Learn - Sharing a Budget

Direct sharing with named people. Three permission levels.

A budget can be private to you, shared directly with specific people you invite, or published as a public budget that signed-in users with the link can read. This page covers the Shared mode: invitations by email, three permission levels, what happens to your collaborators when your subscription ends or your account goes away, and how blocking works in the invite flow.

For publishing a budget as a read-only template people can add from a link, see Public Budgets. The two modes are exclusive; a budget is in one state at a time.

Sharing is a Premium feature for the budget owner. A budget can have up to 5 people on its direct sharing list, including co-owners and pending invitations. Collaborators do not need Premium themselves to view or edit a budget that has been shared with them.

A budget is in one of three states at any time. The state is set on the Edit Budget dialog, in the Access Level dropdown.

Private. Only you can access the budget. The default for new budgets.
Shared. You invite specific people by email. Each person sees the budget the same way you do, with edits restricted by their permission level.
Public. Anyone with the link can read the budget. See Public Budgets.

A Shared budget cannot be switched directly to Public. The dropdown hides the Public option while collaborators are present, and the section shows a note: Shared budgets cannot be made public. To publish a budget that is currently shared, switch it back to Private first (which revokes everyone’s access), then to Public.

Why is Shared to Public blocked? Public budgets are readable by signed-in users with the link, including content your collaborators contributed. Forcing the path through Private makes you revoke their access deliberately, rather than exposing their contributions without their consent.

Open the Budgets page, tap the budget so it is selected, then tap the pencil-icon Edit Budget button on the toolbar. The dialog title is Edit Private Budget when the budget is private, Edit Shared Budget once it is shared, or Edit Public Budget when it is public.

Scroll to the Access Level section. Switch the dropdown to Shared. The Sharing section expands below it, showing the collaborator count, an add-share button, and the Show Full Sharing Details toggle.

If you are not on Premium, the Sharing section is replaced by an upgrade to Premium prompt. Tapping it takes you to the billing screen.

Inviting someone

Tap the plus button at the top right of the share list. A new row appears with an email input and a permission dropdown.

Email address. The email of the person you want to invite. The input placeholder is user@example.com.
Permission. View Only, Can Edit, or Owner (described in the next section).

Tap the checkmark to send the invitation. The cancel button (an X next to the checkmark) drops the row without sending.

The other person gets a Budget Invitation notification. They open it, tap Accept (or Decline, or Decline & block user), and the budget appears in their Budgets list. Until they accept, their row in your share list shows a clock icon. After they accept, the icon becomes a green checkmark.

You cannot invite yourself; the dialog rejects the invite if the email matches your own.

If you hit the invite limit

The app caps you at 10 invitations per budget per hour. The cap is per budget (each budget has its own counter) and counts every invitation you send in a rolling 60-minute window, including invites you later cancel. Past the cap, the next invitation surfaces a Rate limit exceeded toast and the share row stays open until you wait it out.

Why is there a per-hour cap? Sharing is meant to be deliberate. The cap stops a typo loop or a paste-the-wrong-list mistake from spamming twenty unrelated inboxes; it is far higher than any real household or team would hit in a normal session.

The cap does not apply to permission changes, revocations, or accepting invites; only to new invitations.

The three permission levels

The permission picker has three options. The labels in the dropdown are literal: View Only, Can Edit, and Owner.

View Only

A viewer sees the entire budget the way you do: the planner, the reports, history, accounts, items, categories. They cannot make any change. Add-transaction, edit-item, mark-paid, resolve, and undo are all blocked for them.

Useful for a partner or family member who wants to follow along, or an accountant or financial advisor reviewing your books.

Can Edit

An editor can change the budget’s content. They can add and edit accounts, categories, items, and transactions; mark events paid; resolve events; and undo entries from history. The Match Transactions dialog is available to editors who themselves have Premium.

Editors cannot:

Manage sharing (invite, change permissions, revoke).
Change the access level (Private, Shared, Public).
Delete the budget.
Rename the budget or change its theme. The Edit Budget dialog opens read-only for them.

Useful for a roommate, partner, or co-founder who is actively budgeting alongside you.

Owner

A second owner has every permission you do, including managing sharing, changing the access level, and deleting the budget. There can be more than one Owner; one of them is always the original creator (a lightbulb icon next to that row marks them).

Owners cannot change each other’s permissions. If you promote someone else to Owner, you cannot demote them; they must demote themselves or leave. You also cannot remove their access; the trash icon next to another owner’s row is disabled with a tooltip explaining why.

Why this default? Promoting to Owner is one-way. A confirmation dialog titled Promote to Owner appears before the change. It explains that the new owner will have full control of the budget (including the ability to delete it and to remove other users), and that you will not be able to revoke their owner access yourself. The same warning is shown if you grant Owner at invite time, in a dialog titled Grant Owner Access. Reserve Owner for people you would trust with that level of authority. Once you tap confirm, the only path back is for the new owner to step down themselves.

Promoting someone to Owner only succeeds if that person also has a Premium subscription. The app rejects the change with a toast if they do not, since an owner without Premium would lose ownership privileges as soon as their non-existent subscription ended.

The dialog also blocks demoting the only Owner. If you are the sole owner and try to change your permission, an alert titled Cannot Change Permission tells you to promote another user first. With a co-owner present, demoting yourself opens the Change Your Permission? confirmation that lists what you are about to lose.

Live updates

When one person edits a shared budget, everyone else with it open sees the change shortly after. Move an event to a new date, mark a line paid, add a transaction; the other people watching the same budget see the update without refreshing.

There is nothing to enable. It works automatically as long as the people involved have the budget open.

Why is this default-on? The alternative (manual refresh) would create timing disputes. If you marked rent paid and your partner marked it paid five seconds later because they had not seen your change, you would each be looking at a different state and have to sort out the duplicate. Live updates remove the question.

Inside the Sharing section there is a toggle labeled Show Full Sharing Details. Off by default.

When off, editors and viewers see only the owner who shared the budget with them, not the rest of the collaborator list. When on, every collaborator can see every other collaborator.

Pick whichever fits your group. A roommate or family situation often wants it on, so everyone knows who has access. A workplace or coaching situation might want it off, so a temporary edit grant does not expose every other shared account.

Revoking access

Tap the trash icon next to a collaborator’s row. The confirmation depends on the row’s state.

Pending invite. The dialog is titled Cancel Invitation (or Cancel Owner Invitation for a pending Owner row). Confirming cancels the invite. The other person never gains access.
Accepted share, View Only or Can Edit. The dialog is titled Revoke Access. Confirming revokes their access immediately. They get an Access Removed notification.
Accepted Owner, someone else. The trash icon is disabled with the tooltip Cannot remove other owners. They have to leave the budget themselves; you cannot remove another owner. To step down before they do, you have to demote yourself first.
Accepted Owner, you, with co-owners present. The trash icon revokes your own access. The budget continues with the remaining owners.
Accepted Owner, you, no co-owners. The trash icon is disabled with the tooltip Cannot leave: you are the only owner. Promote another collaborator to Owner first, or delete the budget outright.

Re-inviting someone you previously revoked is a fresh invitation: their old share is fully removed, not paused, so they appear back at the top of the share list with a clock icon and you choose their permission again.

Switching back to Private

Open the Access Level dropdown and pick Private. If the budget has collaborators, a Make Private? confirmation appears, naming how many users will lose access. Confirming revokes everyone in one step. The same dialog warns that previous shares are not preserved: switching back to Shared later requires re-inviting each person.

Leaving a shared budget

If you are not an owner of a shared budget, the Edit Budget dialog opens read-only. Below the budget fields, a Leave Budget button appears.

Tap it, confirm the Leave Budget dialog, and your access is revoked from your end. The owner gets a User Left Budget notification. To rejoin, you would need a new invitation.

Owners cannot use Leave Budget; the button only appears for non-owners. To step away as an owner, either demote yourself first (with a co-owner present) and then leave, or delete the budget if you are the only owner.

What happens when Premium ends

A budget’s shares only stay live while at least one of its owners is on Premium. The app handles this automatically when your Premium period actually ends (not the moment you click cancel; you keep all features through the end of your billing cycle).

If a co-owner is still on Premium, you are demoted to Can Edit on that budget. Your editors and viewers keep their access. The bell-icon panel shows an Owner Access Ended notification naming the budget and your new permission, and the budget keeps working for everyone except that you can no longer manage sharing on it.
If no other owner is on Premium, every editor and viewer on the budget is removed. They each get an Access Removed notification with the reason listed as System (subscription expired). The budget itself stays where it was; you (the owner) can keep using it solo on the free plan, or share again as soon as you renew.

If you cancel Premium and then renew before the period ends, none of this fires; the cancellation is reversed cleanly. See Subscription for the broader picture.

When the owner’s account is deleted

If the only owner of a budget deletes their account, the entire budget goes with them: all accounts, categories, items, history, and pending invites are removed when their account is. Collaborators who had access lose it; the budget cannot be recovered.

If a budget has more than one owner, deleting one owner’s account removes that owner from the share list and leaves the rest of the budget intact. The remaining owners and their editors and viewers keep working unchanged. If every remaining owner happens to delete their account too, the budget itself is removed at that point; the app does not leave a budget alive without at least one owner who can manage it.

The deletion does not surface a notification on the collaborators’ bell icon today. Your collaborators discover the change next time they open their Budgets list (the budget is gone, or simply has one fewer owner). If you are the sole owner of a shared budget and you plan to delete your account, tell your collaborators first, or hand the budget over by promoting one of them to Owner before you delete. Once they have Owner access, they can keep the budget after your deletion.

See Your Account for the deletion flow itself.

Privacy and Blocking

The Privacy & Blocking card on the Settings page is the canonical home for the people you have blocked from inviting you to budgets. Open it from the hamburger menu’s Settings row; the card lists every blocked user with an Unblock button next to them.

Blocking a person prevents them from sending you new budget invitations. The block is one-directional (you blocking them; they may not have blocked you), and it is per-account (it follows you across devices, not per-device).

Decline and block on an invitation

When a budget invitation arrives, the third button under it is Decline & block user. Tap it to do two things at once: clear the notification from your panel, and add the inviter to your blocked-users list.

Why this default? The inviter does not know they were blocked. Decline & block is a privacy-preserving action: the invitation stays “pending” on the inviter’s side, the same way it would if you simply hadn’t responded yet. They never get a “you were blocked” notification, and the invite row in their share list does not say anything different from a regular pending invite. The reason is to keep blocking from becoming a confrontation; if someone is sending unwanted invitations, you can shut the door without escalating.

A plain Decline (without blocking) does the opposite: the invitation is rejected outright, the inviter sees the row disappear from their share list, and they can re-invite you if they want. Decline & block keeps the inviter in the dark and stops their notifications from reaching you in the future.

If you change your mind, open Settings → Privacy & Blocking and tap Unblock next to their name. Past invitations they sent before you blocked do not magically come back; they would need to send a new one.

See Your Account for where the Privacy & Blocking card sits relative to the rest of the Settings page.

Behind the scenes

A few details the screen does not surface directly:

The 10-invitation-per-hour limit counts cancelled invites too. If you invite someone, cancel, and re-invite, both invitations count toward the 10 per budget per hour. Wait the hour out, or send from a different budget; the cap is keyed on the budget, not on you.
Live updates use a per-budget broadcast, not per-user. When any owner, editor, or viewer changes the budget, every other collaborator with the budget loaded gets the change. The fan-out happens on the server; you do not need anything special running on your device.
Permission changes are atomic, including demotions. If a permission update fails partway (network drops, version conflict), the share row reverts to the previous value and a toast surfaces; you do not end up with a halfway state.
Owner promotion checks the target’s Premium status server-side. The frontend allows the picker change optimistically, then the server rejects the promotion if the target is not on Premium. The dropdown reverts and a toast explains what happened. There is no “promotion request” that waits for them to upgrade; either they are Premium when you promote, or you ask them to upgrade first.

Quick reference

If you want to	Do this
Invite someone	Edit Budget, set Access Level to Shared, tap the plus, fill in email and permission, tap the checkmark
Change someone’s permission	Tap their permission dropdown, pick the new level
Cancel a pending invite	Trash icon next to the pending row, confirm
Revoke an accepted share	Trash icon next to the accepted row, confirm
Promote someone to Owner	Their permission dropdown, Owner, confirm the warning
Step down from Owner	Your own permission dropdown, Can Edit or View Only, confirm (requires another Owner)
Switch the budget back to Private	Access Level dropdown, Private, confirm
Leave a shared budget you do not own	Edit Budget, Leave Budget, confirm
Block someone who keeps inviting you	Open the invitation, tap Decline & block user
Unblock someone you blocked earlier	Settings, Privacy & Blocking card, Unblock

Public Budgets: the read-only linked-public mode, distinct from Shared.
Your Public Profile: the public profile other users see when they tap a @username you sent them; the username on a budget invitation is fetched from the same place.
Your Account: where the Privacy & Blocking card lives on Settings, where to delete your account, and what happens to shared budgets if you do.
Subscription: the Premium gate on sharing, the canonical 5-person direct sharing limit, and what changes for collaborators when Premium ends.
Notifications: the bell-icon panel where Budget Invitation, Access Changed, Access Removed, and User Left Budget show up.
Matching and Resolving: how live updates show up while collaborators work in the planner.