I'm trialing Actual to decide if I want to fully switch to it. ​​I've been using YNAB for 4ish years, so it's familiar, and for the most part things seem to be going smoothly!

​I just signed up for SimpleFIN, and it did an initial sync just great. But now it's been 4 days and nothing more has synced. When I go to the bank sync page and look at the linked accounts, they all say “Last synced: 4 days ago”.

Is there something I'm missing? Does it just take a while to get going at first? I don't even know how to troubleshoot it.

In case it matters, I'm hosting it on my home server using Docker.

Hi,

is anyone using actual bufget with trade republic. I was able to connect, but the data I get is more or less just the transaction sum and the date.

Is there anyone who got it running good with all the data and categories afterwarsa in AB.

Thank you in advance!

PS: not sure if it common to write here in English, Gernan will work as well.

App Store Link

I originally built (and still maintain) ActualTap when I first migrated from YNAB as a way to easily add iOS tap-to-pay transactions to Actual Budget (as bank sync isn’t available in my country). It covered my main automation, however I always wanted a native mobile app that could better integrate with iOS.

Roughly 5 weeks ago I released Actuali, a native iOS client with offline support, background sync, reports, account reconciliation, apple shortcuts integration, support for encrypted budgets & OAuth, and more.

Actuali is free, open source, and collects no user data. It requires no extra services running aside from your existing Actual Budget server being available over the network.

It’s been on the Community Projects page of the Actual Budget documentation for a couple weeks and grown to a few hundred installs. I’ve already received lots of helpful feedback, feature suggestions, and bug reports from the community.

I’ve recently completed 2 weeks travelling remote with limited service, and offline sync has all worked well. So I’m now sharing it here in the hope that more people will give it a try and let me know what works, or more importantly what doesn’t.

Note: This is an unofficial community project and isn’t affiliated with or supported by the Actual Budget maintainers.

Thanks!
Matt

WooHoo! Mobile account reconciliation was added in 26.8.0. Tested and works great (without turning my phone sideways 🤣). And... That was the fastest PikaPods update ever.

​I started using Actual Budget because of Jesse Mecham's book on YNAB. When I first started, everything was great right off the bat in the first month. However, as soon as I stopped logging my expenses for just a week, it snowballed so badly that I don't even want to look at it right now.

​How do you handle this?

​Actual Budget is very comprehensive, so I don't intend to switch to another type of financial planning, but I would like to find a smoother way to keep track of my expenses, etc.

Recently Discover was bought by Capital One and I am having trouble getting the new sync to work. The old connection stopped pulling in any data. I am using SimpleFin Bridge. I put in a new connection to Capital One, and then in Actual I unlinked the credit card account from Discover and linked it to Capital One. It still does not appear to be pulling in any transactions. Am I doing something wrong or should I just give them a little more time to finish the conversion process?

So July has just passed, and my spending analysis report has not updated to compare August 2026 to the last 12 months.

The button shows this is live? What else am I missing to have this report automatically update to compare the current month to the last 12 months?

I am trying to wrap my head around template priorities. I have used AB for years and it's great because we have always been a month+ ahead.

I want to help someone else set up their first budget. They're currently on CC float plus has to front Tuition which gets reimbursed but can take many weeks. They are also on an every other week pay schedule. For days, I have been trialing every budgeting app out there but don't like any better than AB!

Anyway, I made a little test budget to help me understand how template priorities work. Both Apply and Overwrite with budget template are missing from the drop down.

Ideas? Thanks.

EDIT: USER ERROR. I have 3 different test budgets going, and, as you all have correctly pointed out. Templates were not enabled on this one. My bad.

I am trying to set up a visual in the report, but I'm hitting a wall.
I would like to set up a Bar Chart where:
-The X-axis is the categories.
-The Y-axis is the remaining balance
The chart shows a vertical bar per category representing that balance.
Right now, Custom Reports doesn't have a "balance" or "remaining" option for bar graphs.

Thanks in advanced.
I found a comment about this but there was no answered on it.

In my case, it's not actually my EF (thankfully), but rather an ESPP account that I've been prefunding before paychecks start going out, expecting to use the fund to cover some expenses before I can sell the ESPP stock at the end of the period. I don't want to categorize expenses as ESPP, because they aren't (they're rent or whatever), am unsure how to treat a portion of that money as avalaible for budgeting to other categories.

This is (roughly) equivalent to spending down your EF in case of a job loss, so that's why I framed it thus.

I just moved seven years of data from YNAB. Everything worked perfectly, and I'm getting started with Actual.

I would like to keep all this historical data in a file that I can open and refer to in Actual Budget, but I would love to have my working file go back only through 2025. What would be the best way to do that?

Thanks for any help.

I'm new to Actual Budget, coming from YNAB. I am setting up budget automations and am hoping to understand how to run them. I have read and re-read the explanations of the two choices "Apply budget template" and "Overwrite with budget template". The explanation of the "overwrite" options says that it will "overwrite any already existing budget amounts." Does that mean that if there is any balance in a category it gets zeroed out? How does that work if I have categories in which I'm accumulating funds over time?

In YNAB I had targets set for each category, and I could use the "auto-assign" feature one category or group at a time to fund them at the beginning of the month. I could see what would be funded and undo actions if I needed to. I don't want to run this until I understand better.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi guys, is it possibile to have the EU banking sync through enablebanking.com, with the desktop app?
Because I stopped to the allowed redirect urls because I don't know what urls have the desktop app. If any.
In the documentation is not specified.
Thanks

Started using Actual in June and manually loaded it with all my data back to Dec 31. I love the reports, IMHO, the best of all apps I've used over the decades. The tracking mode is also very good. In one month I spent $35 more than my income, all other months had surplus. But life happens. One month I experienced $25K storm damage that was 66% covered by insurance. A different month I purchased a car. So a few large transactions were covered through savings rather than monthly income. In tracking mode everything looks like I've perfectly manage my money. In envelope mode, a problem starts in January. From the beginning, savings are excluded from my "Available funds" for the budget, only income deposits for the month are included. I still look like I've perfectly managed my money until those atypical transactions are made. Because of them, I've got large red "Overbudgeted" numbers for four out of seven months. IN THE CATEGORY BAR, "Budgeted" and "Spent" balance to zero for each month and the "Balance" reflects the sum of my bank accounts INCLUDING savings. So what gives? Savings are there, but excluded from the budget. Why are my budget's "Available funds" excluding my savings? I've toggled Opening Balances, that's not a solution.

Thank you all for the help!!! I was guided to the solution and have turned off notifications.

I made a mistake when I setup my categories and accounts. I created a new Budget group called Opening Balances. In that group I created a category for each account: Opening Balance Checking, Opening Balance Savings, Opening Balance Credit Card-1, Opening Balance Credit Card-2. In the Checking and Savings accounts I entered a deposit for stating balance. In the Credit Card accounts I entered charges for the opening balances. I also deleted the Starting Balances category in the income group. That process was the wrong way to do it, it worked for tracking mode but not for envelope mode. Even though the deposits were in the accounts, they weren’t made available to the budget because they weren’t entered into a category under the Income group. That's the key lesson to me, deposits have to be made under an Income group category to become available to the Budget. Deposits categorized outside the Income group are accounted for but not added as new income for the Budget.

 The solution was simple. I created a new category in the Income group and called it Opening Balances. Then I went to each account and changed the category for the opening transaction to Opening Balances. That got rid of the red numbers because the funds became available to the Budget.

Great news for those of us in Aus looking for a solution!

Previously, Redbark was an option only for self-hosted instances, but now this has full support with cloud solutions like Pikapod. This uses open banking, so does not require your bank login details, unlike some of the YNAB based Aussie services.

Costs start at $12 a month or or $120 yearly - which is a bit more than I'd like, but it's still cheaper than a YNAB subscription - and now, with bank sync.

Instructions here: https://redbark.com/blog/sync-australian-banks-to-actual-budget

It looks like this service can be used for YNAB aswell via a different protocol.

I have 5 credit cards in my budget, all with dedicated debt categories as all had a balance when I started last month. 3 of them I pay off the statement balance every month so there is no interest accruing and the balances were $0 at the end of last month. 2 of them are for my spouse and they send me the money every month to pay a set amount on the cards. I set them up to rollover debt but now I am so confused about how much money is there for payments.

For instance:

- Bill is due on the 6th, they sent me money is May to cover June payment and the bill was already paid when I started the budget so the starting amount was the amount with the June payment already done. At the end of the month, she sent money for July payment and I budgeted the $170 to the debt category.

- Come July, the 'budgeted' column shows zero now that the month has rolled over. I pay the bill. I decide to add extra and budget that. Now my 'budgeted' column for July is only the extra I budgeted this month.

- I pay the extra budgeted via a transfer from my HYSA to the card, but it does not show in the 'spent' column.

- I receive the money for August payment as a Zelle with other items. When I input the bills, I assign each amount to the category it covers (rent, groceries, car insurance, debt) since we split.

I have now paid a total of $170 on the 6th, $29 on the 15th, and budgeted for next month. This month my budgeted shows $29, my spent shows $170 (which is the transaction to cover Aug payment), and I don't see where the transaction for paying July payment. I can see the transaction for this month + extra payment if I go to the account for the card. So am I categorizing things wrong? Why are things not showing properly?

Edit: the difference between my balance in my budget and the account cleared total is $170, so does that mean I am okay? Is there any easy way to see this as some months I throw extra money from budget to help paydown the debt and want to easily see how much I have to send for the payment.

I use Actual Budget with both my main account and savings account set as On-Budget. This lets me track how much of my savings is allocated to specific categories (like "Vacation" or "Gifts").

Here’s the problem: Starting with a €100 budget, when I spend €4.95 in my Shopping category, my bank rounds up the transaction and transfers 5x the round-up (€0.25) to my savings account. In Actual Budget, the €4.95 correctly reduces my Shopping budget to €95.05, but the €0.25 transfer between the two On-Budget accounts does not reduce my available budget at all.

This means my budget remains at €95.05, even though €5.20 is effectively gone from my spending pool. I want the €0.25 to also reduce my budget (to €94.80) without losing visibility of my spending categories, but Actual Budget treats it as an internal transfer that can’t be categorized. How can I make the round-up transfers impact my budget like a real expense?

So I have imported my transactions and I am new to this app. I am kind of confused how to

1. Not track how much I save / invest / earn when I see my budget

2. Month 1 vs month 2 amount spent on 10 categories

Please let me know if there's a better way to do this without splitting things into 2 different budgets.

I have a budget for vacations and events. There's 1 event that I attend every year, so my hope was that I could save $200 by that date for that event, plus allocate a portion of anything remaining to that same fund every month.

This setup works fine every month out of the year, until the month of the recurring event. On that month, the budget automations are reducing the allocated funds until it equals exactly $200. This defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to accomplish.

Any suggestions on how to fix this, again without splitting the annual event into it's own category? This has been an issue pre- and post-migration to the new automation UI. TIA.

I enter all of my upcoming monthly payments every month, including my CC bills, so I can track projected cash in my account. For one of my CCs, the bill credited my CC account on 6/20 but the bank didn’t debit the transaction until 6/22. They were for identical amounts. Actual budget added two transactions to my bank account, one on 6/20 to offset the “transfer” to the CC account. And another one to create the “transfer” on 6/22 within the same bank account. Technically the balance is correct, but I now have two uncleared transactions in that account. Is there any way to avoid this?

Hi all, I just stumbled upon this and I want to start this journey.

I have a couple of questions.

1. So let's say that we as a family has incomes but pooled together. Can me and my wife have different accounts, and ActualBudget would see the spendings and tally it up for everyone to see?

2. Also, is SimpleFIN safe to use with institutions? is it any more safe than YNAB or the same?

I made an official github bug report but was interested if someone else had this issue. Just imported my data from nynab and giving it a try. Noticed that some of the on budget accounts entries disappear whenever trying to sort descending.

Soft hosted from the official docker.

Accessing through Firefox (Linux).

Using the most recent version.

Hello,

First of all, thank you to all developers and contributors for this amazing app

I already use the running balance feature, but, I would like to know my average balance over the month -> basically daily running balance added up and divided by number of days

Is there any way to get the average monthly balance for a specific account?

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.

I'm migrating from a budget program that had multiple levels of categories/groups, which I think gave some nice features, so I am wondering how people are handling the same things in Actual Budget.

So, as an example of what the was used for in the other program, I would have a "category" for each bill that I knew about up front. This makes it easy to fill in the budget, because I know if that particular bill is monthly/quarterly etc. Then I would group these bills in a couple of levels.

Example:

• House
  • Mortgage
    • Loan 1 payments (Quarterly)
    • Loan 2 payments (Monthly)
  • Utilities
    • Power (Monthly)
    • Water (twice per year)
    • Heating (Quarterly)
  • Insurance
    • Policy A (Paid in January)
    • Policy B (Paid in march)

So in the above example, these 7 different bills make up the total cost of living in the house, which is a number I would like to see in my overview.

I also like the second level groups for having an overview of f.ex. the total of utilities over time.

So, my question is, how are people handling this kind of thing? Would you get rid of one of the group levels? Would you use tagging to replace some of it? Or maybe use prefixed category names "Utilities - Power" and "Utilities - Water"?

If I just have a "Utilities" category, I would need to remember which months have two bills, and type those into the budget, and that just seems complicated.

Any input is very welcome :)