First7STEWARD

FIRST7 STEWARD

Your Data

How First7 Steward stores, protects, and lets you manage your financial data.

Your Data

Your financial records belong to you

First7 Steward is designed around a simple principle:

Your financial records should remain under your control.

Steward is built as a local-first application. The current version stores your financial records locally in the browser rather than requiring a central cloud database for your ledger.

This approach is intentional. Steward is designed to help you keep your records without requiring you to hand your financial history to a financial platform.

Where your data is stored

The current version of Steward stores its working financial data in your browser using IndexedDB, a storage system provided by modern web browsers.

Your Steward installation contains your:

  • Transactions
  • Funds
  • Categories
  • Settings
  • Steward metadata

These records are stored locally for the browser and site where you use Steward.

First7 does not need your financial records

The current version of Steward does not require:

  • A user account
  • A financial account with First7
  • A cloud database
  • A bank connection
  • Automatic bank imports
  • Payment processing
  • Money transfers

Steward is a record-keeping tool. It does not hold or move your money.

What local-first means

Local-first means that the application is designed to perform its core work using data stored locally on your device.

The basic model is:

You → Steward → Your browser’s local storage

rather than:

You → Steward → Central financial database

This architecture gives you greater direct control over your working financial records.

You are responsible for your backups

Local storage also creates an important responsibility.

If your browser’s site data is cleared, your local Steward records may be removed.

For important financial records, do not rely on browser storage as your only copy.

Use Steward’s Export Backup function regularly.

Keep your backup file somewhere safe.

For particularly important records, consider keeping more than one backup copy.

Steward backup files

Steward provides its own backup format using the .steward file extension.

A Steward backup contains the application’s stored data needed to restore your local Steward dataset.

Backups are intended to help you:

  • Protect your records
  • Move to another computer
  • Restore your data
  • Preserve a copy of your records
  • Prepare for future migration

Restoring your data

When you import a backup, Steward does not immediately replace your existing records.

The backup is first validated.

The restore process is designed to follow this principle:

Validate first. Restore second.

If a backup is invalid, malformed, or fails validation, Steward rejects it rather than partially importing it.

When a valid backup is restored, it replaces the current local Steward dataset.

For this reason, create a backup of your current data before restoring another backup.

What Steward does not currently do

The current version of Steward does not:

  • Connect directly to your bank
  • Automatically import bank transactions
  • Process payments
  • Transfer money
  • Hold money
  • Maintain a central cloud financial ledger
  • Provide financial, tax, investment, or legal advice

Steward is focused on financial record-keeping and stewardship.

Privacy

Steward is designed with privacy as a foundational principle.

The current application does not require you to create an account before recording transactions.

Your financial records are not intended to become a public profile or public financial history.

The application is designed so that the financial ledger remains local to your Steward installation.

Moving to another computer

If you move to another computer, browser, or Steward installation:

  1. Export a Steward backup from your existing installation.
  2. Keep the backup file somewhere safe.
  3. Open Steward on the new computer.
  4. Choose Import Backup.
  5. Select your .steward backup.
  6. Review the restore information.
  7. Confirm the restore.

Always keep the original backup until you have confirmed that your records have been restored correctly.

A note about browser storage

Browser storage is convenient, but it is not the same thing as a traditional file stored in your Documents folder.

Your local Steward data can be affected by browser actions such as clearing site data.

For this reason, Steward’s backup system is an important part of the application rather than an optional extra.

If your financial records matter, keep a backup.

Data ownership

Steward is designed around data ownership and portability.

Your financial records should not become trapped inside a service simply because you used that service to record them.

The backup format is intended to give you a portable copy of your Steward data that can be restored when needed.

As Steward develops, portability, backup, validation, and data integrity will remain important parts of its architecture.

Current version

This page describes the data behavior of the current Steward release.

As Steward develops, some technical details may change. We will update this page when the application’s data architecture changes in a meaningful way.

Last updated: 2026-09-04