Sharing Finances with Your Household in Kemback

Money is rarely one person’s business. Couples share rent and groceries, parents keep an eye on a teenager’s account, and some people want their accountant to see the numbers at tax time. At the same time, almost everyone has something they’d rather keep to themselves: a personal card, a savings account for a surprise, or simply the account they had before they met.

Kemback is built around households for this. Everyone you invite signs in with their own login, sees the shared accounts, and keeps their private accounts private. This guide covers inviting people, choosing roles, keeping accounts private, and what happens if someone leaves.

How a household works

When you sign up, Kemback creates a household with you as its owner. Everything you add (accounts, categories, budgets, bills, rules) belongs to that household.

Each person in it is a member with one of four roles:

Role	What they can do
Owner	Everything, including inviting people, changing roles and removing members
Editor	Add and change accounts, transactions, budgets, bills and rules
Viewer	Look, but not change anything
Advisor	Look, but not change anything; meant for an accountant or financial planner

Every member sees the household’s shared accounts. A private account is visible only to the member who owns it. Other members see neither the account nor its transactions, and it isn’t counted in their totals.

Households are kept apart from each other in two layers: in the app itself and in the database. One household’s data can’t be read from another.

Step 1: Verify your email

Before you can invite anyone, you need to have verified your own email address. If you haven’t, a banner at the top of every page says so and has a Resend link button, and the invite form shows “Verify your own email address first.”

Step 2: Invite someone

Only owners can invite. Open Members from the sidebar. The page explains the basic promise: “Everyone in this household sees its shared accounts. Private accounts stay private.”

In the Invite someone card:

1. Email: the address they’ll sign in with.
2. Role: choose one of
   • Editor: can change things
   • Viewer: can look
   • Advisor: an accountant or planner
3. Choose Send invitation.

You’ll see “Invitation sent.” The invitation appears under Open invitations with its role, and you can Revoke it there if you change your mind or typed the wrong address.

New members can’t be invited directly as owners. If you want a second owner, invite them as an editor and change their role once they’ve joined.

What the person you invite does

They receive an email with a link. It opens a page headed Household invitation:

• If they already have a Kemback account, they sign in and choose Accept invitation.
• If not, they create an account first, with the same email address the invitation was sent to.

A few safeguards to know about:

• The link works once.
• It expires after 7 days. If it lapses, send a new one.
• Only the invited email address can accept it. A forwarded link won’t let someone else in.

Once they accept, they appear under People on the Members page, and the household appears in their household menu at the top of the sidebar.

Step 3: Decide what’s shared and what’s private

When anyone adds an account on the Accounts page, the Add an account form has a box: Private: only I can see this account. Tick it, and the account is yours alone. It shows a Private badge in your account list, and the stat card at the top tells you how many of your accounts are private.

A common setup for a couple (more on this in private accounts in a shared budget):

• Shared: joint checking, the household credit card, the mortgage, a joint savings account.
• Private, Alex: a personal card, a savings account from before the relationship.
• Private, Sam: a personal checking account for fun money.

The shared budget, bills and reports then cover the joint finances, while each person’s private accounts appear only for them.

A few things follow from privacy that are worth knowing:

• Exports respect it. When a member downloads everything from Your data, another member’s private accounts aren’t included.
• Alerts are personal. Each member chooses their own alerts and weekly summary on the Alerts page: “These are yours: other members choose their own.”

Step 4: Change roles as things change

On the Members page, an owner sees a role menu next to each person. Change it and the new role applies right away. Some typical changes:

• A teenager who’s been a viewer for a year starts managing their own spending: make them an editor.
• Your partner wants to manage member settings too: make them an owner.
• Tax season is over: remove the advisor, and invite them again next year.

The household always keeps at least one owner. The last owner can’t be demoted and can’t leave, which prevents a household from ending up with no one able to manage it.

Step 5: Removing someone, or leaving

Next to each member, an owner sees Remove. Next to yourself, you see Leave.

Kemback asks you to confirm and tells you what will happen:

• “Remove [email]? Their private accounts move to a new household of their own.”
• “Leave this household? Your private accounts will move to a new household of your own.”

That last part matters in real life. When a couple separates, or an adult child sets up on their own, nobody’s private data is left behind or exposed. Each person’s private accounts move with them into a household they own, and a person who leaves their only household gets a new one. A removed member loses access immediately.

Shared accounts stay with the household. If the shared history needs dividing, each person can download a copy from Your data before anyone leaves.

Keeping track: the activity log

Open Activity in the sidebar to see every membership change in the household: households created, invitations sent and revoked, members joining, leaving or being removed, roles changed, and accounts added or moved in and out. Each entry has its date and time.

The log is tamper-evident. Each entry is chained to the one before it, so changing or deleting an old entry breaks the chain. The top of the page shows a badge such as History verified (128 events). If the chain ever failed to check, the badge would say where.

More than one household

You can belong to several households, for example your own and an elderly parent’s whose bills you help with. Switch between them with the Household menu at the top of the sidebar. Each one has its own accounts, budget, members and roles, and nothing crosses between them.

Tips for sharing money well

• Agree on what’s shared before you invite. Kemback makes either choice easy, but it’s a conversation, not a setting.
• Give the least access that works. A viewer can still see everything shared. Editors are for people who’ll actually enter and categorize transactions.
• Use rules to keep categories consistent. When two people categorize, “Dining out” and “Restaurants” can drift apart. A few rules keep the budget clean.
• Revisit roles once a year. People’s needs change; access should too.

The iPhone app, which is in beta, works with the same households, so each member can check the shared accounts from their phone.

#households #couples and money #kemback guides

This article is general information, not financial, tax or legal advice. For decisions about your situation, talk to a qualified professional.