Your data and backups

Where your budget lives

Each budget is one SQLite database file in your browser's private storage for the site (the Origin Private File System). Nothing leaves your device unless you turn on automatic backups, and then only encrypted.

Clearing site data deletes your budget

Because the budget lives in the browser's storage, clearing the site's data deletes it: from the browser's settings, a "clear browsing data" that includes site data, or uninstalling the browser. So does losing the device. Keep a backup somewhere else.

In Settings → Storage, Data protection asks the browser not to clear your budget when the device runs low on space. Some browsers decide by themselves, and usually protect installed apps. The same section shows how much space Moneta uses.

Several budgets

You can keep several budgets side by side: your own and a family one, or a test one. Settings → Budget files lists them; New budget starts another, and Open switches. Each budget has its own accounts, categories, currency and number format (Budget details).

Deleting a budget asks you to type its name, then waits a few seconds before it goes: it deletes the budget and its saved copies for good.

Backups

Settings → Backup → Back up now saves every budget on the device into one .moneta file. Chrome and Edge on a computer ask where to save it; other browsers download it, and Moneta asks whether the download worked. Keep it off the device: in your cloud storage, on a computer, on a USB stick. Moneta reminds you when your last backup is more than two weeks old.

Restore from a backup reads a .moneta file (or an older .sqlite one) and lets you pick which budgets to restore:

• a budget that isn't on the device is added;
• a budget that is already there is replaced by the backup. What it held is kept under Saved copies, so a mistaken restore can be undone.

Saved copies

Moneta also saves a copy of a budget by itself:

• before an update changes how the budget is stored (the last three are kept);
• when a restore replaces it.

In Settings → Backup → Saved copies you can restore a copy as a new budget, or download it.

Encrypted backups

Turn on Encrypt backups to protect the files themselves. Anyone holding an unencrypted backup can read every transaction in it.

1. Choose a password. Moneta checks how easy it is to guess; a few unrelated words make one that is hard to guess and easy to remember.
2. Save the recovery key it shows you (see below).

From then on, backing up still asks for nothing: Moneta keeps the key on this device. Restoring an encrypted backup asks for the password or the recovery key.

• Check password makes sure you still remember it.
• Change password applies to backups made from then on; older ones keep their old password and recovery key.
• Turning encryption off leaves the backups made before still encrypted.

Backups are encrypted with AES-256-GCM, with a key derived from your password (PBKDF2-SHA256) or from the recovery key.

The recovery key

The recovery key opens your encrypted backups if you forget the password. Copy it into a password manager, or save it as a file and print it, and keep it apart from your backups.

If you lose both the password and the recovery key, nobody can open those backups, Moneta included. There is no reset.

Automatic backups to Google Drive

Connect your Google Drive once (Settings → Backup → Automatic backup), and Moneta saves an encrypted backup of every budget into a Moneta folder there by itself.

• It needs backup encryption turned on first: cloud backups are always encrypted.
• It backs up two minutes after you stop making changes, when you switch away from the app with a change waiting, and at start when the last backup is a day old. It only runs while Moneta is open.
• Each device keeps one file per day: its newest and the five days before it. Older ones are deleted.
• Moneta can only see the files it created in your Drive.

Restore from Google Drive lists the backups there, newest first, with the device that made each one. On a new device, connect, pick one, and enter the password or recovery key.

Disconnect stops the automatic backups; the files already saved stay in your Drive.

More than one device

Moneta doesn't sync devices: each one keeps its own data and its own backups, so one device's backup never replaces another's. When Moneta opens, it looks at the other devices' backups and tells you when one has a version this device lacks (Settings → Backup → Automatic backup):

• A newer version, when this device changed nothing since it last matched: restore it to pick up where the other device left off.
• Different changes, when both devices changed something: restoring the other version discards the changes made here, so pick the one to keep. Keep this version stops the warning here, and the other device is told the versions differ.

Nothing is restored without you. To move between devices without losing anything, let one finish its backup before you open the other.

This option exists only where the site that serves Moneta has set up Google sign-in. A copy you host yourself may not show it.

Exports

In Settings → Backup → Exports, Transactions (CSV) and Whole budget (JSON) export the open budget for spreadsheets and other apps. They can't be restored into Moneta, and they are never encrypted: keep them somewhere safe.

Delete everything

Delete all data on this device, in Settings → Storage, deletes every budget, every saved copy and the backup key, and forgets your settings. Only your backup files can bring them back.