A shared budget without a joint account: two consents, one view

A shared budget without a joint account works when each of you connects your own banks with your own consent, and the app merges both histories into one view without counting the transfers between you as spending or income. No new account, no shared logins, no copying receipts into a spreadsheet. In Kasandro a household has up to four members, each with their own PSD2 consent and their own decision about which account the other person sees.

Why a joint account does not solve it

Ania and Tomek (sample data) earn well and still do not know where the money goes, because the money lives in six places: his account, her account, the joint account opened for the mortgage, his sole-trader business account, two savings accounts. A joint account is one of six. Even if both salaries landed on it, card payments from the personal accounts would still sit in two other apps.

The second problem is transfers: a 350 zł "here is my half of the groceries", 1,400 zł each into the mortgage account every month, a savings top-up. In September that adds up to 3,560 zł, which an ordinary app counts as spending on one account and income on the other. Total spending goes up even though nobody bought anything.

A shared budget without a joint account in Kasandro: how it works

1. One of you creates the household ("For us" when signing up) and connects their banks: log in through the bank's own app, give read-only consent, choose the accounts.
2. They send the other person an invite link. The partner sees "Ania invited you to a shared river" and goes through the same steps on their side: their own e-mail, their own consent, their own choice of accounts. Kasandro never asks for a partner's login.
3. For every account the partner decides: visible to the household or private. A private account counts in the household total, but nobody except its owner sees its transactions.
4. Kasandro matches transfers between all accounts in the household. A matched transfer is an "own transfer" on both sides: not income, not spending, for either of you.
5. Uncertain matches (same amount, a few days apart, but an unknown account number) go to the review queue once: "Is this 2,800 zł transfer to PKO your account?" One tap, and the rule learns.
6. The household river shows shared spending as one list with a "who paid" filter, not as two apps.

Time: about eight minutes for the first person, about five for the second, because the household already exists.

Transfers between you are the same water

The rule from honest counting: a transfer whose recipient is any account in the household (yours or your partner's) is an own transfer on both sides. That covers savings top-ups, "here is my half", the monthly transfer to the mortgage account and the transfer from a business account to a personal one. On the river it is a loop inside the "Accounts" column, never an outflow. Tapping the loop says: "3,560 zł circulates between your accounts: not spending".

Matching works by account number, and when the number is unknown, by amount, payment reference and a window of a few days. A match on amount alone is never automatic: it always asks once, then remembers.

Three situations a shared budget without a joint account has to handle

Salary on one account, spending from another. Tomek is paid on account A and moves 2,500 zł to account B, which he uses for card payments. An ordinary app shows 2,500 zł of "spending" on A and 2,500 zł of "income" on B. In Kasandro it is one loop on the river, and the spending is the card payments from B.

A joint mortgage account. Each of you transfers 1,400 zł a month and the bank takes a 2,650 zł instalment. The two transfers are own transfers. The instalment is a liability shown under "liabilities", not under a spending category, because a mortgage is not groceries.

Paying a partner back. Ania paid 412 zł for groceries from her account and Tomek sent her 206 zł. The spending is 412 zł, once, from Ania's account, with the filter "who paid: Ania". The 206 zł is an own transfer. If you want to split it in half, that is a question about splitting, not about spending; Kasandro shows the facts and leaves the split to you.

Who paid, and what follows from it

"Who paid" is a filter, not an accusation. It shows which account the payment left: Ania's, Tomek's, or "joint" when the account is joint. A conversation about money can then start from a fact ("1,870 zł on food went from your account, 1,240 zł from mine and 980 zł from the joint one") rather than an impression.

Tomek's business account is private. Ania sees that the household total includes "business", but not the invoices or the counterparties. Business spending is counted separately as "business" and stays out of the household's "life" total unless Tomek decides otherwise.

How different tools count a couple

The Martia column quotes its own pages on the date given; the criterion-by-criterion comparison is in Kasandro vs Martia.

What a partner never sees

A partner never sees transactions from an account you did not share, not even as an "Other" line. The household total is counted so that the unshared part cannot be derived from the shared numbers. The assistant has no access to accounts that are not shared with the person asking, so "how much did Tomek spend from the business account?" gets the answer that the account is private. Each of you has your own chat history.

What it costs

One payment per household. The owner pays 4.99 zł a month for every connected account, theirs and the partner's, on one bill. The partner connects their own banks with their own consent and never pays separately. Example: 3 accounts are 14.97 zł a month; the slider on the pricing page adds it up for your accounts. A year costs the same as ten months. An account you do not tick is not read and not counted.

FAQ

Do we need a joint account to use Kasandro together?

No. Each of you connects your own banks with your own consent. If you do have a joint account, one person connects it and marks it as joint.

Does my partner see my bank password or login?

No. You log in through your own bank's app and Enable Banking hands Kasandro read-only access to transactions and balances. Your partner sees only what you share, and never your login data.

What about "here is my half of the groceries"?

It is an own transfer on both sides: not income for the recipient, not spending for the sender. The spending is the groceries themselves, once, on the account that paid.

Can I hide an account I shared earlier?

Yes. Visibility is set per account at any time. Once you hide it, the household river is recalculated and that account's transactions disappear from the partner's view.

What happens if we separate?

Either of you can leave the household with one tap or delete everything. The accounts and transactions of the person who leaves disappear from the other person's view, and own transfers are recalculated. If there is a dispute about an account, or an account is visible that should not be, write to support@kasandro.com from the e-mail address of your own Kasandro account; we reply only to the person the account belongs to.

Kasandro is an insight tool for your finances, not investment or financial advice. It shows what happened and what it adds up to under assumptions you set; what to do about it is your call, together.