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. You’re in. There’s no email verification hoop and no payment screen.

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 the Budgets tab. 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

Vault has four tabs. Each one does a single, specific job. Here’s how to use every one of 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, emojis & labels

Each category in Vault has its own emoji and color. Food is red 🍜, Bills are blue ⚡, Transport is purple 🚇, Fun is orange 🎬, Income is green 💼. The colors carry through the whole app — you’ll see them in your charts, your budget bars, and your transaction list, so a quick glance tells you what you’re looking at.

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.

🎯 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 the Budgets tab 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

Budgets reset every month

On the 1st of each month, every budget bar starts fresh at 0%. Your budget amounts stay the same — Vault remembers that you set Food at $400, so you don’t need to retype it. If a budget no longer feels right, just open the category and change it.

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.

📊 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 — every transaction marked Income, added together.
• Expenses — every transaction marked Expense, added together.
• Saved — what’s left over (Income minus Expenses) for the current month.

The arrows next to each number

Each number shows how it compares to the same number last month: ▲ green up means more than last month, ▼ red down means less. For Income and Saved, up is good. For Expenses, down is good — you spent less than the previous month.

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 emoji, 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 the running total of every month’s saving (Income minus Expenses) added up over 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.

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