A detailed look at every feature. Import your statements and let VulaMoney handle categorisation, forecasting, and tracking — so you can focus on spending smarter.
A simple four-step setup gets you going. No forms to fill in, no bank credentials to share, no waiting for accounts to sync.
Your name and preferred currency
Drop in your first bank statement, or skip for later
Pick from 40+ spending categories that fit your life
Your dashboard is ready with a full financial picture
Download a statement from your bank's website — most banks offer OFX or QFX format — then drag and drop it into VulaMoney. That's it. Upload multiple files at once, or a ZIP with several months of statements.
Works with every South African bank and most international banks that offer OFX downloads.
Re-importing the same statement updates balances without creating duplicate transactions.
Recognises account types automatically — cheque, savings, credit card, home loan, and more.
Categorise a few transactions and the app learns your habits. Next time you import a statement, it recognises "Woolworths" as groceries, "Engen" as fuel, and "Netflix" as entertainment automatically — no matter which branch or how the bank spells the name.
Transfers between your own accounts are detected and labelled so they don't show up as spending.
Groceries
Supermarket, Butchery, Bakery
Transport
Fuel, Parking, Tolls
Housing
Rent, Bond, Maintenance
Utilities
Electricity, Water, Internet
Entertainment
Dining, Streaming, Events
Insurance
Medical Aid, Car, Home
Medical
Doctor, Pharmacy, Dental
Income
Salary, Freelance, Dividends
Plus Shopping, Education, Savings, and more. Create your own at any time.
Stop wondering where your money goes each month. VulaMoney analyses six months of transactions to find your recurring expenses — debit orders, subscriptions, insurance premiums, rent — automatically. No manual setup needed.
Discovery Medical Aid
Monthly · Last charged 1 Mar
R4,250.00
98% confidence
FNB Home Loan
Monthly · Last charged 28 Feb
R12,800.00
95% confidence
Netflix
Monthly · Last charged 5 Mar
R199.00
92% confidence
Shows weekly, biweekly, and monthly cadences with a confidence score for each.
The app detects your salary automatically — it finds the largest regular monthly deposit, figures out which day of the month you get paid, and counts down to the next one.
Combined with your recurring expenses, it calculates how much you can safely spend until payday. This number updates live as new transactions come in — it's your real-time financial runway.
25th
Typical payday
R42,850
Expected salary
R11,530
Available to spend
Every account gets a visual chart showing your daily balance over the current month and two months prior. See where your balance stands today compared to the same point last month, a forecast of where you're heading, and your predicted low point before the next pay day.
A "this time last month" overlay so you can see if you're spending more or less than usual.
Projected balance through month-end with predicted high and low points. Spot trouble before it arrives.
Mark transactions as confirmed, disputed, or excluded. When you're checking your statement against receipts, newly imported transactions are highlighted so you can see what's new. Transfers between your own accounts are matched automatically — confirm one side and the other is confirmed too.
Accounts can be in any currency, with wealth totals grouped separately. If you have USD and ZAR accounts, you see distinct totals for each.
Loyalty programme balances — Discovery Miles, eBucks, Vitality points — are tracked alongside your bank accounts with their own label, separate from your cash totals.
Live USD, EUR, and GBP rates against ZAR with daily, weekly, and monthly trend indicators. A 90-day chart shows how rates have moved over the last quarter. Rates update automatically in the background.
Export your entire financial history — every account, every transaction, every category — as a single file, whenever you want. One click and it's on your device.
Restore to a new account by uploading the file. The system recreates everything exactly as it was. Restore the same backup multiple times without creating duplicates. Every backup includes an integrity check so you know immediately if a file has been damaged.
All your data in a single file
Upload and pick up where you left off
Corruption detected before it causes harm
Not sure where to start? Browse our collection of guides that walk you through every feature — from importing your first bank statement to setting up automatic categorisation rules. Written in plain language with no jargon.
A complete walkthrough of uploading your bank statement and getting your accounts set up.
New guides are added regularly. Check back for walkthroughs on categories, recurring expenses, and more.
Your data. Your key. Nobody else can read it.
Most finance apps store your data in plaintext on their servers. If they get breached, your account numbers, balances, and spending history are exposed. VulaMoney is different.
Enable Vault Encryption and all of your financial data — account numbers, balances, transaction amounts, merchant names, and memos — is encrypted into a single sealed blob per database row using AES-256-GCM. The encryption key only exists in your browser and temporarily in server memory — it never touches the database. We can't read your data. No one can — not us, not a hacker, not a rogue employee, not a government subpoena. If the database is stolen, attackers get meaningless encrypted bytes.
You set a vault passphrase. It derives an encryption key using 600,000 rounds of PBKDF2 — entirely in your browser. The passphrase never touches our servers.
The encryption key exists in server memory only while you're using the app. When the page closes, it's gone. The key never touches the database, disk, cache, or logs.
Industry-standard authenticated encryption. Each row's sensitive fields are sealed into a single encrypted blob — tamper-proof and virtually unbreakable.
Share with your spouse or auditor without compromising encryption. A secure key exchange means shared viewers can decrypt your data — and revoking access breaks the cryptographic chain instantly.
Eight single-use recovery codes generated at setup. Each one can unlock your vault independently. Print them, store them safely.
Hardware-accelerated AES-NI decrypts thousands of transactions in under a millisecond. You won't notice any difference.
| VulaMoney | Typical Finance App | |
|---|---|---|
| Server can read your data | No | Yes |
| Database breach exposes data | No | Yes |
| Encryption key stored on server | Never | Usually |
| Company can comply with data requests | Impossible | Yes |
You download statements yourself and upload them. Your bank login stays with your bank.
This is a tool for you, not a business model built on selling your spending data.
Export everything and leave any time. No lock-in, no data hostage.
Sign in with a magic link sent to your email. One click and you're in. Passwords are optional.
Set up in under two minutes. No credit card, no bank login required.