Do multiple users intentionally have isolated data, or can data be shared between logins?

[jonathanmoss98]

One-line summary:
I’m seeing separate datasets per user and want to confirm whether shared household data across multiple logins is supported or intentionally out of scope.

Hi,
First of all, thanks for building Ocular - it’s been great to set up and use so far.

I have Ocular running correctly. I defined the initial admin user via the .env file and then created a second user through the GUI for my partner.

What I’m observing (and I suspect this may be by design) is that each user appears to have a completely isolated dataset. When logging in as each user, they do not see the same accounts, transactions, budgets, or categories.

My intended use case is a shared household budget, where two people log in with separate credentials but manage the same underlying financial data.

So I just wanted to clarify:

Is this user-level data isolation intentional?

Is there currently any supported way for multiple users to share the same dataset?

Or does a shared household setup require using a single login?

I’m mainly looking to understand whether this is a configuration issue on my end, an intentional design decision, or something that may be on the roadmap.

Happy to provide additional details if helpful.
Thanks again for the project!

Regards, Jonathan

[simonwep]

Thank you! To give you a bit of background - the tool originated from me using (personally) google sheets which was a little bit rough so I first copied their "Annual Budget" template and created ocular, adding more and more features over time for what I needed.

As of right now I'm using it as well as my partner, each having their own account. We have common expenses such as rent, food etc. where each one of us just put's in half of the total expense in their own budget planner, so everything is kept separately and shared expenses are divided by two and entered by each one of us however we like. There is an overlap (shared expenses) but each one of us has their own account plus a shared account so for us it makes sense for it to be this way.

So yeah, the data isolation is on purpose because, also originating from my personal situation. I can see that for the situation where there isn't a separation between accounts ocular currently doesn't provide a "clean" way of sharing data. If you want two users to edit/work with the same data-set you'd have to share the password, for now.

This could be a feature, but I'm not sure if it wouldn't be out-of-scope. Maybe there could be an .env variable for making all users share the same data-set, would that work for you? Or you could provide a list of usernames that share the same data, although that might be a tad more difficult.

I hope I could clear up a few things, feel free to create an issue nonetheless :)

[jonathanmoss98]

Thanks for the response, apologies for the delay in replying. I think a .env varaible for toggling between all users sharing data and individual data sets would be a good start. Perhaps in the future, this could be expanded to allow the admin to select which users share data with each other for additional flexibility.