Getting Started

After your transactions are imported, wunderBudget sends them in batches to Claude (an AI by Anthropic) along with your category list. Claude reads the merchant name, amount, and transaction type to assign the most likely category.

High-confidence assignments (85%+) are applied automatically and a merchant rule is saved so future transactions from the same merchant are categorized instantly without AI. Low-confidence items are flagged for your review.

A few types of transactions are genuinely ambiguous — paper checks, obscure merchant names, or transactions where the context isn't clear. These are left as "Unknown" and appear in the review queue for you to categorize manually.

Once you assign a category, a merchant rule is created and that merchant will be recognized automatically on future syncs.

Sync whenever you want to see your latest transactions — daily, weekly, or whenever you're checking your budget. wunderBudget only fetches what's new since your last sync, so it's fast after the first time.

Note: wunderBudget relies on Plaid to fetch transaction data. Plaid typically refreshes bank data every few hours, so very recent transactions may take a short time to appear.

Merchant rules are shortcuts that remember how you've categorized a merchant before. When a transaction comes in from a known merchant, wunderBudget applies the saved category instantly — no AI needed.

Rules are created automatically when the AI assigns a high-confidence category, or when you confirm a category during review. You can view and edit all rules in Settings → Merchant Rules. Changing a rule gives you the option to apply the new category to all matching transactions at once.

Yes. Go to Settings → Categories to add, rename, archive, or set monthly limits on any category. You can also import a custom category list from a CSV file using the download icon in the top right of the Categories screen.

The AI will automatically use whatever categories you have set up when categorizing new transactions.

On the Accounts tab, swipe left on any account and tap Disconnect to remove it entirely. If you have multiple accounts connected, transactions from all active connections will appear in your budgets and transaction list.

Yes. wunderBudget uses Plaid to connect to your bank — your credentials are entered directly into Plaid's secure interface and are never visible to wunderBudget. Transaction data is stored on AWS infrastructure with encryption at rest and in transit.

wunderBudget does not sell your data or share it with advertisers. See our Privacy Policy for full details.

Go to the Accounts tab, swipe left on the account you want to remove, and tap Disconnect. This immediately revokes wunderBudget's access to that account through Plaid. Your existing transaction history is not deleted.

You can also manage connected apps directly at my.plaid.com.

If you delete the wunderBudget app without first going to Settings → Delete Account, your account and all associated data — including bank connections and transaction history — will remain on our servers temporarily. After 90 days of inactivity, your account is automatically and permanently deleted, including revoking any linked Plaid bank connections.

To remove your data immediately, open wunderBudget and go to Settings → Delete Account before deleting the app. This is the fastest way to ensure everything is removed right away.

Savings Goals let you track progress toward a financial target — a tax withholding fund, vacation, emergency fund, home down payment, or anything else you're saving for. Goals live on the Dashboard so you see your progress every time you open the app.

Setting up a goal takes two steps:

1. Create a budget category dedicated to the goal (e.g. "Tax Withholding", "Vacation Fund"). This is the category you'll assign contributions to when they appear in your transactions.
2. Create the goal — tap + in the Savings Goals card on the Dashboard, give it a name and emoji, set your target amount, enter your starting balance, and link the budget category you just created.

Savings Goals require an active subscription or free trial.

The starting balance is how much you've already saved toward this goal before you created it in wunderBudget. Enter whatever is sitting in your savings account (or mentally set aside) right now.

From the moment you create the goal, wunderBudget tracks new contributions and withdrawals through your linked budget category automatically. The starting balance makes sure your progress bar reflects reality from day one — not just the activity wunderBudget has seen.

Any transaction assigned to the goal's linked budget category is counted automatically:

• Contributions — expense or transfer transactions to that category increase your goal balance (e.g. a monthly paycheck transfer into your tax savings account).
• Withdrawals — income or credit transactions in that category reduce the balance (e.g. a quarterly estimated tax payment). These are tracked automatically so you always see your real remaining balance.

Only transactions that post after you create the goal are counted — that's why the starting balance matters for existing savings.

If you've set a target date, wunderBudget compares your recent monthly contribution rate against the amount you'd need to save each month to hit your goal in time.

• On track — your recent contribution rate is enough to reach the target by the deadline.
• Behind — need $X/mo more — you'd need to increase your monthly contributions by that amount to hit the goal on time.

If no target date is set, wunderBudget estimates when you'll reach the goal based on your recent contribution rate and shows "Est. MMM YYYY."

The rate is calculated from your last 3 months of contributions (or since the goal was created if it's newer). It improves in accuracy the longer the goal runs.

Yes — toggle off "Set a target date" when creating or editing a goal. This is ideal for open-ended goals like an emergency fund where the timeline is flexible. wunderBudget will show an estimated completion date based on your current contribution rate instead of an on-track / behind status.

Chip, wunderBudget's AI assistant, understands a wide range of plain-English questions about your finances and the app itself. See the complete Ask Chip vocabulary for examples, but here's a quick overview:

Spending queries: "How much on dining in June?", "Total spending last month", "Dining and groceries combined"

Budget questions: "Am I over budget?", "What's left in my shopping budget?", "What's my total budget for June?"

Trends & comparisons: "Compare April vs May", "Is my grocery spending going up?"

Budget updates: "Set my coffee budget to $500", "Reduce shopping by 50%", "Add $100 to dining"

Navigation: "Show me my dining transactions", "Show income transactions for June", "Show recurring charges"

App help: "How do I connect a bank account?", "What does the Insights tab show?", "How do I rename a category?"

Follow-ups: After any result, ask "What about May?" to switch months, or "Show me" to jump to those transactions.

Tap Summarize [month] from the starter suggestions, or type "Summarize May" — Claude generates a plain-English overview of your spending for that month: what went over budget, what looked healthy, patterns worth noting, and actionable suggestions.

Once generated, you can ask follow-up questions in the same conversation: "Where should I cut back?", "What was my biggest problem area?", "How can I close the gap?" — Claude maintains context and gives tailored advice based on your actual numbers.

The summary is cached on your device so you don't need to regenerate it every time you open the app.

Tap the pencil icon (top right of the Chip sheet) to start a fresh conversation. Your current chat is saved automatically before clearing, so nothing is lost.

Tap the clock icon to browse your saved conversation history. Each past session can be expanded to read the full thread or deleted.

You can also type "Start over", "New conversation", or "Clear chat" to reset from within the chat itself.

Yes — to keep the service running fairly for everyone, there are daily and monthly limits on AI queries:

- Ask questions: 200 per day, 500 per month
- Monthly summaries: 10 per day, 30 per month

These limits are generous for normal use — most users will never come close to hitting them. If you do reach a limit, it resets at midnight (daily) or on the 1st of the month (monthly).

When wunderBudget categorizes your transactions, it sends the merchant name, transaction amount, and transaction type to Claude (an AI assistant by Anthropic) along with your category list. Claude reads this information and assigns the most appropriate category.

That's it — no account numbers, bank names, email addresses, or any other personally identifying information is included. The categorization result is returned to the app and your data is not retained by Anthropic after the response is delivered.

No. The monthly summary is generated from category totals and budget limits only — aggregated numbers, never raw transaction lists, merchant names, account numbers, or balances. For example, Claude sees "Dining: $487 spent vs. $400 budget" — not a list of individual restaurant charges.

The summary is cached on your device after it's generated, so it's only sent to Claude once. You can also continue the conversation with follow-up questions — those send the same aggregated context, not your raw data.

When you type a question in Chip, wunderBudget sends only your typed question to Claude to understand what you're asking — your transaction data never leaves your device.

Claude identifies the intent (e.g. "you want Groceries spending for May") and returns a structured instruction. The app then queries your local data, computes the answer on-device, and displays it. No transaction list, merchant names, account numbers, or balances are ever sent to Claude.

For monthly summaries and follow-up advice questions, Claude receives aggregated category totals (e.g. "Dining: $487 spent vs. $400 budget") — the same approach as the monthly AI summary.

No. Anthropic does not use API data to train its models. Data submitted to Claude via the API — including any transaction or financial information processed by wunderBudget — is not used to improve Anthropic's AI. Your data is used solely to return a response and is not retained by Anthropic afterward.

This is governed by Anthropic's Privacy Policy.

Yes — that's one of the things that makes wunderBudget different. After generating a monthly summary, you can ask follow-up questions in the same session: "Which category went over the most?" or "How does that compare to last month?" Claude maintains context across the conversation so you can dig into your finances naturally.

The Ask feature also supports freeform questions at any time — not just at month end. Throughout the month, you can ask things like "Am I on pace for dining this month?" or "What did I spend on travel this year?" and get a plain-English answer drawn from your actual data.

Our full Privacy Policy covers exactly what data is collected, how it's stored on AWS, how Plaid accesses your bank data, and how AI categorization works. The short version: we don't sell your data, we don't share it with advertisers, and your financial information is used only to provide the wunderBudget service.

Go to Settings → Security → App Lock and toggle on Lock with Face ID / Touch ID. You can choose how long the app waits before locking after you leave it — immediately, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, or 1 hour.

When enabled, your financial data is hidden in the iOS app switcher (the task switcher shows a privacy screen instead). If Face ID fails, you can always unlock with your device passcode.

Note: You must be signed in to your wunderBudget account to access Security Settings.

After a sync imports new transactions, a red badge appears on the Transactions tab showing how many new items arrived. Tap the Transactions tab to see them — the badge clears automatically when you view the New filter.

First, make sure you're using the email address and password you registered with. Passwords are case-sensitive.

If you've forgotten your password, tap Forgot password? on the sign-in screen. You'll receive a reset code by email — enter it in the app and choose a new password.

If you're not receiving emails, check your spam folder. Still stuck? Email us at support@wunderbudget.com and we'll sort it out.

A few things to check:

Pending transactions. wunderBudget only imports settled transactions — pending charges from your bank won't appear until they post, usually within 1-3 business days.

Plaid connection expired. Bank connections occasionally need to be re-authorized. If you see a warning on the Accounts tab, tap it to reconnect through Plaid.

Very recent transactions. Plaid refreshes bank data every few hours. Transactions from the last few hours may not be available yet.

If none of these apply, try disconnecting and reconnecting your bank on the Accounts tab. Your existing transaction history won't be deleted.

Authenticator app: Make sure your phone's clock is synced correctly — TOTP codes are time-based and will fail if your device clock is off. Check Settings → General → Date & Time and enable "Set Automatically."

SMS code: Check that you have cell service or a data connection. Codes expire after a few minutes — tap Resend if it doesn't arrive within 30 seconds.

You can switch between authenticator app and SMS at any time in Settings → Security inside the app. You must be signed in to your wunderBudget account to access Security Settings.

Tap the transaction, tap the category, and select the correct one. You'll be asked if you want to apply that category to all transactions from the same merchant — tap Update all to fix past and future transactions in one step.

wunderBudget learns from every correction. That merchant will be categorized correctly on every future sync.

Every new account gets a 7-day free trial with full access to all premium features — no credit card required to start. You won't be charged until the trial ends.

At the end of the trial, you'll be prompted to subscribe to continue using premium features. If you don't subscribe, your transaction history and budgets remain accessible but bank syncing, Reports, and Net Worth will be paused until you subscribe.

Premium includes everything:

- All bank connections (checking, savings, credit cards)
- Ask Chip — natural language spending queries, monthly AI summaries, conversational follow-ups, and financial advice
- Full Reports suite: Spending Breakdown, Monthly Trends, Deep Dive, Credit Card Dashboard
- Net Worth tracking with manual asset entry
- All future premium features

Plans: $7.99/month or $69.99/year (save 27%).

wunderBudget subscriptions are managed through Apple. To cancel:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone
2. Tap your name at the top
3. Tap Subscriptions
4. Tap wunderBudget
5. Tap Cancel Subscription

You'll keep access to premium features until the end of your current billing period. Your transaction history and budgets are never deleted.

This is usually a sync delay between Apple and the app. Try these steps:

1. Open wunderBudget and go to Settings
2. Scroll to the bottom and tap Restore Purchases
3. If that doesn't resolve it, force-quit the app and reopen it

If you're still seeing the issue after a few minutes, email us at support@wunderbudget.com with your Apple ID email and we'll investigate right away.