User Guide

Wet Paint — Personal Finance & Budgeting App

Getting Started

1. Create your account

Go to getwetpaint.app/auth/register, enter your email address and a password of at least 12 characters. You'll receive a verification email — click the link to activate your account.

2. Your first login

After verifying your email, sign in. Wet Paint automatically sets up a full set of Australian budget categories for you — housing, food, transport, health, and more. You don't need to create them from scratch.

3. Pick your year

Use the year selector in the bottom-left of the sidebar to choose the financial year you want to work with. Wet Paint supports multiple years — 2024 through 2027.

4. Set your budget

Head to Budget Planner and enter your expected income and expenses for each month. Once your budget is set, import your transactions to see how you're tracking.

Dashboard

The Dashboard gives you a real-time summary of your financial position for the selected year:

• Annual Income Budget — your total budgeted income for the year
• Annual Expense Budget — your total budgeted expenses for the year
• Net Cashflow — income minus expenses (your planned surplus or deficit)
• YTD Actuals — your actual spending so far this year based on imported transactions
• YTD Budget — what you budgeted to spend up to today
• YTD Variance — the difference (green = under budget, red = over budget)

The charts below show your budget vs actuals by category (annual and month-to-date), plus a monthly income/expense/actual bar chart for the full year.

Recent Transactions shows your last 8 imported transactions with their categories.

Budget Planner

The Budget Planner is where you set your planned income and expenses for each month of the year.

How budgeting works

Your budget is organised into Categories (e.g. Housing, Food & Dining, Transport) and Line Items within each category (e.g. Mortgage / Rent, Council Rates, Water & Sewerage within Housing).

For each line item, enter a dollar amount for each month. Click anywhere on a category row to expand it and see its line items.

Saving your budget

Each category has its own Save button. Click it after entering amounts for that category. Your changes are saved immediately to the database.

Tips

• Set income categories first so you can see your available cashflow as you fill in expenses
• For annual expenses (e.g. car registration, insurance), put the full amount in the month you expect to pay it
• Leave months at $0 for expenses you don't expect that month — they won't affect your totals

Transactions

The Transactions page shows all your imported transactions for the selected year in reverse chronological order. Each transaction shows:

• Date, description, and amount
• The category and line item it's been assigned to
• Source (CSV upload or Open Banking) and match status

Transactions are linked to budget line items so they feed directly into your Actuals reports. A transaction without a line item won't appear in your category breakdowns — make sure to categorise uncategorised transactions.

CSV Import

You can import transactions from any Australian bank by downloading a CSV from your bank's internet banking and uploading it to Wet Paint.

Downloading from your bank

Most Australian banks let you export transactions as CSV from their internet banking portal:

• CommBank: Accounts → Transaction History → Export
• ANZ: Accounts → Select account → Export
• NAB: Accounts → Transactions → Download transactions
• Westpac: My Accounts → Export transaction history
• ING: My Accounts → Export as CSV
• Macquarie: Accounts → Transactions → Export CSV

Uploading your CSV

1. Go to CSV Import in the sidebar
2. Click Choose File and select your downloaded CSV
3. Wet Paint will preview the transactions it found
4. Each transaction can be assigned to a budget line item using the dropdown
5. Previously mapped transaction descriptions are auto-matched using TX Mapping rules
6. Click Save Transactions to import

TX Mapping (auto-categorisation)

Go to TX Mapping in the sidebar to create keyword rules that automatically assign transaction descriptions to line items. For example, a rule for "WOOLWORTHS" → Groceries & Supermarket means every Woolworths transaction will be auto-categorised on import.

You can also use the AI categorise feature on the import page to have Claude automatically suggest categories for uncategorised transactions (requires the AI feature to be enabled by the administrator).

Open Banking

Open Banking lets you connect your real bank accounts so transactions are imported automatically — no CSV downloads needed.

How to connect

1. Go to Open Banking in the sidebar
2. Click Connect Bank Account
3. You'll be redirected to your bank's secure login page (via Basiq)
4. Log in with your internet banking credentials — these are never shared with Wet Paint
5. Authorise the data sharing consent
6. You'll be returned to Wet Paint and your transactions will start syncing

Syncing transactions

Once connected, click Sync Now to pull the latest transactions from your bank. Wet Paint will retrieve transactions from the past 90 days on first sync.

Disconnecting

Click Disconnect on the Open Banking page to remove the connection. Your existing imported transactions will remain in Wet Paint.

Actuals

The Actuals page compares your budgeted amounts against your real spending from imported transactions, broken down by category and month.

Green figures indicate you're under budget for that category. Red figures indicate you're over budget. This view is updated in real time as you import new transactions.

Categories & Settings

Go to Categories & Items (Settings in the sidebar) to customise your budget structure:

• Add, rename, or delete categories
• Add or remove line items within categories
• Reorder categories and line items using the up/down arrows
• Set category type (Income or Expense)
• Choose a Bootstrap icon for each category

Changes to your categories take effect immediately across all views.

Mortgage & Offset

The Mortgage & Offset page lets you track your home loan and model the effect of offset account contributions.

Enter your loan details:

• Loan balance, interest rate, remaining term
• Monthly repayment amount
• Current offset account balance

Wet Paint calculates your effective interest rate with the offset, estimated interest saved, and years reduced from your loan term. These are estimates only — see our Financial Disclaimer.

Investments

Track your investment portfolio by manually adding holdings:

• Shares (ASX, international)
• ETFs and managed funds
• Superannuation balance
• Cryptocurrency
• Term deposits or other assets

Enter the current value of each holding. Wet Paint shows your total portfolio value and allocation breakdown. Values are not updated automatically — update them manually when you want a fresh snapshot.

Account Security

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

We strongly recommend enabling 2FA on your account. To set it up:

1. Go to your Profile (bottom of the sidebar)
2. Click Enable Two-Factor Authentication
3. Scan the QR code with an authenticator app (Google Authenticator, Authy, or 1Password)
4. Enter the 6-digit code to confirm
5. Save your backup codes somewhere safe — you'll need them if you lose your phone

Changing your password

Go to your Profile → Change Password. Enter your current password and your new password (minimum 12 characters).

Forgotten password

On the login page, click Forgot password? and enter your email address. A reset link will be emailed to you. The link expires in 1 hour.

Signing out

Click Sign out at the bottom of the sidebar. For security, sign out when using a shared or public computer.

Still need help? Email us at hello@getwetpaint.app and we'll get back to you.