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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Hey lovely YNAB team. I'm new to the product and have been using it devotedly for January and February. From September through December I was using Every Dollar but your product blows that away. I'm not a big fan of paying for things (ha, I'm on a budget) but your product probably pays for the entire year's subscription in what I save in a single month. Compliments over.... I too would like to be able to have multi-user support. Unless you are single, no one operates their budget in a vacuum. My husband would stop going over so much on groceries if he had easier access to the budget. I just got 1Password family subscription. I suggest you take a look at their model for access. 5 people in a family, all with their own logins and the organizer controls which vaults each user has access to. That model would be perfect for YNAB. You could have two levels of subscription pricing, single and family. Thanks.
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Alice Blue Mixer Welcome to YNAB and to the forum - I'm happy to hear it's making a difference for you!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this and the suggestion! I can't say for certain how we'll implement multi-user features, but they're in the works! Hopefully, we'll have more updates on this in the near future! :)
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Alice Blue Mixer my husband has the app on his phone and he consults available and I have even gotten him to the point of entering spending right when he does it. Huge win for us. So your husband can have access to the budget and not go over budget on groceries (also my husband's problem). He doesn't change any of the budget amounts (although he could). We do that at our budget meeting in front of the computer. That and reconciling is really the only time we use the web based budget. All the rest is done on our phones.
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Hi YNAB! I´m not native English speaking so please accept my appollogies for my language.
I have the same problem with multiple budgets and trying to find some solution to it. As i read in this topic, there was a big request in the past for multiple budget security feature as budget password . Your app is great, but i need to point out that i´m disappointed that 2 years is not enough for implementing such a crucial feature. Yes, there is an option to buy two subscriptions, but isn´t it the opposite way of what you´re teaching? to save money? I think f
Anyway, is there a chance that YNAB would implement this long awaited feature in the near future, i mean this year 2020?
Thank you in advance
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Maroon Panther No need to apologize - we're happy you're here! :)
I can't offer a timeline for our planned improvements to make multi-use easier to manage in YNAB. However, I can say that we're actively working on these changes and we hope to have an update in the near future! I'm not certain if this will be a password-enabled option, but I'll be sure to share once we have more details!
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Faness I'm glad to hear something is in the works! Could you please give us a little more information? I'm just starting off budgeting together with my wife as we've recently moved in together and we're figuring out how to best tackle this. I would really appreciate a little more information (broad strokes is fine) about what this will look like, since I don't want to be spending a whole lot of time and effort only to discover I have to do that all again in a few weeks or months time.
I guess my main question is: Will there be an easy way to set up separate budgets (one personal for me, one family for our shared expenses)?
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Hans You can already set up the separate budgets now. It's only that it's on each person's honor not to load a budget they shouldn't.
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dakinemaui Thanks for your reply. This is what I'm currently setting up to use. I just want to be sure that I'm not going to be doing a lot of work only to find out there will be a better, but different way coming up soon that will require me to overhaul things again.
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Hi Hans !
The improvements we're working on wouldn't interfere with the set up you currently have. We're looking into improving access to budgets, but that won't take away the option to create multiple budgets for you and your partner to share. This hasn't made it to beta testing just yet, but we're getting there!
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Faness Thank you for your quick reply! That's good to hear. If you still need people for beta testing I would like to apply.
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Hans We're currently not looking for beta testers at this time, but thank you for volunteering! If we do open requests for Beta testers I'll be sure to keep this in mind! :)
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I am curious about this multiple budget thing. I can see the following needs.
1. I have a business that I want to manage in YNAB as well as my home budget. Possible now.
2. I have our family budget and I want to set up budgets for kids to manage their own money. I don't want them to be able to see our family budget (in my case I don't care but some people don't want to share their financial details with their kids). This is currently not possible (unable to restrict view of family budget to kids).
3. I have a family budget plus I have a business with another person (not my family). We want the business budget in YNAB too but don't want the business associate to have access to my family budget. This is currently not possible with one YNAB subscription (unable to restrict view of family budget). But I would say that the business should purchase its own subscription as it is a separate legal entity. This setup would also allow access for your accountant if you want. (as an accountant I can tell you I don't want to be I do agree there should be some kind of discount available for multiple subscriptions.
4. I am in a relationship with someone I live with but we maintain separate bank accounts etc. and we share this information with the other person. This would require 3 budgets - yours, mine, and ours. This is currently possible with one YNAB subscription.
5. I am in a relationship with someone I live with but we maintain separate bank accounts etc. and we DO NOT share our personal account information with the other person. This is currently not possible with a single subscription (unable to control who sees what). I (in my personal opinion) do not agree with this model of finances between people in a significant relationship and would rely on trust to have the other person stay out of my budget but I do understand the need for this in some situations. This is also the most complex model because money is moving between the 3 budgets (or at a minimum from each separate one to the joint budget). Regardless of the trust component to say don't look at my stuff, there is the extra work of moving money from my budget to the joint budget which would require entries in both budgets.
Not sure if there are other models. Model 5 may also exist with kid budgets even within a single log in if I want to transfer money to my kids (allowance etc). This inter-budget transactions requirement is the tricky one (not a developer just speaking as a person).
