Everything you need to use Vault.

What is Vault

Vault is a free, manual budget tracker. You add your income and expenses by hand, set monthly budgets, and watch your money story unfold. That’s it.

Most budget apps ask you to plug in your bank login, then sell your data, push you toward upgrades, and bury the basics under features you don’t need. Vault is the opposite. It exists for people who want a clear picture of their spending without handing over their bank credentials or paying a subscription.

What Vault stands for

Getting started

From zero to your first budget in under two minutes. Here’s exactly what to do.

Create a free account

1. Go to vaultbudgets.com Open the site in any browser. Click the Get started free button in the top right.
2. Fill in the registration form You’ll see four fields: Referral code (optional — skip if you don’t have one), Email, Password, and Confirm Password. Use an email you have access to.
3. Click “Create Account” Confirm in the popup, then click the verification link Vault emails you. That’s it — no payment screen and no credit card.

How to use Vault on your phone

Vault works on any phone — there’s nothing to download from an app store. Open vaultbudgets.com in your phone’s browser and sign in. Everything is the same as on desktop, sized for your screen.

1. Open vaultbudgets.com on your phone Use Safari (iPhone) or Chrome (Android). Sign in with the same email and password.
2. Add it to your home screen In your browser menu, tap Add to Home Screen. Vault now opens like a regular app, full-screen, with its own icon.

First-time setup — under 2 minutes

Once you’re logged in, do these three things in order. After this, Vault is fully usable.

1. Add your monthly income Open the Transactions tab. Add a transaction with type Income — the amount of one paycheck, a label like “Paycheck”, and the date you got paid.
2. Add a recent expense Add a transaction with type Expense — pick a category (Food, Bills, Transport, etc.), the amount, and a short label like “Groceries”.
3. Set your first budget Open Necessities or Wants. Pick a category (Food is a good starting point), enter the most you want to spend on it this month, and save. The progress bar appears immediately.

Core features

Everything lives on one of the pages in your sidebar: Overview, Transactions, Necessities, Wants, Bills, Goals/Savings, Reports, Settings, and Feedback. Each one does a single, specific job. Here’s how to use them.

📒 Transactions

The Transactions tab is where every entry lives — every paycheck, every coffee, every bill. Everything else in Vault (budgets, the dashboard, the charts) is built from what you put here.

Add income

1. Click “Add transaction” It’s the main button on the Transactions tab.
2. Choose type: Income This tells Vault the money is coming in, not going out.
3. Enter the amount, date, and a label Example: $2,410.00, May 1, label Paycheck.
4. Save It appears at the top of your list and updates the Overview straight away.

Add an expense

1. Click “Add transaction” Same button as before.
2. Choose type: Expense Vault now expects a category.
3. Pick a category Food, Housing, Transport, Fun, Bills, or any custom category you’ve made. If nothing fits, use Other.
4. Enter amount, date, and label Keep labels short — “Groceries”, “Coffee”, “Uber home”. Future you needs to read them at a glance.
5. Save The expense subtracts from any matching budget instantly.

Categories & labels

Categories are customizable. Make new ones for things that matter to you (Pets, Gym, Side hustle), and use Other for one-off purchases that don’t deserve their own bucket.

Labels are the short note next to each transaction. They’re for you, not Vault. Write whatever helps you remember what the expense was — “lunch with mom”, “Spotify”, “new shoes”.

Edit or delete a transaction

1. Find the transaction in the list Scroll the Transactions tab, or filter by category or month.
2. Click the entry to open it Every field is editable — amount, date, category, label.
3. Change what you need, then save Or click Delete to remove it. Your budgets and totals recalculate automatically.

🏠 Necessities & Wants

Vault splits your categories across two pages: Necessities and Wants. Necessities is for the things you have to pay for — rent, groceries, transport. Wants is for the fun stuff — eating out, games, that third streaming service.

Each page shows one row per category, and this is where your budgets are set. The row is the budget: you type the most you want to spend on that category this month, and the row shows how much of it you’ve used so far.

Moving a category between pages

Changed your mind about where something belongs? Open the category, move it to the other page, and Vault takes it over there. Your past spending and its budget stay exactly as they were — only the page it lives on changes.

🎯 Budgets

Budgets tell Vault the most you want to spend in each category this month. Then color-coded bars show you exactly how close you are to your limit.

Create a monthly budget

1. Open Necessities or Wants You’ll see one row per category — empty rows mean you haven’t set a limit yet.
2. Click “Set budget” on a category Or click an existing budget to edit it.
3. Type the most you want to spend this month Use round numbers — $400, $1,000. Whatever feels honest, not aspirational.
4. Save The progress bar appears immediately, showing how much of that budget you’ve already used.

What the colors mean

One more thing: once a category’s set-aside is fully spent, it locks. You can’t quietly keep spending from a category that’s used up everything it was given.

Bringing over last month’s entries

Your budgets don’t vanish when a month ends. What you set aside stays assigned until you change it, and whatever’s left over — or overspent — carries into what you have available next month. Nothing resets to zero on the 1st.

Each month’s category list starts empty — a new month shows no rows until you put them there. If the month is empty and the one before it had entries, Vault offers to bring over last month’s entries: it copies the category names so you don’t retype them, with the amounts left blank for you to fill in. Nothing happens automatically on the 1st; bringing entries over only happens when you click it.

Use the ‹ Prev and Next › buttons at the top of Necessities or Wants to flip between months and compare what you planned and spent in any month. And if you spend in a category you didn’t bring over, nothing is lost — it still shows up under Not budgeted this month on the page and in Budget vs Actual.

What happens if I never set a budget?

Nothing breaks. The category is still tracked — every expense lands there and shows up in your totals and reports. The only thing missing is the bar, because there’s no amount to measure against.

What happens if I go over a budget?

Nothing breaks — Vault doesn’t block you, and it doesn’t scold you. The bar turns red, the label changes to Over, and the category shows up at the top of your overspending in Reports next month. The point isn’t to be perfect; it’s to see where the over-spend happened so you can decide whether to change next month’s plan.

⚖️ Budget vs actual

Setting a budget is the plan. Budget vs actual is the plan next to what really happened. For every category, Vault shows two numbers side by side: what you set aside for it, and what you’ve actually spent from it.

The math is plain: what you set aside, minus what you’ve actually spent — the rest is still free to spend. Set aside $400 for Food and spend $260, and $140 is still yours to use there. Spend past the $400, and the category shows the overshoot instead of room left.

Two guardrails worth knowing:

• A fully spent category locks. Once every dollar you set aside has been spent, the category locks so you can’t quietly keep spending from it. Editing a transaction in it unlocks it again.
• You can’t set aside more than you have. The total you assign across categories can’t exceed what’s ready to assign. If it would, Vault tells you and asks you to lower an assignment first — every dollar needs a real source.

🧾 Bills

The Bills page is for the money that leaves on a schedule — rent, electricity, internet, subscriptions. You tell Vault how often each bill comes, set the money aside ahead of time, and mark it paid when it goes out. No more surprise weeks.

Add a bill

1. Open Bills and click “Add bill” Give it a name and an amount — Electricity, $80.
2. Choose how it repeats Pick the pattern that matches the bill (see below) and a date to anchor it to.
3. Save The bill now appears on the Bills page with its own row.

The repeat choices, in plain words

• Once — a single bill on one date.
• Every week — same weekday each week.
• Every two weeks — like a fortnightly payment.
• Every 15 days — a fixed count of days between bills.
• On a chosen day each month — rent on the 1st, phone on the 9th.
• On a chosen weekday of a chosen week each month — for example, the third Friday.
• Every 3 months — quarterly bills.
• Every year — things like insurance renewals.
• Every N days — any gap from 1 to 365 days.
• A one-off lump sum — a one-time amount you’re saving toward or paying off, tracked on its own.

Setting money aside ahead

Before a bill is due, you set money aside for it — that month’s amount moves out of your ready-to-assign pool and into a holding spot with the bill’s name. The money isn’t spent; it’s just reserved so the bill can’t ambush your other budgets. Fell behind or the bill came in bigger? Set aside a bit more to top it up — partial amounts are fine.

Paying a bill

When you record a payment, the money comes out of what you set aside — not out of your other budgets. You can pay up to the last cent of what’s set aside. If you try to pay more than what’s left, Vault blocks the payment and tells you, with a message like:

The numbers you see

• What’s left aside — what you set aside for the month, minus the payments you’ve already recorded against it.
• How many repeats a payment covers — one payment of a full bill amount covers one repeat of the bill. Pay two full amounts in a month and you’ve covered two repeats.

Settling a month

Each month a bill is due, you settle it one of two ways: with a real payment (recording it settles the month automatically), or without one — for the months someone else covered it or it was a gift. If you try to mark a month as a gift when a real payment already exists, Vault refuses and asks you to delete that payment first.

Marked a month settled by mistake? Un-settle it — that clears the gift mark. A real payment is only reversed by deleting the payment transaction itself.

Unfunding

Changed your mind about money you set aside? Unfund the month and the exact amount goes back to your ready-to-assign pool. If the bill already spent some of it, the remaining balance simply goes negative and stays visible — nothing hides.

How overdue clears

Missed a week? The bill shows as overdue — but only for the weeks actually missed. Once you settle the past weeks, each settled installment clears its own overdue flag, and the bill stops looking behind. The next unpaid date is always the one shown.

The stat strip

At the top of the Bills page you’ll see three numbers for the month you’re viewing: Set aside (how much you’ve reserved), Remaining (what’s still owed after payments and set-asides), and Ready to assign (what’s still free in your pool).

🎯 Goals/Savings

Budgets guard your spending. Goals grow your saving. A goal is a named pot — Emergency fund, Japan trip, New laptop — that you add money to over time.

Create a goal

1. Open Goals/Savings and click “Add goal” Give it a name, like Emergency fund.
2. Set a target (optional) A target amount and date give you a progress bar and a suggested monthly amount. No target? That’s fine — the goal is open-ended, a pot that just grows.
3. Save The goal appears on the page, ready for its first contribution.

Contribute in one tap

Got $50 to put away? Open the goal, tap Add amount, enter $50 — done. The saved amount updates instantly.

Your progress

With a target set, the progress percent is simply what you’ve saved, divided by your target. Saved $600 of a $1,200 target? You’re 50% there, and the bar shows it.

The suggested monthly amount

Set a target date and Vault does the split for you: what’s left to save, divided by the months until your target month. $1,200 by December with $600 saved, six months out? That’s $100 a month. It’s a suggestion, not a rule.

Deleting a goal

Delete a goal and it’s gone, along with its saved total. A goal keeps one saved number — it doesn’t hold a list of your past contributions — so make sure you really mean it.

Total saved

Across all your goals, Vault adds up everything saved. That total is also what Reports counts as your savings.

📊 Overview

The Overview tab is your homepage inside Vault. Open the app, glance at this screen, and in a few seconds you know how the month is going.

The three numbers at the top

• Income — the money that came in during the period you’re viewing.
• Ready to assign — money that’s landed but hasn’t been set aside for anything yet. Give every dollar a job and this number goes to zero.
• Spent — what you’ve actually used in that period.

Using more than one currency? Each one totals separately — Vault never converts between them. Your main currency shows as the headline number, and the others appear as their own lines.

The arrows next to the numbers

The ‹ and › buttons step between time periods — last month, the month before, and so on. Each period shows its own three numbers, so flipping back is a quick way to see how an earlier month actually went.

Make the dashboard yours

You’re not stuck with the categories Vault picks. Add your own pages — up to five — for groups that matter to you, like Side hustle or Kids. Each one gets its own page and its own entry in the sidebar, and your custom groups appear in Budgets too, right beside Necessities and Wants.

• Drag to reorder — arrange the sidebar links in the order you like. Vault remembers it.
• Remove a page — take it off the dashboard and pick where its categories go: Necessities, Wants, or another custom page. Nothing is deleted.

Category breakdown (the donut chart)

The donut shows how this month’s expenses split across categories. The bigger the slice, the bigger the share of your spending. The legend next to it lists the dollar amount per category, sorted from largest to smallest.

Recent transactions

The most recent five entries, with their label, category, date, and amount. Tap any entry to open it directly. It’s a quick way to confirm you logged something — or notice that you forgot to.

📈 Reports

Where Overview is about this month, Reports is about over time. Open it once a month and it tells you the story of your money — whether you’re trending up, slipping back, or holding steady.

Charts and trends

The main chart shows your income line and your expenses line side by side, month after month. Two simple things to look for:

• When the lines pull apart (income up, expenses down), you’re saving more.
• When the lines come together (or cross), saving is shrinking — time to look at what changed.

Net savings over time

The single big number at the top of Reports — Net saved — is each month’s income minus spending, added up across the period you’re viewing. It answers the question “am I building anything?” in one number.

Year-over-year trends

Switch the time range to a full year and Vault compares this year to last. You’ll see whether you’re spending more on Food than you did 12 months ago, whether your income has grown, whether the saving habit is sticking. This is the view that turns a budget app into a habit-changing one.

Reading your money story

Don’t look at Reports daily — it’s designed for a once-a-month read. Best done on the 1st or 2nd of the month, when the previous month is closed. Ask yourself three questions:

1. Which category surprised me? If one slice of the donut is bigger than you expected, that’s where to focus next month.
2. Did I save more or less than last month? The trend matters more than any single number.
3. What budget should I change for next month? A budget you went over by 50% is too low. One you barely touched might be too high.

Settings & your data

The knobs, the exports, and the exits. Everything that lives under Settings — and how to get your data out whenever you want it.

Light & dark mode

Prefer your budget dark? Switch themes with the toggle in the sidebar, or pick light or dark on the Settings page. Your choice is remembered every time you sign in.

Currencies

Pick your main currency in Settings. From then on, new transactions use it by default.

But every entry can be its own currency: a transaction, a budget row, or a bill can all be set to a different one. Say you earn in Canadian dollars and take a trip paid in euros — log the trip in euros and it stays in euros.

The rule is simple: Vault never converts. Each currency totals up separately — the totals sit side by side, never mixed.

Exporting your data

Your numbers are yours, and you can prove it any time.

• Transactions CSV — download every transaction (or just one month, type, or category) as a spreadsheet-friendly file with date, type, category, label, amount, and currency.
• Full export (zip) — one download with everything: an account summary file, your transactions, bills, goals, budgets, categories, feedback, and an activity log, each as its own file, plus a readme explaining what’s inside.

Starting over

Want a clean slate without losing your account? Clear your data on the Settings page. It wipes your transactions, budgets, categories, bills, and goals, and keeps your account itself. You’ll confirm with your password first — then it’s fresh-start time.

Deleting your account

If you’re leaving for good, deletion is a careful two-step:

1. Request a code Click the button on the Settings page and Vault emails a one-time 6-digit code to your own address. The code works for a limited time, and requesting a new one retires the old.
2. Confirm with the code and your password Enter both, and your account and all of its data are deleted for real. You’ll get a confirmation email when it’s done.

The deletion card lists exactly what will be lost, and links the full zip export first — grab it before you go.

Something broken? Tell us

Found a bug, or something feels off? Open Feedback in the sidebar. Say how serious it is with a quick 1–5 rating, write a few words about what happened, and send. It goes straight to the person building Vault.

Tips & best practices

Small habits that make Vault work. Most people who quit budget apps quit because of one of these.

Build the daily logging habit

Set realistic budget limits

The biggest mistake new users make is setting budgets like New Year’s resolutions — too tight, with the wishful thinking that they’ll just spend less. Then the bars all turn red and they give up. Don’t do that.

1. Track first, budget second For your first full month, just log transactions without any budget. At month-end, look at what you actually spent per category. That is your starting point.
2. Set budgets at last month’s actual If you spent $440 on Food, set the Food budget at $440 — not $300. The goal is awareness first, change second.
3. Adjust by 10% per month Want to spend less on Fun? Drop the budget by 10% next month. Small cuts stick. Big cuts break.

Read reports to actually improve

Once a month, open Reports and ask: which one category, if I changed it, would change everything? Most people find one or two categories quietly eating their savings. Fix that one — leave the rest alone — and your saving rate climbs without effort.

Common mistakes to avoid