Household Management

Add family members to your household so everyone can track their meals while sharing the same pantry and subscription.

How to Invite

1. Go to Settings → Household
2. Click "Invite Member"
3. Enter the person's email address
4. They'll receive a magic link to join your household

What Members Can Do

• Track their own meals: Each member has their own meal history and nutrition tracking
• Share pantry inventory: Everyone sees the same pantry items and can scan receipts
• Private meals: Personal meals remain private to each member

If you and someone else both created separate Eatomate accounts but want to share one household, you can merge your accounts together. This combines your pantry data, meal history, and subscription into one household.

How to Merge

1. Go to Settings → Household → Advanced Household Management
2. Click "Merge Households"
3. Enter the other household founder's email address
4. Review the merge preview (shows data from both households)
5. Click "Check Merge Compatibility"
6. If compatible, this creates a pending merge request
7. The other founder will receive a notification and must confirm the merge
8. Once both founders consent, the merge executes automatically

Viewing & Confirming Pending Merge Requests

Both the initiator and receiver can view pending merge requests in the Settings → Household → Pending Merge Requests section (located in Advanced Household Management).

• For Initiators: You can see your outgoing merge requests, monitor their status, and cancel them if needed
• For Receivers: You can review incoming merge requests, see details about the other household, and confirm or reject the merge
• The initiator remains the founder: After a successful merge, the household founder who initiated the merge request will remain the founder of the combined household

Requirements

• The target household (the one you are merging into) must be in TRIAL or ACTIVE status
• The source household (the one being absorbed) must be on Trial, Trial Expired, or have its subscription Cancelled
• If the source household has an active paid subscription, it must be cancelled from Settings → Billing before merging
• Only household founders can initiate or confirm merges
• Both household founders must consent to the merge (two-party consent required)
• Combined member count cannot exceed 10 members
• Limited to 20 merge attempts per hour per user (to prevent abuse)

What Happens After Merging

• Members: All members from both households are combined
• Pantry: Pantry inventories are merged together
• Meals: Meal history from both households is preserved
• Subscription: You continue with the target household's subscription. If the target has a paid plan, additional seats are added automatically.
• Billing: Additional seats cost £9.99/month (or equivalent annual rate) per member added

Privacy & Security

• Email Privacy: When entering another founder's email, the system won't reveal whether that email has an Eatomate account or if they're a founder. You'll only get a generic success/error message.
• Rate Limiting: To prevent abuse, merge attempts are limited to 20 per hour per user.
• Founder Verification: Both parties must be actual household founders—regular members cannot initiate or confirm merges.

Any non-founder member can leave a household at any time. Leaving creates a new solo household for you with your personal data, while the pantry stays with the original household.

How to Leave

1. Go to Dashboard → Household
2. Click "Leave Household"
3. Confirm the action in the modal
4. You will be moved to a new solo household

What Happens When You Leave

• Your meals: All your meal history moves with you to your new household
• Your calibrations: Personal calibration data stays with you
• Pantry: Stays with the original household (pantry is shared, not personal)
• Helper relationships: Any helper relationships involving you are removed
• Subscription: If the original household is still on a free trial, your remaining trial period carries over to your new household. If the original household had a paid subscription, you will need your own subscription to continue using Eatomate.

Group Departures

If multiple members want to leave and form a new household together, each member leaves individually and then uses the Merge Households feature to combine their new solo households into one.

Founder

The person who created the household. Founders have full control over the household.

• Invite and remove members
• Manage subscription and billing
• Initiate household merges
• Transfer founder role to another member
• Delete the household

Member

Regular household members who were invited to join.

• Track their own meals
• View and add to shared pantry
• Scan receipts
• View shared meals
• Can leave the household at any time
• Cannot invite others, manage billing, or initiate merges