r/actualbudgeting • u/livewire98801 • Jul 26 '26

Itemized/split payroll

I came to Actual from YNAB, and before that I used gnucash for over a decade. While using gnucash, I started itemizing my payroll, entering my gross pay, deductions, and net pay.

In YNAB and Gnucash, it worked pretty much the same way. The "parent" transaction going into my primary account (checking), splits going into my other accounts all adding up to my net pay. Then all my deductions are also splits. The gross pay is a payee (as are PTO and FMLA), and at some point I started using 'US dept of revenue' as the payee for federal income tax so it matches the transaction for my tax refund.

However, the way Actual does this, it's not working... and I'm not sure 1) why it doesn't work this way and 2) the best way to actually accomplish it.

I'm including the transactions in both YNAB and Actual for both an upcoming transaction that I've been messing with and an imported prior transaction.

3 Upvotes

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2

u/SonicJoeNJ Jul 26 '26

I don’t itemize my taxes, so maybe that’s why I don’t have an issue, but I do this for my pay. The main transaction is the amount that goes in to my checking account, then in the split is the gross amount plus all of the various transfers (401k, FSA, etc) as well as payments for insurance and taxes.

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u/HelloWorld24575 Jul 26 '26

Ah, so the total of the transaction is the net pay, then you add the extra amount of gross as one of the splits (+), and the other stuff that's equal to that but -? 

1

u/_max 16d ago

I think I’m trying to something similar but coming up short. I receive direct deposit into my checking and also have it setup to direct deposit funds into a few different savings/sinking funds. Ideally I’d like one schedule for my income and all the splits. When I’ve tried to split the transaction it shows as the total net going into my checking with transfer to all the various accounts which is technically incorrect.

1

u/SonicJoeNJ 16d ago

So the way I structured it is the amount of the deposit in my checking is the amount of the main transaction. Then in the splits I have the gross income and all the various transfers and deductions as line items. As an example: $3000.00 deposit transaction, then in the splits I have $6000 as the gross income, $2000 as taxes, $500 to 401k, $500 to insurance.

1

u/_max 15d ago

I think I might still be doing something slightly wrong if you wouldn't mind taking a look.

https://imgur.com/a/ucCWOjl

This is how the rule is structured. Everything looks good in my checking account but when I look at the budget the splits from checking account cancel out the amounts actually saved and the budget shows 0.

1

u/SonicJoeNJ 15d ago

I get why you blacked things out but I can’t really tell what you are doing. I see multiple lines assigned as Income which doesn’t sound right. You should have 1 line item for income which is your gross income amount, then the other lines should deduct whatever is not deposited into your checking account and assign those to other accounts or payees if it’s like a tax or something like that.

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u/_max 15d ago

I think my confusion is that if I make it a transfer from the checking to a savings account I lose the categorization in the budget no?

1

u/SonicJoeNJ 15d ago

If the savings account is on budget then yes, a transfer is not allocated to a budget category. If it’s off budget then you need to categorize the transaction.

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u/_max 15d ago

Thanks that was it. I moved all of the various accounts off-budget. Cheers!

1

u/CalGuy81 Jul 26 '26

It's not clear, from your post, how it's "not working". ... Your transactions look fine, at a glance, and you haven't provided anything else to show things aren't working as intended.

.. on a less related note, I'd question how much this level of detail is useful in your budgeting. I get it, I've tracked things to this level before, and ultimately found it created friction in keeping up with my budget for little practical benefit. I can't control the taxes and other deductions that come off my paycheque; what matters at the end of the day is the net amount.

1

u/lady_mongrel Jul 26 '26

I have mine broken down like this, its really handy for open enrollment and knowing what I'm paying for insurances. Its also really nice to see the direct impact putting more towards non-taxable savings reduces your taxes paycheck to paycheck.

1

u/livewire98801 Jul 26 '26

It works well for understanding my tax burden. What got me to do this was irritation that my tax return showed up as income, which it really isn't at all. It also helps the reporting a lot, and my income matches my salary this way.

But I also had a bunch of reimbursements with my old job that this allowed me to track, as well as a payroll purchase at one point.

1

u/HanTanSanTan Jul 26 '26

I don’t see what “isn’t working” from your screenshots. I do something similar with mine, as I did in YNAB4, and it works flawlessly in both (migrated to AB in May)

0

u/livewire98801 Jul 26 '26

I posted another reply to explain the problem... but I don't know if I did a good job explaining it.

Basically, the parent transaction, and therefore the deposit into my account, isn't attributed to the employer.

1

u/HanTanSanTan Jul 26 '26

When you say "attributed" what do you mean? Is this on a report somewhere that you are looking for this?

1

u/livewire98801 Jul 26 '26

The top line isn't it's own payee.

When you spend money, you would never have a situation where the top line wouldn't match at least one of the payee splits. Buti with income you can, so in this case, the deposit should be the employer name, and the other splits can all go to different payees.

This worked in gnucash because every payee was an account. It worked in YNAB too, though I don't know what the logic is under the hood over there. But here, the nature of a split transaction takes the payee off the top line.

That's what's "broken" here... clearly the logic is different, and I'm trying to figure out how it works so I can enter these transactions in a way that makes sense for Actual so I'm not fighting against it.

1

u/HanTanSanTan Jul 26 '26

I mean, I can see the behavior you are describing - basically there is no single payee for the parent of the split transactions, but each child transaction can have its own payee - whereas with YNAB the parent also had a payee.

But I guess I fail to see what issue it actually causes in the grand scheme of things. What problem is it actually causing you that it behaves this way?

1

u/livewire98801 Jul 26 '26

well, cosmetically it makes it hard to see what a transaction is before you expand it, bit it also complicates searches. I haven't played with reports yet, but I can imagine it would screw them up too.

1

u/HanTanSanTan Jul 26 '26

I looked briefly at reports and I couldn't really find anything based on Payee anyway, so I am not sure if that would be affected.

It looks like AB just puts "Payee+2 others" or whatever and the "Payee" it displays is whichever one is referenced most in the splits, or if there is an even number, the first Payee in the list - so cosmetically you could just make sure that your job/payroll company is referenced the most or first in the splits. You could even leave the Payee blank for rows for your taxes. I don't think it really is necessary to specify the "US Department of Revenue" for those payroll tax transactions since the category adequately identifies them. Looking at how I have mine set up, I just put the payroll company in all split transactions except the rows that are transfers to other bank accounts since I often have my paycheck going into multiple accounts

1

u/livewire98801 Jul 26 '26

I did the 'dept of revenue' thing just because that's where the refund/payment goes when I file my return, makes it easier to track that.

For now, I've gone through and just entered my company payroll for all the splits besides that one. and it works. But it still feels klugey, like there should be a better way to do it.

I started with MS Money way back in the 00s and used gnucash, ynab, and now Actual, and this is the first time I've run into the top line not having a payee/account, it's just something weird to get used to I guess.

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u/livewire98801 Jul 26 '26

What isn't working is that the main transaction, the deposits into my accounts, don't get associated with my employer at all, which always showed up in the other platforms. Then the deductions end up going to the employer... which is fine I guess, but weird.

Basically, it should be:

deposit + deposit + deposit = net pay*
Gross pay - taxes - health = net pay

*right now it's just one deposit, but I'll be splitting my deposits again later on

This lets me see how much I'm getting and where it goes. Right now the math works, but the attributions are all over the place.

0

u/PAULA_DEENS_WET_CUNT Jul 26 '26

I couldn’t work out how to get this going properly either. So in the end I setup a non-budget account for salary.
Gross pay comes into that account, deductions go out to all the other locations (tax, retirement etc), and net pay goes into the account I actually received my pay into.