Pools, members and roles

Everything in Budget Smugglers lives in a pool: accounts, transactions, budgets, bills, loans and the rest. You can be in more than one pool, and each pool has its own members and settings. Changes show up for everyone in the pool.

Household and business pools#

A pool is one of two kinds:

• A household is for personal and family money. A business’s accounts can sit here too, kept apart. See Businesses.
• A business belongs to a business. Staff you invite only ever see that business, never your own money.

The kind changes a few things, like the starter categories and which steps the setup wizard shows. A business pool starts with categories such as Owner’s drawings.

If you have both, a household pool and a business pool, pooled reports can show them together.

Switching pools#

The pool switcher sits at the top of the sidebar and shows the pool you’re in. Click it to see your Pools and pick another. You land on that pool’s dashboard.

To make a new pool, open the switcher and choose New pool. You go through the same pool settings as your first one, then the setup wizard for the new pool.

Inviting people#

If you create a link, share it however you like. Each link works once and expires in 7 days. The Invitations tab lists links that haven’t been used yet, with options to resend or revoke them.

The person opening the link sees who invited them, to which pool, and with what role. They can sign in, or create an account if they don’t have one. Pool invites are a way in even while sign-up is invite only.

Roles#

Every member has a role. A role decides what they can do, and which accounts they see without anything shared with them.

Role	What they can do	Accounts they see
Owner	Full control, including deleting the pool.	All
Admin	Everything except deleting the pool.	All
Editor	Manage money data (accounts, imports, budgets, bills and so on), but not members or roles. Can export reports.	All
Contributor	View everything, import statements and categorise transactions.	All
Viewer	Read-only.	All
Kid	Read-only, and can’t see the member list.	Only accounts shared with them
Bookkeeper	Same as Editor.	Business accounts only, plus anything shared with them

Only owners and admins can manage members and roles, change pool settings and read the audit log.

A few rules keep things safe:

• You can only give out permissions you have yourself.
• Only owners can make someone an owner, or change or remove another owner.
• A pool always needs at least one owner.

Custom roles#

The Roles tab lists the built-in roles and any your pool has added. Choose New role to make your own. Give it a name, tick its permissions, and choose:

• Sees by default: All accounts, Personal accounts, Business accounts or Only what’s shared.
• With those accounts: Everything the permissions allow, or Look only.

A custom role can only be deleted when nobody has it.

Changing someone’s role#

On the Members tab, pick a new role from the dropdown next to their name. To take someone out of the pool, remove them there. They lose access straight away.

Who sees what#

You can share more, or less, with one person than their role gives them. On the Members tab, open the access button next to their name. For each business and each account, choose:

• Role default
• Full access
• Read-only
• Hidden

Sharing a business covers every account in it, including new ones. You can also tick Extra permissions on top of their role.

The Who sees what tab shows the result for everyone at once: who Can change, who Can see, and what’s Hidden, account by account. Owners always see everything.

Pool settings#

Open Settings › Pool. Owners and admins can change:

• The name, kind, timezone, currency, number and date style, week start, financial year and capital gains rules.
• Use AI for merchants Budget Smugglers doesn’t recognise. This is off until you turn it on. See Auto-categorising.
• Default view under Reports, when the pool has businesses. See Businesses.

Settings › Pool also holds the price feed settings for shares and crypto.

Require two-step sign-in#

Owners can make every member use two-step sign-in or a passkey. Turn on Require it for all members under Require two-step sign-in. Members without a second step are asked to set one up before they can see anything in the pool.

You need two-step sign-in or a passkey yourself before you can turn this on. See Signing in and two-step.

Leaving or deleting a pool#

Both are in the Danger zone at the bottom of Settings › Pool.

• Leave pool takes you out of it. You lose access until someone invites you back. If you’re the only owner, make someone else an owner first.
• Delete pool is for owners only. It permanently deletes every account, transaction, budget and bill in the pool, for every member. You type the pool’s name to confirm.