pretty popular feature request, and as you can already see, it's pretty deep in how it could be implemented while creating guard rails for the potential that Tan Major presents (ie. indiscriminate sharing). All that to say, it's definitely something we have on our list and I'll add another tick to that!
We actually have a real list where we tally up all the feature requests. And then our Design team walks through them in our regular research cycles to determine what’s next in YNAB.
I know this isn't ideal, but you may find that it's worth the extra subscription to run your business budget with your business partners in a completely different account. After all, if you feel like you're limited, $4.17 each month might be worth the potential of really unleashing the power of the YNAB method with your business partners!
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Implementing a robust UAC system would not be difficult. It just needs to be well thought out.
All that is required is multiple YNAB accounts and access permissions on a per-budget basis. The number of accounts that a subscriber can share their budgets with and/or the number of budgets an account can own could be limited based on subscription tiering... that's something that other subscription software has built into their pricing model.
Furthermore, you could also give user accounts admin vs. read vs. write access to a budget.
You could also go a step further and be able to transfer a budget "ownership" from one account to another.
This also allows better control over passwords since it eliminates the need for password sharing.
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Thanks for this Reiji ! I am surprised that this is not a feature of YNAB already, considering all of the articles already published extolling the importance of budgeting with a joint account ( https://www.youneedabudget.com/category/budgeting-with-partner/ ). I've been reading over these articles, but although they all repeat how important it is to operate from a shared account, none of them address how to actually do this within YNAB. Are we supposed to both add the joint account to our own YNAB instances? If so, we're going to be doubling the work of reconciling purchases and there's a high likelihood that we'll reconcile differently.
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Since my wife and I are starting fresh this new year, last night she told me we should get a joint account so we can manage our budget online. Again, the problem with this is that we would be forced to log in and out of our personal accounts each time we have to enter a transaction.
Again, there is no clear solution for this issue so far, and not clear ETA on when it will be.
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Years later, I came back to check YNAB out again.
Still no translations. Still no multiuser support. But you expect me to pay for an incomplete product anyway. I think I'm just going to forget this ever existed because it's frustrating to know a product exists that my wife would actually use, but you refuse to enable us to do so.
Multiuser should have been released on day 1. I can't believe your user base puts up with your bullshit.
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Add another one for shareable password protected budgets. Would love to be able to create a seperate budget for each of my kids to teach them financial control and responsibility without exposing our own personal budgets. Not sure I would be willing to pay an subscription for each of my children, if this was for a business sure, but not for teaching kids. There are other less convenient solutions that wouldn't cost anything and that's not to devalue YNAB, just looking at the cost / benefit ratio.
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After getting a new phone, I found that I cannot use YNAB Classic any more, so I have switched everything over to the new subscription online only version. I am fine with that but not with paying TWICE just so that my wife can also access our finances. Is it really correct that she has to pay a separate sub?
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Found this app on the 'Works with YNAB' page- https://familybudgets.online/ Has anyone tried it? Wondering if it will address the issue of being able to share a budget with a business partner without exposing personal budgets.
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For those willing to buy additional subscriptions for these use cases - you wouldn't necessarily have to log in / log out to work between different accounts. You could use a different browser or an icognito window. For example: Family budget in normal chrome window - primary account, Business account in edge / firefox / or safari with second account.