How to share financial documents with family

Households run on paperwork: the lease, the insurance policy, last year's tax return, the paystubs for a mortgage application. It tends to be spread across email threads, a shared drive somebody set up in 2019 and a folder on the kitchen counter. Era's Document Library gives it one home, with a place for what is yours alone and a place for what the household shares.

How do I share financial documents with family?

Put the documents in your Document Library, then place each one where it belongs: in your own space if it is only for you, or in the shared space if the others need it. Members see the shared space's documents in its Documents tab, so a partner can find the lease without asking you to forward it.

You decide document by document. Nothing in your personal space is visible to the household until you place it in the shared one.

What's the difference between my own space and a shared one?

Your own space is private to you, and a shared space belongs to everyone in it. A tax return, a salary letter or a personal loan statement can stay in your own space, while the lease, the home insurance and the energy contract suit the shared space, where every member and every member's assistant can see them.

You can move a document between the two when things change, and you can see what you already share before you change a share.

Who can see a shared document?

The members of the space can see it, and their roles decide what they can do with it. Owners and admins manage the space, contributors add and change things, and viewers can look without editing. A "stop everything" control withdraws everything you've shared in one step, and a "What I share" view lists exactly what the others can see.

If you want to give a document to someone outside the space, such as an accountant or a mortgage broker, you can send a share link. Share links are for signed-in recipients only and expire after the time you choose, and you can cancel one whenever you want.

Can my AI assistant read our shared documents?

Yes. Era reads statements, paystubs, tax forms, leases and bills into figures, with the period, the parties and a note of the page each figure came from. Ask Claude or ChatGPT "what's the notice period in our lease?" or "what did our gross pay come to last year?" and the answer comes from the document, with the source shown.

A fact read from a document is shown as what the document states. It becomes a fact your household's memory holds only when someone chooses to keep it, which keeps the paperwork and the memory honest with each other. There is more on that in what your household's AI assistants remember.

How should we organise a family's paperwork?

Keep it simple and use folders and tags. A folder for the home, one for insurance, one for tax and one per child is plenty, and tags such as "2026" or "mortgage" cut across them. Era can suggest where a new document belongs, and you accept the suggestion or file it yourself.

When a document arrives, filing it takes a moment, and finding it takes less, because you or your assistant can search across the whole library.

What documents should a household keep together?

A household is best served by keeping together the documents everyone eventually needs in a hurry: the lease or mortgage statement, the insurance policies, the energy and phone contracts, last year's tax return and the paystubs a lender asks for. In detail, that means:

• The lease or the mortgage statement.
• Home, car and life insurance policies.
• Energy, internet and phone contracts.
• Last year's tax return and the forms behind it.
• Paystubs and the statements a lender asks for.

Anything that is more sensitive than the others can stay in your own space and travel by share link when you need to send it.

How do I start?

Create a shared space, invite your family by handle or email and upload the first document, or hand it to your assistant to file. Era connects accounts across the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and 40+ countries in all.

If you are also splitting bills, Splitwise alternatives for couples and housemates shows how the same space keeps track of who owes whom.