Family & Team sharing: one budget, separate logins, clear permissions

A shared budget should make it easier to work together. It should not require passing around a password or giving someone access to every budget you have.

Family & Team brings people together in EnvelopeBudget with their own logins, shared subscription coverage, and access you choose for each budget. Your partner can help manage household expenses. A child can work on their own budget. A teammate can review a project budget without changing it.

The screenshots in this walkthrough use sample people and budgets. No real household finances are shown.

Separate logins, one shared plan #

Each member signs in to their own EnvelopeBudget account. You invite them by email rather than sharing your account credentials.

Family & Team members use the family owner's subscription, so they do not need to buy a separate subscription to participate. The family owner can see and edit every budget in the family. Other members see only the budgets they have been given access to.

That last distinction matters. A budget can be private from other members, but it is not private from the family owner.

Choose who can view and who can edit #

Access is assigned per person, per budget:

In this example, Alex is the family owner. Sam can edit Household Budget and Sam's Personal Budget, but has no access to Side Business. Jordan can view Household Budget and has no access to either of the other budgets.

• No access: the member cannot see that budget.
• Viewer: the member can see its accounts, envelopes, transactions, and reports, but cannot change the budget.
• Editor: the member can manage transactions, accounts, envelopes, and allocations.

Editor access is for doing the budgeting work. It does not make someone the budget owner or give them control over inviting and removing budget members or deleting the budget.

For a household, you might give your partner Editor access to Household and Viewer access to a child's budget. For a team, someone entering expenses might be an Editor while someone reviewing spending is a Viewer.

Viewer access covers the whole shared budget, not a hand-picked envelope or account inside it. Use separate budgets when different people need to see different finances.

Invite someone to the budgets they need #

Open Family & Team in the sidebar. From there, you can manage members and family budgets, create another budget, or invite someone to join.

When inviting a person, enter their email address and choose the budgets they should have access to. Select Viewer or Editor for each budget you want to share. Nothing is shared by default.

Here, Casey is being invited to edit Household Budget. Side Business and Sam's Personal Budget are unchecked, so the invitation does not share them. Review those choices, then click Send invitation.

The recipient follows the email invitation link and signs in, or creates an account with the invited email address. After they accept, the shared budget becomes available in their account. Invitation links expire after seven days, so send a new invitation if the old one expires.

There is no need to create a second copy of the household budget. Everyone works from the same accounts, envelopes, and transactions. Load or refresh the page to see the latest changes.

Keep individual budgets separate #

The permissions change what each member sees, not just which buttons they can use.

Sam sees the two budgets Alex shared, with an Editor label on each. Side Business does not appear.

Jordan sees just Household Budget, labeled Viewer. Sam's Personal Budget and Side Business do not appear.

Suppose you manage Household, Jordan's Budget, and Casey's Budget. You can give Jordan Editor access to Jordan's Budget and Casey Editor access to Casey's Budget, without sharing Household or either sibling's budget with them.

As the family owner, you can help with all three. Each child sees only their own budget. The same approach works for a team with separate project budgets.

You can change a member's budget access from Family & Team whenever their responsibilities change. Switch Editor to Viewer when someone only needs to review, or choose No access to stop sharing that budget. Removing access takes effect immediately.

Sharing just one budget outside the family #

You can also invite someone through Budget Settings → Invite New Member. Choose Viewer or Editor and send the invitation for that budget alone.

This is useful for a collaborator who does not belong in your family or team. It does not grant access to your other budgets or extend your family subscription coverage to that person.

A practical starting point #

For couples, start with a shared household budget and give both people the access they need to maintain it. Keep a short check-in for decisions like adjusting grocery funding or covering an overspent envelope.

For families, create separate budgets where privacy between members matters. Explain the difference between Viewer and Editor before inviting someone. Start with Viewer when they only need visibility, and upgrade access when they are ready to help manage the money.

For a team, share only the relevant budgets and review permissions when someone joins, changes responsibilities, or leaves.

Open Family & Team to set up your members and budget access. You can also explore the full sharing and access feature list or start your free trial.