Households explained
A household is a workspace. Every account, transaction, category, rule, and reminder in LedgerBear belongs to exactly one household. When you sign in, you're always signed in to one household at a time — the "current" household — and everything you see is scoped to it.
Why households exist
Households let you:
- Share finances with a partner. You and your spouse can both log in, see the same accounts, and work together. Changes one of you makes are visible to the other.
- Keep personal and shared finances separate. You can belong to multiple households — a personal one just for you and a shared one with a partner — and switch between them. Data doesn't leak across.
- Give someone read-only visibility. Invite a family member or accountant as a Viewer so they can see the books without being able to edit.
Who created your household?
The first time someone signs up for LedgerBear, a household is created for them and they become its Owner. Everyone else joins via invitation — either invited to an existing household by an Owner, or (for new signups) by receiving a system-level invitation that lets them create their own household on registration.
The household's name
Every household has a display name, visible in the top-left profile panel under your own name. Owners can rename the household from the Settings page. See Renaming your household.
What's scoped to a household vs. to a user
- Household-scoped: accounts, categories, rules, reminders, transactions, members, invitations, the household name.
- User-scoped: your own name, email, password. These stay with you across any households you belong to.
When you switch households, your identity stays the same (same name, same avatar, same email in the top-left), but everything else in LedgerBear swaps to show the other household's data.
A note on terminology
You may see references to "tenant" in some older docs or error messages. That's an internal synonym for household — they mean the same thing. The UI uses "household" in all modern surfaces.