All Devices Family Sharing Purchases: How to Get Wife to Purchase Apps with her own Credit Card, AND NOT MINE?!

[HappyDude20]

Hello,

So I turned on Family Sharing and love it so far. It's me, my wife and my kid.

I have no problem if my kid asks me for permission to purchase an app from the App Store, but my wife is a different story.

She runs a home business and we just got her an iPad this afternoon and she's setting it up and she likes that she can download apps from my previous purchase history but she knows that she's going to have to purchase half a dozen apps in the coming weeks specific to her business, for example LumaFusion.

How can I set it up so that when she wants to purchase LumaFusion (or any other app), Apple charges her bank account and not mine? The main reason for this is she needs receipts that she herself purchased them so she can add them to her finance books that she'll take to her account come tax time.

Bottom line is, I don't want me wife to charge my debit card only because im the main Family Sharing account holder, considering I know she's gonna be purchasing a couple of hundred bucks worth of apps in the coming weeks. (She'd purchase all her needed apps tonight if it wasn't that I just convinced her to be on the lookout the coming weeks for Black Friday and Holiday sales)

 

[dcp10]

You can only have 1 credit card per family, hence the sharing part. She should buy iTunes credit so her purchases will charge against that instead.

 

[HappyDude20]

You can only have 1 credit card per family, hence the sharing part. She should buy iTunes credit so her purchases will charge against that instead.

I just read up on Apple's Family Sharing page that there's an option to 'Stop Sharing Purchases' and although it would stop from any music, movies, tv shows, books and apps from being shared, I believe it'll also stop from my main personal debit card from being used for purchases. I could be wrong if im reading Apple's webpage incorrectly. Seems like a reasonable compromise I suppose.

 

[CMoore515]

You can only have 1 credit card per family, hence the sharing part. She should buy iTunes credit so her purchases will charge against that instead.

This. She needs to buy iTunes gift cards.

 

[Clix Pix]

If your wife is running her own business, then she needs to set up an Apple ID specifically for that and to put all business-related purchases on that account rather than the family sharing account. She really should have a debit or credit card specifically for this purpose as well. This makes things much simpler when tax time rolls around. Personal stuff, fine, she can continue to be on the family account for that.

 

[HappyDude20]

This. She needs to buy iTunes gift cards.

does this mean that if I was to purchase iTunes gift cards for my self that if my wife wanted to purchase an app on her account that my iTunes credits would be used? I’d be okay with that, even though I know she wouldn’t since she wants receipts under her name.

 

[CMoore515]

does this mean that if I was to purchase iTunes gift cards for my self that if my wife wanted to purchase an app on her account that my iTunes credits would be used? I’d be okay with that, even though I know she wouldn’t since she wants receipts under her name.

No, it would still pull from the card on file.

 

[pika2000]

You can only have 1 credit card per family, hence the sharing part. She should buy iTunes credit so her purchases will charge against that instead.

Didn’t know this.
It’s really silly imo on Apple’s part when there are more than 1 adult in the family sharing pool. It should be a simply category whether the Apple ID is an adult (thus can have his/her own payment) vs a child.

 

[alamagator]

YOUR credit card is HER credit card. You must be recently married. Good Luck!

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Didn’t know this.
It’s really silly imo on Apple’s part when there are more than 1 adult in the family sharing pool. It should be a simply category whether the Apple ID is an adult (thus can have his/her own payment) vs a child.

Apple's motive when designing Family Sharing was quite simple - funneling everything to a single credit card helps ensure that friends and acquaintances won't create Family Sharing groups. Who wants to be stuck with the bill if a friend turns out to be less-than-friend? Overall, Apple and all the app and media producers did not want to make sharing useful to school-mates, co-workers, etc. That kind of sharing could end up costing the companies big bucks. If each group member had their own credit card it would be more likely there would be group harmony and much more likely they'd all spend far less money than they would otherwise have spent.

As others have noted, the solution for the OP is for the wife to purchase iTunes Gift Cards and place them on her account. Those gift cards will be just fine for tax accounting purposes. The one thing to keep in mind is that she can't decide which things to purchase with the gift card, and which to purchase on the OP's credit card - gift card balances are spent first, the credit card is charged only after the gift card is used up. If the wife wants to get a paid app and not charge it to the business, then the husband should make the purchase from his account (he can always delete it from his phone afterwards, if he doesn't need it).

Gift cards remain user-specific - only the account to which they've been added can make a purchase from that gift card. If Grandma wants to give Jimmy a present, only Jimmy should be able to spend it.

 

[C DM]

YOUR credit card is HER credit card. You must be recently married. Good Luck!

Seems like some parts of the OP were overlooked.

 

[riteshritesh]

May sound tedious, but 1) Remove wife from family sharing 2) She adds her Credit Card to her apple ID 3) Buys her apps with her CC 4) Add her back to family sharing.
Everytime she wants to buy, delete her from family sharing.

Edit: Else remove your card and add hers.Business purchases can be sorted from personal ones when accountant asks for the bills. You can pay her by cheque for yours and kids purchases.