Vaultine for Small Business Owners — Payroll, Staff Files and Tax

Situations this covers

—Payroll runs, national insurance or social security numbers, and bank details for people who work for you.

—Staff records: contracts, right-to-work documents, disciplinary notes, emergency contacts.

—A back-office computer in a shop or workshop that more than one person sits down at.

—Years of tax records and company documents you are required to keep and would rather not leave in the open.

—A laptop stolen from a van, an office or a market stall, holding everything above at once.

What does the work

Multiple separate vaults

Payroll in one vault, staff records in another, tax and company documents in a third, rather than one folder holding everything.

Folder import

Bring an existing accounts or HR folder in whole, structure intact, instead of moving files one at a time.

Stealth auto-lock

The vault closes and cryptographic keys are cleared from memory the moment the app is minimized, which matters on a back-office machine other people use.

Separate lock from the device login

The vault opens on its own 5x5 pattern or six-digit PIN, so a shared computer password is not enough to reach payroll.

Zero-knowledge design

The key is derived from your code on your device and never leaves it. There is no account and no server holding your files or your key.

Works on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android

The same vaults on the back-office PC, the laptop you take home, and the phone you run the business from.

It isn't only your data

Protecting your own documents is a preference. Payroll is different: it holds other people's bank details, tax identifiers, addresses and sometimes their immigration or medical information. If the laptop goes, that is their exposure, not just yours, and in most places it also carries obligations you would rather not discover after the fact.

That is the real reason to treat this material differently from the rest of the machine, and it is not solved by the device login. A login password decides who can sign in to the operating system. Pull the drive out and connect it to another computer and the files open like any other files.

Separate vaults, because these are separate jobs

Payroll, staff records and tax documents get used by different people at different times, and there is rarely a reason for all three to be open at once. Vaultine supports as many separate vaults as you need, each with its own contents, so opening the accounts you need for a VAT return does not also expose everyone's contracts.

Folder import matters for getting there: an existing accounts or HR directory comes in whole, structure intact, rather than being rebuilt file by file at the end of a working day.

The back-office computer problem

Small businesses rarely have one computer per person. There is a machine in the back, and whoever needs it uses it, often signed in to the same account.

Vaultine's vault opens on its own 5x5 pattern or six-digit PIN, separate from that shared login, so the computer password that everyone knows is not the thing standing between a member of staff and the payroll file. Stealth auto-lock covers the rest: the vault closes and the keys are cleared from memory as soon as the app is minimized, so walking away from the counter does not leave it open behind you.

Where this stops

Be clear about the limit before you build a process on it. Vaultine is designed for an individual managing their own vaults. There is no team account, no central administration, and no way to grant a bookkeeper access to one vault and revoke it later.

That suits an owner-run business where one person holds the sensitive records and wants them properly encrypted on the devices they already use. If you need several people working from the same protected records with managed access, that is a different category of tool and you should buy that instead.

The bottom line

The difference between this and protecting your own documents is whose data it is. Payroll and staff files belong to the people who work for you, and losing a laptop that holds them is their problem as much as yours. Vaultine puts that material behind its own lock, separate from the device login that half the shop knows. It is built for one person managing their own vaults, though, not for giving a team shared access, so it fits an owner-run business rather than a company with an IT department.

Frequently asked questions

Can I separate payroll from everything else?

Yes. Vaultine Pro supports as many separate vaults as you need, so payroll, staff records and tax documents can each sit in their own, rather than sharing one folder. The free tier covers one vault of up to 10 files, which is enough to try it rather than run a business on.

Can my bookkeeper or staff have access to a vault?

Not in a managed way. Vaultine is built for an individual: vaults are opened with a code on a device, and there is no team account, no shared administration and no way to grant or revoke someone's access centrally. If several people genuinely need access to the same records, this is the wrong shape of tool for that job.

Does this protect payroll on a computer other people use?

The vault opens with its own pattern or PIN, separate from the device login, so being able to sign in to a shared back-office computer does not mean being able to open payroll. Stealth auto-lock also closes the vault as soon as the app is minimized, so stepping away does not leave it open.

Does Vaultine hold a copy of my company's files?

No. The encryption key is derived from your code on your device and never leaves it, and there is no account or server holding your files. Optional encrypted backup to your own Dropbox is encrypted before it leaves the device, so it is unreadable there too.

Your staff's records are your responsibility, not just your files.