Frequently Asked Questions

Beams Vault is one workspace for everything you sell and everything you know about it: quantities, purchase costs, locations, photos, listings, and sales, kept together from your phone to your laptop. It is an inventory and selling platform for collectors, resellers, and live sellers. It is not an authentication, grading, appraisal, or valuation service, and it never verifies that an item is genuine. See the Terms of Service for the full description.

Create a free account, add your first items with photos or by typing them in, and explore at your own pace. When you want to publish to marketplaces or use Vault AI, upgrade from the pricing page. See the features or compare the plans.

Inventory management for collections of up to 200 inventory items, human-readable PDF copies of your inventory and sales records, and manual listing guides for every destination Vault supports. It does not include marketplace publishing, Vault AI credits, or spreadsheet exports. See the full comparison.

Yes. You always sell from your own marketplace accounts — Vault connects to them. Vault never asks for or stores your marketplace passwords; connections use each marketplace's own sign-in page, and you can disconnect one at any time without losing your Vault inventory.

Yes. Public pages like this one work signed in or signed out on any screen, and the mobile seller app covers inventory, quick photo add, publishing, and Point of Sale. A few desktop-only workspaces deliberately stay on the desktop so big jobs remain comfortable on a large screen.

Every item lives in one canonical record — quantity, cost, location, category, condition, photos, and notes stay together. Sales, imports, Point of Sale, and publishing all work from that same record instead of disconnected copies, so one truth carries everywhere.

Three ways: point your phone's camera and shoot (Point & Add), type an item in by hand, or import a spreadsheet. On plans with Vault AI, the photo flow can identify the item and draft the listing copy for you to review — you always confirm before anything becomes final.

Yes. CSV, Excel, and Google Sheets files go through the Import Wizard: it maps your columns to Vault fields (remembering your mapping for next time), matches what it can, and shows you a preview. Nothing is written until you confirm.

When you add or edit an item you pick a detailed category — Sneakers, Morgan Dollars, and so on. For scanning and filtering, the Inventory screen groups everything into five broad management buckets (Fashion & Apparel, Coins & Currency, Sports & Trading Cards, Comics, and General Goods & Electronics). Marketplaces get their own category requirements translated at publish time — that never changes how Vault files your item.

Each plan has its own capacity: Collector up to 200 inventory items, Seller up to 5,000 inventory items, and Vault Pro unlimited inventory. See capacities on Pricing.

No — keep your own copies of important records. Every plan, including Collector, can print or download a readable inventory and sales PDF, and paid plans add spreadsheet exports.

Vault AI looks at your photos and helps identify the item and draft its title, description, and story. It runs only when you ask it to, and you review the result before it touches your listing. It is not authentication, grading, appraisal, or financial advice — and it can be wrong, so check every result before you rely on it.

One explicit run costs one credit — even when Vault answers from its stored knowledge instead of a model, or the result matches what you already had. Deliberately repeating a run costs another credit, and Vault tells you so before it starts. Browsing, editing, publishing, and reports are always free, and manual entry never uses AI or credits.

In Point & Add, Intelligent mode (off by default) sends your photos for identification and listing copy when you finish the item. It needs Vault AI, which starts on the Seller plan. Without it your photos still go straight into your Vault — you just fill in the details yourself.

Treat it as a first draft from a helpful assistant. Confident-looking items can still be misidentified, and any suggested value is an opinion, not checked market evidence. You review everything, details you type yourself are never overwritten, and pricing evidence comes from a separate Market Check you trigger on purpose.

A Market Check looks up sold listings to help you price an item. It is metered separately from Vault AI credits — 75 per month on Seller and 300 on Vault Pro — never runs on its own, and always shows its cost before it runs.

Collector — free. Inventory and PDF records for getting started.
Seller — $29.95/month. The complete seller toolkit: supported marketplace publishing, image hosting, 150 Vault AI credits and 75 Market Checks each month.
Vault Pro — $74.95/month. Everything in Seller plus analytics, advanced financial reporting, Point of Sale, and Inventory Guardian.
Business — coming soon, price not announced.
Compare all plans.

The trial needs a payment method and lasts up to 14 days, with 20 Vault AI credits and 10 Market Checks included. Paid service begins when the 14 days end or when you go past those trial allowances, whichever happens first. If the first payment can't complete, the account returns to Collector and your inventory and records are kept.

Seller includes 150 Vault AI credits and 75 Market Checks per month; Vault Pro includes 600 and 300. They reset at the start of each month (UTC) and don't roll over. An AI Top-Up is a one-time $14.95 purchase that adds 100 credits and 50 Market Checks: no expiry while your account exists, used only after your included allowance, and non-refundable if the account is deleted.

Any time. Paid plans renew until you cancel; after you cancel, paid features keep working through the period you already paid for, then the account moves to Collector — inventory, history, purchases, and unused top-up balances stay with you. A refunded, reversed, or disputed payment ends paid features right away.

Shopify Integration is a separate monthly subscription billed through Shopify (the price is shown on the pricing page) and works with any Vault plan — it never changes your plan or its allowances. Vault also never copies your Shopify catalog into your Vault inventory to resell on other marketplaces.

Four ways: synced from connected marketplaces, imported from a file, rung up in Point of Sale, or entered by hand. Every sale lands against the item's own record, so quantity, cost basis, and history stay consistent.

Collector keeps simplified sales facts (item, cost, date, sold price) on screen and in printable PDFs. Seller adds sales history with channel, totals, and CSV / XLSX export. Vault Pro adds sales and contribution analytics plus the advanced financial package with accountant-friendly exports.

From what you record: sale proceeds minus what you paid (average cost from your purchase lots), marketplace fees, and shipping as entered. Vault labels estimates as estimates, keeps source and calculated values distinguishable, and does not claim accounting-standard (GAAP) compliance.

A per-item figure showing the price that covers your cost and estimated shipping before profit. It is a forward-looking estimate built from your costs and Vault's published reference shipping ranges — never a live carrier quote. It is available on every plan, including Collector.

Each item can hold its weight and package details. Vault uses them to suggest shipping costs during listing preparation and inside Est. Break Even. Those figures are Vault Reference Estimates — a published baseline you can override per item — not live carrier rates.

No. For marketplace sales, buy labels through that marketplace's own shipping flow when you fulfill — Vault stays focused on your inventory and records. Orders placed on the Beams Vault Store are the exception: those labels are bought right in Vault through its shipping provider.

Sales Tags — scannable QR or barcode price tags — from the Sales Tags studio on desktop or a single tag from your phone. Printable inventory and sales PDFs on every plan. Listing photos and pages print from your browser like any other web page.

Where a destination supports saved shipping profiles (eBay, for example), Vault prepares them from your workspace settings during listing preparation. You always review the listing before anything is published.

A workspace for selling in person: scan or search your items, build a cart, hand out payment tickets, and record the sale — into the same inventory, quantities, and history everything else uses. Point of Sale is included with Vault Pro.

No. Vault records sales; it never sees card numbers or security codes. An optional Square connection takes card payments through your own Square account and marks the sale paid only when Square confirms it. Cash, and cards taken on your own reader, are recorded paid when you confirm them. Stripe is used only for Vault subscriptions, never for your sales.

Vault Pro and Business. On other plans the mobile POS tab stays hidden and the page explains the upgrade — and the server enforces the same entitlement, so hiding the tab is a convenience, not the security.

Vault reaches destinations three different ways: publishing through official APIs, preparing file (CSV) exports, and step-by-step listing guidance — including eBay, Whatnot, Palmstreet, Depop, Poshmark, Etsy, Amazon, TikTok Shop, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, Vinted, and more. Methods and current status differ by destination, so the full picture — including what is still in development — is on Marketplaces & Crosslisting.

You press Connect and sign in on the marketplace's own page. Vault receives a limited token that lets it do what the feature needs — read and update the listing, inventory, and order information you use — never your password. Disconnecting stops Vault's access and touches neither your marketplace account nor your Vault inventory.

Seller and Vault Pro include every currently supported destination; Collector gets manual listing guides only, and Shopify is a separate subscription on any plan. Each publish and export is checked against your entitlement on the server, not just hidden in the menu.

No. Whatnot is CSV and export only today — Vault prepares your file and sale sets, and you import them on Whatnot. Vault does not claim a Whatnot API connection.

Yes — no tool can promise otherwise. Inventory Guardian (Vault Pro) helps by watching for sales and guiding updates or delistings on your other channels, but delays, outages, listings made outside Vault, and simultaneous purchases can still cause overselling. The honest failure windows and safeguards are laid out on Marketplaces & Crosslisting.

You do. Your inventory, photos, and records are yours; Vault keeps them only to run the service. Closing your account deletes what Vault itself maintains (subject to legal and financial record-keeping). It cannot delete accounts or data that live only at marketplaces, Stripe, or the sign-in service — and Vault never claims otherwise. Read the Privacy Notice.

Never. Connections use each marketplace's own sign-in (OAuth), and the tokens Vault receives are stored encrypted. The Browser Agent — still coming soon — runs in your own signed-in browser and likewise never asks for or keeps your marketplace passwords.

Marketplace order messages can arrive with buyer details attached. Vault keeps only what business records need — item, quantity, money, dates — and does not retain buyer names, emails, shipping addresses, or identifiers.

Vault never receives your card number or security code. Subscription payments are handled entirely by Stripe; Vault stores only the subscription identifiers it needs to run your plan.

Sign-in runs through a dedicated identity provider; Vault keeps only your email address and user identifier to tie your account together, and all access to data is scoped to your own account on the server. Details are in the Privacy Notice.

From your account settings, or by asking support. Vault deletes the data and credentials it maintains, as described in the Privacy Notice — never data that belongs to a marketplace, Stripe, or another provider. Unused top-up balances are forfeited without refund when an account is deleted.

Long-inactive Collector accounts may be deleted, but only after advance email notice with a long window to respond — signing in, updating your email, or correcting the address stops the process. The exact rules live in Terms: inactive accounts and the Help Center.

The public Help Center has step-by-step guides for billing, marketplace connections, publishing, Guardian, Point of Sale, privacy requests, and Vault AI. Signed-in sellers also have Vault Help & Support inside the app for account-specific questions.

They stay. Moving from a paid plan back to Collector keeps your inventory, history, purchases, and unused top-up balances; you lose access to paid features, never your data.

Deals is a free public page of shopping destinations and offers curated by the Vault team — no account needed. Look for Deals in the menu whenever you see it there.