No account, no server: how VatMainder keeps your books private

Your receipts, income and tax figures say a lot about you. VatMainder was built so that nobody else sees them, us included. There’s no account to create, no VatMainder server, no analytics, no ads and no tracking.

Everything stays on the phone

What you add is stored in a database on your phone and nowhere else. Receipts are read on the phone too: Apple Vision on iPhone and Google ML Kit on Android, both offline. Reminders are scheduled on the phone, so no push service needs to know your deadlines.

The Android app doesn’t even ask for permission to use the internet. Pro purchases are checked by the App Store or Google Play on the phone, with no server of ours in between.

Lock it

Turn on Lock with Face ID (or fingerprint, or your passcode) in Profile → Security. VatMainder then asks when it opens and after 30 seconds away. While the lock is on, the app is hidden in the app switcher, and on Android screenshots of it are blocked.

Back it up, your way

Because nothing is on a server, a lost phone without a backup means lost data. VatMainder makes backing up easy:

• Back up data (free): one file with everything, receipt photos included. Save it wherever you like with the share sheet.
• Restore from backup (free) brings it all back, on the same phone or a new one.
• A reminder comes 30 days after your last backup, or after 20 new invoices.

Automatic backup (Pro)

Pick a folder once and VatMainder backs up by itself: a day after you add invoices, and at least once a week.

• iPhone: to a folder in iCloud Drive (or anywhere in Files). VatMainder keeps the 5 newest backups there.
• Android: to a file in Google Drive (or anywhere the picker offers). Google Drive keeps earlier versions.

Your phone does the uploading. VatMainder sends nothing anywhere itself and never sees the files.

A password on your backups

On the automatic backup screen you can set a password, which then locks every backup, the ones you make by hand too. They’re encrypted with AES-256-GCM, with the key made from your password by PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 and 210,000 iterations. A wrong password is told apart from a damaged file, and a backup that’s been cut short or tampered with won’t restore. The password is never stored in a backup, and it can’t be recovered, so keep it somewhere safe.

Erase it all

Profile → Erase all data removes everything from the phone.

The Privacy Policy has the details in full.