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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.

Creating one, and joining one

Both live in one place — Settings → Shared space. There is no other way in or out.

• Creating a space requires Premium, and it has to be a Premium of one's own: a member who is Premium because of a space cannot use that to found a second one.
• Joining is free. A guest never needs a subscription — that is the point of the feature.
• The space is joined with a code, handed over by whoever created it.
• Creating a space, and generating an invite for it, each ask for explicit agreement that the records will become visible to whoever joins.

What happens to the records already on the phone

This is the decision worth taking slowly, because it is asked once, when joining:

• Carry the existing book up into the space. The accounts and movements already on the phone become part of the shared book, visible to every member.
• Start from what is already in the space. 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.

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 → Shared space, 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 — the one from before joining, or from the moment of joining if the book was carried up. The shared records stay with the space and its remaining members.
• Leaving as the last member copies the space's records up into the personal book first, so they leave with the person leaving.
• Premium borrowed from the space ends on departure.

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.