Help / Households & Members

Roles and permissions

Every member of a household has a role that determines what they can do. There are three roles.

Viewer

Can see everything — accounts, transactions, categories, rules, reminders, the cashflow dashboard — but can't change anything. Good for:

  • A family member or accountant who should have visibility without being able to edit.
  • Giving yourself a read-only alternate account (e.g., for demos).

Viewers see Edit and Create buttons disabled or hidden, and their changes are rejected by the server even if they somehow bypass the UI.

Editor

Can do everything a Viewer can, plus create, edit, and delete the core data: accounts, transactions, categories, rules, reminders. This is the role most household members should have.

Editors cannot:

  • Invite new members.
  • Remove existing members or change their roles.
  • Rename the household.
  • Delete the household.

Anything that affects the membership or identity of the household itself is Owner-only.

Owner

Full control. Owners can do everything an Editor can, plus:

  • Invite, remove, and re-role members.
  • Rename the household.
  • Revoke and resend pending invitations.
  • Access the Settings page (only Owners see it in the profile panel).

Every household must have at least one Owner at all times. LedgerBear won't let you remove the last Owner or demote the last Owner to a lower role — the system would have no one with authority to manage membership.

Changing a member's role

An Owner can change any other member's role (including promoting an Editor to Owner). See Changing a member's role or removing them.

Owners can also demote themselves to Editor or Viewer, but only if at least one other Owner exists. This is useful when two people share a household and want to trade off who manages membership.

Why not more granular permissions?

LedgerBear intentionally keeps the role model simple. Most households have between one and three people, and a three-role model (look, edit, manage) covers the common cases without making permissions a chore. If you need a finer split — e.g., "can edit transactions but not reminders" — the cleanest workaround is to use separate households for separate scopes of work.