Create Tags or Vaults

Hello,
I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on whether I should create vaults or tags. I have accounting clients that give me passwords and information for lots of things. I would like to keep that information in 1Password, but I'm not completely sure the best way to organize it. Here are the ways that I have looked into:

1- Create a tag called "Clients" and create a sub tag for each client. This was my initial thought, but if I want to share the files with a team member, I don't necessarily know how the tags replicate to other team members. I was also thinking that it may get a little bit unwieldy to have 500 tags and try to keep them all strait.

2 Create a vault for each client. I like this idea because I could potentially share a vault with a client if they use 1Password. This way, we could easily share information back and fourth if we shared a vault and they would only be able to see the information that we share. I don't know if this is necessarily a good idea since we would have a large problem if a password for one client were accidentally saved in the vault of another client. I just don't want to fence myself into tags if this would be something that could potentially work. I also don't know if it would be more unwieldy to handle 500 vaults or 500 tags. Maybe some folks could tell me which poison that they would choose?

3- Somewhat of a hybrid. I could create a vault for clients and then have a tag for each client in that vault. I would still potentially have 500 tags, but at least all of my clients would be separate from the rest of my logins.

If there is a good idea that I have not thought of to organize client data and client passwords, please let me know.


1Password Version: 7.2.5
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 10.15.3
Sync Type: 1Password for Teams
Referrer: forum-search:use cases for tags

Comments

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @tylerzoll: It's a good question! Ultimately it's really a personal choice, but it helps to keep in mind what vaults and tags are designed for, and what they're good at.

    Vaults are fundamental to 1Password's security model. Each one is encrypted separately. Not everyone shares vaults with others, but having them each have their own unique encryption keys makes doing that securely possible. For example, if you have a separate vault with financial information saved in it, you could share that with your spouse or attorney, and that would allow them to access the data in there, but nothing else.

    Tags are more organizational. They're a way to sort of "label" items to group them together. For example, it might be useful to tag items in the "financial" vault with something like "taxes" to be able to quickly find the stuff you or someone else you're sharing the vault with needs when it's that time again. ;)

    It sounds like you're already kind of thinking along these lines. Really, it's up to you. But it's important to keep in mind sharing, for two reasons:

    • If you have an idea that you might need/want to share the items in a vault at some point, using a vault for them right off the bat would save you some hassle later on.
    • Along those same lines, if you have a vault with some items you want to share, but others you don't want to, it is better to create a new vault to share the items. Merely deleting the items in the original you don't want to share would mean you'd need to clear the Trash and item history too. Creating a new vault expressly for the person you want to share with avoids those considerations.

    I hope this helps. Be sure to let me know if you have any other questions! :)

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