A friendly guide for everyone in your family. We'll show you around — how to add things, where to find them, and how to share access with the people you love.
⏱ 15 minutes·🔒 AES-256 encrypted·✓ Built for non-technical users
If you're reading this, you've just set up an account — welcome to FinalKey. This is the home you've now made for the things your family will need someday: account numbers, passwords, insurance policies, important documents, and the kind of personal notes that don't belong anywhere else.
You don't need to be technical. If you can use an iPhone or a web browser, you can use FinalKey. This page walks through every part of the vault — what each button does, what each screen means, and how to make sure your family finds the right things when they need them.
Step 1
Getting around your vault.
When you sign in, you'll see your Dashboard — the welcome screen that greets you by name and shows your whole vault at a glance. From there, everything else is one click away.
1Avatar & name — Click your initial to upload a profile photo, or skip it entirely; everything works without one.
2Dashboard — A warm welcome screen that shows your totals, recent entries, and a one-click shortcut to share access with your heirs.
3Vault categories — Eight sections, each holding a different kind of entry. The little badge on the right tells you how many items are already in that section.
4Vault Scanner — The fastest way to build your vault: import passwords from a CSV, scan a paper document with your phone, or connect Gmail to find accounts automatically.
On a phone, the sidebar collapses. You'll see a hamburger icon ☰ in the top-left, and five buttons running along the bottom of the screen:
Home — your dashboard.
Scanner — opens the importers (CSV, document, Gmail).
Vault — opens a quick picker for any category.
Contacts — your access contacts (the people you name as heirs).
More — opens a menu with your account info, Settings, and a Sign Out button.
Step 2
Your Vault Drawers.
Your Dashboard is laid out as a grid of drawers — one for each kind of account, document, or memory you might want to save. Each drawer has a little icon and a count, so you can tell at a glance what's already inside.
1The icon & name. A small picture and a short label tell you what kind of entries go here. Tap a drawer to open it.
2The count. How many entries are already saved in that drawer. Your family can glance at the Dashboard and see exactly what's where — and what still needs to be added.
In plain language: Investments & Retirement holds brokerage accounts, your 401(k), and any IRAs. Home Security holds your alarm code, smart lock PIN, and camera logins. Social Media holds the Facebook, Instagram, and other social logins — including any you want to memorialize. Photos & Memories is for the family photos you'd like your children to have someday. Recipes holds the handwritten family favorites that don't fit anywhere else.
The other drawers cover the rest of life — passwords and online accounts, insurance policies, bank accounts, the will and trust, medical directives, online businesses, payment portals, and final wishes. Each one is a small, focused place for a different kind of thing.
Step 3
Adding things by hand.
Most people start by adding a handful of important items directly. For each one, you pick the right category, tap the green + Add Entry button, and fill out a simple form. The form changes depending on the category — so when you're adding a bank account, you'll see fields for routing number and account type. When you're adding your will, you'll see fields for the attorney and where the original is kept.
AName it. The first field is always the easy one — the name of the account, the name of the policy, the name of the password. FinalKey doesn't care what you call it as long as it's recognizable to you.
BSensitive fields. Fields with a small lock effect (account numbers, passwords, SSNs) are stored with extra-strong encryption. Your family can view them; nobody else can.
CEye toggle. The eye icon next to any password field lets you reveal or hide what you've typed — handy for double-checking a copied password.
The same form pattern is used everywhere — for bank accounts, insurance policies, passwords and logins, medical directives, legal documents, online businesses, investments & retirement, and final wishes. Each one asks for the details that matter for that category and nothing you don't need.
You don't need to add everything today.
The vault is yours forever — come back next week, next month, next year. Add what you can today. Add more later. There's no rush.
Step 4
Uploading files and documents.
For things like a will, a trust, a deed, or an advance directive, you'll want to upload the actual file — not just type a description of it. FinalKey has two categories built for this: Legal Documents and Medical Directives.
1The lightbox viewer. Tap any uploaded file to open a full-screen view. PDFs scroll like a normal document. Photos can be zoomed in by pinching on a phone. This is what your family will see when they open your will or trust from the vault.
2Download & print. Authorized family members can save the file to their own computer or print a copy for their records. Nothing is watermarked, nothing is locked down — your family gets the original.
To upload a file:
Open the Legal Documents or Medical Directives category.
Tap + Add Entry, fill in the title and type.
Inside the entry, look for the Upload PDF or photo button. Tap it. On a phone, you can choose a photo from your library or take a new picture of the document. On a computer, you'll get the normal file picker.
FinalKey accepts PDFs, JPGs, and PNGs. Most phones and scanners export to one of these by default.
What about the original paper copy?
The upload doesn't have to replace the paper document. Use Legal Documents to record where the original is kept ("file cabinet, top drawer, blue folder") and upload a digital copy for safe-keeping. Both are useful.
Step 5
Dragging things into a drawer.
If you add something to the wrong drawer, you don't have to delete it and start over. FinalKey has two ways to move an entry to a different drawer. On a computer you can drag and drop. On a phone, you can use a small Move to… button.
1Press and hold a row. On a desktop, click and hold an entry in Recent Entries. A small in-flight preview follows your cursor as you move.
2Drop on a drawer. A gold dashed ring highlights the drawer that's about to receive the entry. Release to move it. The whole entry — including any file attached to it — moves with everything inside, so nothing is lost.
3On a phone. Most phones don't have drag-and-drop, so open an entry row and tap the Move to… button. A small sheet of drawers appears — choose the one you want.
Some drawers accept files too. If you drag a drawer card that's built for documents, FinalKey lets you drop a file directly into it:
Legal Documents & Medical Directives — PDF, JPG, PNG, WebP. The file becomes a new entry automatically.
Photos & Memories — JPG, PNG, WebP (and most phone photos, including HEIC). Multiple files can be added at once.
What moves with the entry.
If an entry already has a file attached (a scanned PDF, a family photo), the file moves along with the entry. The lightbox opens the file from whichever drawer the entry now lives in — your family doesn't need to track down where the scan went.
Step 6
Photos and memories.
If you want the people you love to see the photos that mean the most to you — the family at the lake in '94, the house you grew up in, the view from the porch — the Photos & Memories category was made for that. It's separate from your account logins on purpose: it's the human part of the vault.
1Swipe to flip through. On a phone, swipe left and right to walk through the photos like a slideshow. Pinch to zoom in on details. The counter at the top right shows where you are ("4 of 12").
2The thumbnail strip. The little row along the bottom shows every photo in the entry. Tap any thumbnail to jump straight to it.
Adding photos is quick:
Open the Photos & Memories category, then tap + Add Photos.
On a phone, your camera opens so you can take a fresh photo — or pick existing photos from your library.
You can add a short caption to each one if you want (a name, a date, a memory).
Tap any photo to open the lightbox. Swipe through them like an album.
Step 7
Final wishes & arrangements.
The Final Wishes category is where the personal, non-financial information lives. Funeral preferences, cemetery details, a draft obituary, what music you'd like at the memorial service, a private letter to your family — anything you'd want them to know but wouldn't put in a formal document.
1Letter to family. The most personal part of FinalKey. A free-form letter, written in your own words, that opens up when the time comes. There's a field for video message links, too — anything you want them to have.
Other things you can capture here: burial or cremation preference, the cemetery and plot number, the funeral home, draft obituary text, preferred publication outlets for the obituary, your memorial service preferences (venue, music, speakers), and a place for anything that doesn't fit anywhere else.
You can change any of it later.
Nothing in FinalKey is permanent. As your preferences evolve — or your family situation shifts — edit the entries. Your heirs will only ever see what you last saved.
Step 8
When a scanned document lands in your vault.
If you scan a paper document with the Vault Scanner — insurance card, tax form, trust paperwork — FinalKey creates a new entry from it. Once it's saved, you can spot it on the Dashboard right under Recent Entries, alongside everything else you've added by hand.
1The paperclip badge. A little gold tag on the right of the row means a file is attached — a PDF, a scanned photo, or multiple documents. The number tells you how many. No badge? It's a plain entry with just typed fields.
2Tap the row, open the lightbox. Open the entry and tap the file to see the actual scanned document. From there your family can zoom in, read the small print, and download or print a copy — exactly like with anything uploaded by hand.
From the camera? Same thing.
If you used the Vault Scanner's camera scan on a phone, the photo becomes the file. AI reads the key fields off the picture (account number, policy number, balance) and fills in the form for you. The entry shows up in Recent Entries with the same paperclip badge.
Step 9
Choosing your heirs and what they can see.
Open the Access Contacts page (in the sidebar under Settings, or under Contacts on mobile). This is where you name the people who will be able to request access to your vault when the time comes — your spouse, an adult child, your attorney, a trusted friend.
1Add Contact. Opens a form where you enter their name, email, phone, and relationship. That's all the basics.
2Access level. This badge tells you what that person can see when they request access. You can change it any time.
3The heir link. Each contact has a private link that opens the vault from their side. You can send it now — for safekeeping — or wait until the time comes.
For each contact, you pick their access level. There are three tiers:
🔓 Full access
Can see every entry in every category — accounts, passwords, documents, final wishes. Choose this for a spouse, an executor, an attorney handling the estate.
🔒 Specific entries only
Can see only the entries you mark as shareable with them — perhaps your will, a memorial video, but not your banking logins. Choose this for adult children, close friends.
📜 Read-only, after death
Notified when your account is marked as inactive; receives a one-time, read-only view of the entries you've chosen. Choose this for distant relatives or attorneys who need only specific records.
🤝 Trusted family
Same as Full access, but you can also let them manage the contact list themselves (add their own spouse, for instance). Use carefully — only for the person you trust most.
What your heirs won't have.
Heirs get access to view entries and request unlock — they do not get your master password, the ability to add or remove entries, or the admin view. Access is read-only on their side, and an heir's request still needs your approval (or, after the inactivity period, automatic unlock — typically 60 days of no login).
Step 10
How your vault stays protected.
Every entry you add to FinalKey is encrypted using AES-256-GCM — the same standard banks and the military use. What that means in plain English: even FinalKey itself can't see what's in your vault. Only the person holding your password can.
Your master password is yours alone. FinalKey never stores it, never emails it, and can't reset it for you. Pick something you'll remember — and consider writing it down somewhere safe, like a fireproof lockbox.
Auto-lock after inactivity. If you walk away from your computer, the vault locks itself after a few minutes. Nobody can sit down and read your passwords without entering your password again.
Heir access is gated. When a contact requests access, you (or your pre-authorized backup approver) must approve it. Even then, they see only the entries you've permitted — not the whole vault, not your master password.
The Gmail connection is read-only. If you use the Email Scanner, FinalKey sees just the headers (sender, subject, date) — never the body of your messages. Disconnect any time.
Your profile photo is optional. You can upload one to make the vault feel like home, or skip it — your initials stand in. Click the avatar any time to change or remove the photo.
Step 11
Using the Vault Scanner.
If you have a long list of accounts, you don't have to type them in one at a time. The Vault Scanner takes three different kinds of input and converts them into vault entries for you to review before anything is saved.
📄 CSV import
Export your saved passwords from Chrome, Firefox, or Safari as a CSV file. Upload it. FinalKey sorts every row into the right category (banks, subscriptions, payment portals) so you can review and save the whole batch.
Take a picture of an insurance card, a tax form, or any paper document. FinalKey reads it using AI, pulls out the key details (policy number, account number), and offers to save them as a new vault entry — plus keeps the photo for reference.
📧 Gmail scanner
Connect your Gmail account. FinalKey reads the sender and subject of every recent email, finds the companies that have sent you account notices or sign-up confirmations, and offers them as new entries. You stay in control — review everything before it lands in the vault.
Drop a PDF — like a brokerage statement or a benefits letter — into the scanner. FinalKey reads it, finds the relevant account numbers and balances, and suggests where each item belongs in your vault.
Common questions
Will my family see my master password?
No — FinalKey never stores your master password, so there's nothing for them to see, even with full access. They unlock their view of the vault with a separate one-time request mechanism, not with your login.
What if I change my mind about who gets access?
Edit any contact any time on the Access Contacts page. You can add new people, remove existing ones, change their access level, or send them a brand-new heir link — all without losing anything you have in your vault.
Can I add things later, or is this a one-shot setup?
Add things whenever you want. There's no deadline, no checkpoint, no "you have to do it all today" moment. Many people add a handful of items the first week, then come back over months to fill in the rest.
I lost my password. Can FinalKey reset it for me?
No — and that's by design. Because your data is encrypted with your password, nobody at FinalKey can see the contents without it. Write your master password down somewhere physically safe (a fireproof lockbox, a safe deposit box) when you create it.
What happens if I stop logging in?
After 60 days of inactivity, your pre-authorized heirs receive a notification that they can submit a vault access request. Their request is reviewed by you (if you're still reachable), by your backup approver if you've named one, or auto-approved after the full inactivity period. You can adjust this window in Settings.
Is my data really private?
Yes. FinalKey uses AES-256-GCM encryption at rest. Your data is encrypted on our servers using keys derived from your password, so a server breach would yield nothing usable. We never share, sell, or advertise against your data. We don't train AI on your vault. See our privacy policy for the full commitments.
Does FinalKey work on my phone?
Yes — the vault is web-based, so it works on any modern phone or tablet browser (iPhone, Android, iPad). There isn't a separate app to install; just open the site, sign in, and the layout adjusts to your screen.
You've got this.
The vault is built for people who aren't technical. Sign in, take a look around, and add one thing today. You'll be surprised how easy it is.