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Keeping one book with family or a team

Two people running the same money out of two phones end up reconciling by message: did you already log the fuel? A shared space removes that step. Everyone in the space works on the same accounts and the same movements, and a change made on one phone appears on the others.

It is worth being clear about what that means before starting one: a shared space is not a private book with a shared corner. Everything in the space is visible to every member of it. The one exception is the receipt files: the photos and PDFs attached to movements are kept under the account of whoever attached them, and only that person can open them.

Creating one, and joining one

Both live in one place — Settings → Cloud Sync → Shared space, which appears once the phone is signed in with a Google or Apple account. There is no other way in or out. Without a space, the screen has two cards: Create a shared space, with an optional name, and Join with a code.

• Creating a space takes a Premium subscription of one's own, paid: the 14-day trial does not create spaces, and a member who is Premium because of a space cannot use that to found a second one. The book on the phone moves up into the new space; nothing is deleted.
• Joining is free. A guest never needs a subscription — that is the point of the feature — and, from version 1.7.4, does not need to have synced before.
• Creating a space, generating an invite for it and joining it each ask for explicit agreement — Share household data — that the records, and the name and email of the account, will be visible to the other members.

Invite codes

Inside the space, Generate invite code shows a 12-character code, in three groups, with buttons to copy it and to share it in a message. From version 1.7.4:

• a code works once — the person who joins with it uses it up — and expires in 7 days;
• only the person who created the space generates codes; the other members read Only the person who created this space can invite new members.;
• the codes not yet used are listed under Pending invites, each with its expiry date, and each can be cancelled there: it stops working at once.
• the code is shown on one line, made smaller when the screen is narrow, beside the copy and share buttons;
• joining reads the code first, before the agreement and What about your data?: a code already used or cancelled is refused at once with This invite has already been used or was cancelled. Ask for a new code., and an expired one with This invite has expired. Ask for a new code.

The card also shows how many members the space has and, under Members, each member's name and email.

What happens to the records already on the phone

This is the decision worth taking slowly, because it is asked once, when joining: after the code and the agreement, the box What about your data? offers two buttons.

• Bring my data. The accounts and movements already on the phone become part of the shared book, visible to every member.
• Start fresh. The phone is cleared and filled with the space's records instead. Nothing is destroyed: the personal copy stays in the cloud under the account that joined, which is also what a later departure falls back on. From version 1.7.4 what only this phone held for the personal book — the reconciliation rules, the statement-import history and the receipt-reading learnings tied to the person's own accounts, categories and suppliers — is kept on the phone too, and comes back on leaving.

Two accounts with the same name stay two

Two people joining the same space, each with an account called "Savings", keep two accounts. An account is identified by a code of its own, never by its name — which is also why renaming an account never loses it, and why the two do not quietly become one. Records that genuinely were entered twice can be found under Settings → Premium → possible duplicates, where which one survives is a choice, not a guess.

The same is allowed inside one person's book — two accounts in different banks may share a name. Saving an account under a name already used on the phone therefore only warns and asks to confirm; it never blocks.

Premium inside a space

One subscription covers the space: a member of a space whose subscriber is paying gets Premium without buying anything. Two details are worth knowing, because they are visible in use:

• The entitlement is written by the server after it checks the subscription with the store — never by the app on its own.
• It is granted with a time limit of 35 days, renewed whenever the subscriber's app re-checks the subscription. The practical consequence: if the person paying does not open ZeniCash for more than 35 days, the other members lose Premium until they do. Members keep their records either way — what lapses is the Premium features, not the data.

Leaving a space

Leaving is also done from Settings → Cloud Sync → Shared space, with Leave, and it needs a connection: the app first makes sure everything on the phone has reached the space, and refuses to leave rather than lose anything if it cannot.

• Leaving while others remain returns the phone to the personal book kept in the cloud as it was when you joined or created the space. What was recorded inside the space in the meantime — your own movements included — stays with the space and its remaining members. For whoever created the space, that is the book as it was on the day of creation. From version 1.7.4 the confirmation box says so, and the book comes back with what lived only on this phone — the reconciliation rules, the statement-import history and the receipt-reading learnings.
• Leaving as the last member closes the space. The space's records are first copied up into the personal book, so they leave with the person leaving; nothing is deleted. From version 1.7.4 the box says so: You are the last member, so the space closes. Its data stays on this device and in your personal cloud backup. To share again, you will need to create a new space.
• Premium borrowed from the space ends on departure. From version 1.7.4 leaving also cancels the invite codes the person had generated that nobody has used yet.

From version 1.5.0 the dashboard says what it is doing in the seconds between the two steps — "Bringing your personal book back…" — instead of showing balances at zero; if there is no connection at that moment it says so, and the next sync with a connection brings the book. One consequence of leaving last is worth knowing: the founder's book then holds everything the space held, including what other members brought, as the founder's own.

What the others can see

Everything in the shared book: accounts, balances, movements, entities and any tax numbers recorded against customers and suppliers — plus the name and email of the account each member signed in with. It is a deliberate transfer of data between people, which is why the app asks before it happens; the Privacy Policy describes it in section 2.3b.