RandWise

RandWise is a South African personal finance coach built with a Svelte frontend and a Laravel API.

It turns bank statement CSVs into clear ZAR-based dashboards, spending insights, recurring debit order detection, and realistic savings goals.

Why this project exists

Most budgeting apps feel generic. RandWise is designed around South African money habits: debit orders, prepaid electricity, airtime and data, fuel, local banks, and rand-based goal planning.

This repo is built as a portfolio project for a junior full-stack role. It shows product thinking, frontend polish, backend API design, file uploads, data processing, and tests.

Features

• Svelte dashboard for money health, cash flow, category spend, goals, and transactions
• Laravel API with demo, preview, persisted import, and import history endpoints
• MySQL-backed statement imports, transactions, goals, and saved dashboards
• CSV statement upload with transaction parsing and persistence
• Spending categorisation for South African expenses
• Recurring payment and debit order detection
• AI-style coach insights generated from real transaction data
• Privacy-focused controls and demo mode
• Feature tests for the financial insights API

The current coaching layer is deterministic so the demo works without paid API keys. It is structured so an LLM summary provider can be added later.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Svelte 5, TypeScript, Vite, Lucide icons
• Backend: Laravel 13, PHP 8.3
• Database: MySQL for development and production-style persistence
• Testing: PHPUnit, svelte-check, TypeScript
• Data format: CSV imports with sample Capitec-style data

Project Structure

randwise/
  api/          Laravel API
  web/          Svelte frontend
  sample-data/  Demo bank statement CSVs
  docs/         Portfolio and demo notes

Local Setup

Run the Laravel API:

cd api
composer install
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
mysql -u root -p -e "CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS randwise CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;"
php artisan migrate
php artisan serve

Update DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD in api/.env to match your local MySQL credentials before running migrations.

Run the Svelte frontend in another terminal:

cd web
npm install
npm run dev

The frontend proxies /api requests to http://127.0.0.1:8000.

API Surface

• GET /api/demo returns sample dashboard data
• POST /api/statements/preview analyzes an uploaded CSV without storing it
• GET /api/imports returns saved statement imports from MySQL
• POST /api/imports stores an uploaded CSV and returns the saved dashboard
• GET /api/imports/{id} reloads a saved dashboard from persisted transactions

The PHPUnit suite uses an in-memory SQLite database so tests are fast and do not mutate your local MySQL data.

Demo Data

Use this sample CSV in the upload flow:

sample-data/capitec-demo-statement.csv

Verification

cd api
composer test

cd web
npm run check
npm run build

Portfolio Pitch

I built RandWise, a personal finance coach for South Africans. It imports bank statements, categorises local spending, detects recurring debit orders, and turns messy transaction history into practical monthly money actions.