5 minutes to learn how BullionVault works

Your Account

Get there by pressing  ACCOUNT  and  BALANCE .

On the Account Screen see your balances of gold in any vaults, your balances of any currencies, and a summary valuation which shows you what your account is worth.  Most people stick with one vault and one currency which keeps things very simple, but you don't have to.

Note.  On BullionVault the colour green is associated with cash

This is a good place to check a holding prior to trading; you can immediately see what you've got and what it's worth.

You will need an available balance of cash to buy gold and an available balance of gold to sell it.

You buy and sell by entering an order - which you can do directly from this screen with no typing and just with a couple of clicks.

Before explaining how to buy and sell in a couple of clicks let's first get the hang of what your balances mean.

Understand your balances

You can buy gold with your available balance which you can see from your account balances screen.

Any money you deposit is available as soon as we receive it.

Your reserved balance is an amount reserved to ensure you can settle any open orders if they execute.

BullionVault frequently matches your limit orders with little part-fills.  These happen as other customers trade with you, but for small amounts.  You can watch this progressing on your account balances screen.

Rapid order entry

From this cash balances screen you can fill in your first order with just a couple of clicks.

At the right hand end of your cash balance line is the option to 'buy in'.  Just click it, choose a vault, and the system fills out order details for you automatically on the order details panel on the right hand side.  Now you just submit and confirm.  

The Order Details Clicks in many different places on screens cause order details to be automatically filled out with sensible guesses at what you want to do.  This makes it very easy to fill out your orders, and often all you have to do is look carefully at the order we generate from your click, and confirm. Explain : order Explain : duration
Confirming an order Your order details are offered for your confirmation.  Only when you confirm does your order get passed to the market for validation, matching and/or posting on the order board. Explain : validation Explain : matching Explain : 'posting on the order board'
Were you successful ? Don't rush off just yet!  When you confirm an order one of three things could happen. Your order fails validation. Your order executes in its entirety Some or all of your order can't be executed, and what's left is posted as a limit on our order board [shown here]. You need to read the response to see which one of these occurred. If you are not sure what has happened go and check your open orders on the orders menu.
The Order Wizard The wizard offers a different route to filling out your order. It lets you fix one variable in an order, and works out suggestions for the others. For example, you could set the wizard to 'fix my order value' setting it at $1,000.  The wizard checks the market and sees how much you should bid for, and what price you should offer. Press the 'Suggest' button and the optimal results are displayed - if possible. If you like the suggestion you press 'Proceed' and the wizard drops you into the buy/sell panel, ready to trade and confirm.

The account settings screen

Get there by pressing  ACCOUNT  and  SETTINGS .

The Account Settings Screen

You use this screen and to fine tune your account.  Most of the settings values are standard internet account fields to do with identifying you and reminding you safely of your password should you forget it.

There are a few extra things too.  Setting your time-zone, preferred vault and preferred currency will make your life much simpler, because the system will default on your computer to offering you the markets, currencies and local time you usually prefer.  BullionVault runs on European time because that interacts with banking hours in both Asia and the US.  But you don't have to know that.

Another important feature is enabling your Mobile Text Alerts.  This tells us how to sound your BullionVault 'Burglar Alarm'.  The Burglar Alarm protects you by getting us to text your 'phone either when you log in, or when you deal.

Criminals on the internet try to duplicate people's identity and use it on-line when they're not looking.  The burglar alarm makes it extremely difficult for them to do this.  By the way, don't forget that even if criminals do find a way in it won't do them much good - the only way for your money to leave BullionVault is straight back to the bank which paid in all the money.

Open orders

Get there by pressing  HISTORY  and  ORDERS .

The Orders Screen

This screen displays your orders and their status.  You get a history of all the orders you have submitted, including the ones which failed. 

One useful way to use this screen is to filter them on status, so that you only see the open orders.  You can quickly cancel an open order by clicking on any given line and pressing the 'Kill Order' button.

Click here to see a quick overview of the home page and the order boards

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