Bank connections via Plaid
Budget Pilot uses Plaid to connect to your bank accounts — the same infrastructure used by Venmo, Robinhood, Acorns, and thousands of other financial apps. When you connect a bank, you authenticate directly inside Plaid's own secure flow.
Your banking credentials (username and password) never touch Budget Pilot's servers. We receive read-only access to account balances and transaction history. We cannot initiate transfers or move money on your behalf.
Encryption in transit and at rest
All data sent between your browser and Budget Pilot's servers is encrypted using TLS (HTTPS). Your data is stored in Supabase, a managed database platform built on PostgreSQL, with encryption at rest enabled.
Your data belongs to your household
Budget Pilot enforces Row-Level Security (RLS) at the database level. This means no query in the application can return data belonging to a different household — not through a bug, not through a misconfigured API call. Every row in every table is scoped to the household that created it.
Other Budget Pilot users — including anyone not signed into your household — cannot see your accounts, transactions, budgets, or reports.
CPA report sharing uses expiring links
When you share your reports with a CPA or accountant, Budget Pilot generates a time-limited, token-authenticated link. The recipient does not need a Budget Pilot account. The link expires automatically and can only access the accounts you explicitly chose to share — it cannot access your full household data.
What we store
We store the minimum necessary to run the app. We never sell your data to advertisers, data brokers, or any third party.
| Data | Why we store it |
|---|---|
| Email address | Authentication and account communication |
| Account names and balances | Net worth tracking, reports, and budgeting |
| Transaction records (amount, date, category, description) | Reports, autocoding rules, budget progress, and spending history |
| Budget targets per category | Budget progress bars and variance reports |
| Recurring bill details | Bills calendar and due-date reminders |
| Plaid access tokens (encrypted) | Ongoing bank sync — stored securely, never logged |
| Household membership and invite code | Multi-member access and sharing |
Have a specific security question? Email Mark Chapman directly — you'll get a real answer from the Arizona CPA who built it.
mark@trybudgetpilot.com