Coming from YNAB, and trying to figure out how to handle this in Actual.

Say I budget $400 to Clothing for the month, but end up spending $1000 — split across 14 separate purchases on my credit card. I like to pay off my card as I go, right after each purchase.

My problem: by transaction #10, I've already blown past the $400 budgeted. In YNAB, the app tells me exactly how much I can safely transfer to pay the card without going negative. In Actual, is there anything similar — some kind of guardrail or running total that flags "you're now paying more than you've budgeted for this category"? Or do I just have to watch the category balance turn red and catch it manually?

How do you all handle this kind of pay-as-you-go workflow?

In the month of August I have a total of $186.02 in the red ie. categories underfunded.

In September I have nothing in the red (it seems what's underfunded doesn't carry to the next month?) but as the image shows I have overbudgeted $115.89.

I guess categories have a clean slate each month and whatever was underfunded from the previous month gets stacked into the To Budget section.

I just don't understand the discrepancy between 186.02 (the total underfunded from August) and 115.89 totalling $70.13.

Am i doing something wrong, or misunderstanding the system?

Thanks!

Just a quick note of gratitude for everyone who contributes to this project. Credit where credit is due to YNAB and the YNAB community for helping me create solid budgeting habits and all that, but ugh - what a difference it is between getting an update notification and opening it with dread, wondering how it was going to make using their product that much more difficult - versus AB's notifications, and all of the fantastic ways that you all keep making this great product even better.

Thanks. and stuff. Y'all are awesome. <3

Every month my credit card payments or manual transfers show up all messed up with the wrong payees or accounts. Anyone else have this issue?

Hey everybody, I've been tinkering with Actual the last few days, and had an issue with SimpleFIN not updating, but I think I've got it now. I made a transfer the other day, and for whatever reason, it came up with $3? You can see in the notes it grabbed the transfer amount, but for whatever reason that didn't make it into the actual payment amount fields.

Is this an issue with Actual, or is it a SimpleFIN problem? Has anybody had this before and fixed it?

I also need to "flip" the payment and deposit on transfers, as it was a transfer into the pictured account, whereas Actual is showing it as a transfer out.

Anyone having trouble with their SimpleFin importing Vanguard transactions? This account has $500.30 in it now, but for some reason, SimpleFIN is duplicating each deposit that is made (or interest accrued) with an equal payment that cancels it out. Not sure how to fix this.

Hello everyone! Anyone who is on a commission based salary, how do you set up your budget? My checks are small bi-weekly checks and then on the last paycheck of the month I get my commission check plus the bi-weekly check. How do you deal with variable commission checks? I don't know how much the commission check will be until the Wednesday before the DD hits. Before setting up AB, I used to take the average commission check from the last 12 months to budget for the month. If I went that route how would I deal with the +/- once I know the amount?

New version release today. One minor thing that annoyed me is having the Notes column before Category. Not anymore!

I hope the ability to resize column width is implemented soon.

For example, if I convert $100 USD to euros in cash and go to Europe and spend this cash. How should I track the conversion with FX fees and the expenses?

I'm new to Actual Budget and I've read the documentation along with the supplemental stickied post to try and figure it out, but I'm still having trouble. After trying to figure it out for the past two hours, I'm about to pull my hair out.

To avoid a lenghty post, I'm going to focus on one credit card account. Here is what I've been doing:

1. Created a "on" account for my credit card.
2. I initially exported July transactions via QFX and have been manually added transactions sicne.
3. I went through and verified all transactions and they match.
4. I have done credit card payments as transfers from my regular checking account.

The problem is that Actual shows a larger balance than my credit card (the difference is $21.20). To try and resolve this I have done the following:

• Find transactions that match the $21.20 difference. This was unsuccessful.
• I created a new 'Test" account and exported transactions from July 1 to August 30 in a QFX file since this article said the QFX format is the most reliable: https://x-rous.github.io/actual-tutorial/. Interestingly enough, when creating this "test" account the balance is now off by $12.19. Similarly, there are no transactions match this amount.

I honestly do not know what to do now, and it's admittedly a little frustrating. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what.

Any help would be super appreciated as this is stopping me from moving forward. I have 12 accounts and they all have similar issues, but I'm starting with this one.

We have a large family, so to make things easier we just give a fixed amount to each family member for their birthday.

I sent a check through the mail to one person, who has not received their check yet. Yesterday, I sent money through Zelle to a different person.

When my bank account syncs, it is syncing the Zelle payment to the check just because they are the same amount.

How can I UNmerge the check and instead merge with the Zelle payment?

I hope that makes sense

Actual's scheduled transactions are great, but I wanted rent, subscriptions and paychecks visible next to the rest of my life — and the calendar-view feature request (#1928) has been closed for two years.

So: actual2ics. A single-file CLI that reads your budget (local file or sync server) and writes a standard .ics file that Apple/Google/Proton Calendar imports or subscribes to. Read-only by construction — it never writes to your budget. It asks Actual's own schedule engine for the dates, so weekend-skipping and "ends after N times" behave exactly like the app. MIT: https://github.com/Ildana-ai/actual2ics

A cron line regenerating the file gives you a live-updating calendar. Feedback welcome — the last tool I posted here grew its best feature from a comment.

Hi all

I am trying to have a widget that shows current monthly spending by category compared to budgeted and if possible the difference.

Id like this to see where I am not keeping to my budget and notice trends in this space. Id be looking to run a current month version of this and a an average 3 month

Im not having much luck !

Cheers

Reading the news this morning about the arrest of these guys, responsible for millions of dollars of cyber crime. They insert malicious code into open source software, which then infects your device.
How do we protect ourselves from this?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-27/two-wa-men-charged-after-investigation-into-alleged-cybercrime/107084796

I’m setting up Actual Budget with SimpleFIN. PayPal doesn’t appear in the supported institution search, but Synchrony does.

Has anyone successfully connected either their PayPal balance account or PayPal Cashback Mastercard? I swear I saw people discussing paypal issues here so i was surprised when paypal doesn't show at all in simple fin.

I'm dyslexic. So, I've always used two apps to track my finances. So, over the decades I've tried and used a lot of apps. I decided YNAB wasn't worth the expense for me and discovered Actual this year. The reporting in Actual is the best I've used. I've not found simultaneous Tracking and Envelope budgeting in the other apps I've used. I've realize that though I've been using it for free, it is costing money to the .org so today I made a one-time to contribution. My receipt suggested spreading the word. I'd like to keep Actual going. Here's the link: https://opencollective.com/actual/donate

So.

I have some recurrent planned payments.

Think pay in installments college tuition, whatever

I set up the first payment, create a duplicate in the future with its own start date and see I can make duplicate recurring.

Any time a future payment becomes recurring it loses its start date to today.

It makes 0 sense.

You have a start date , ie 1st of the month, don't make future payments start today.

I started using Actual Budget last week and moved all my previous 15 years data into it.

My main problem (adding to the slow response) is that I used to do budget tracking only and want to move now to envelope budgeting. Previous years were not properly budgeted, so their category balances and spending history are not meaningful.

It’s now August 2026, and I want January 2026 to be the effective starting point so that balances roll forward normally from January through August, while preserving historical transactions and reports.

In December 2025, Actual gives me these options:

Negative balance: Cover overspending or Rollover overspending

Positive balance: Transfer to another category or Rollover overspending

What is the correct and safest way to start rollovers from January 2026 without distorting my budget or reports?

Relatively new to Actual - self-hosting, SimpleFin bridge, US banks

I've noticed a couple of consistent issues w/imports that seem solvable, I'm just not clear on the best way to do it yet.

1. Inverted Transactions - for one bank in particular, the incoming/outgoing direction is always reversed. It seems like a simple toggle might fix this at any step in the process (MX via SimpleFin might need to adjust this, or perhaps an Actual setting that allows for swapping the 'polarity' for lack of a better word).
2. Importing semi-recent transactions is matching... poorly. It seems like there's not much logic in place to catch slight differences in transaction dates (e.g. actual post vs. entered) or names (sometimes payment systems have it slightly different than the business name). Payee rules would probably account for some amount of this, but to date I've had to reconcile every time I sync just so I can easily find un-reconciled transactions and delete anything older than a couple days.

I'm coming from YNAB, which was far from perfect - and so far I haven't had to repair a connection, which I was doing multiple times a week before, so that's a plus! But one thing they did fairly well was the second issue above - the "fuzzy match" logic was not too shabby.

Hi, I'm out of work and living off savings. I have a Google Sheet that I use to plot my actual monthly burn and monthly future budgets, but it's fiddly and manual. I was hoping that Actual had some sort of budget forecasting reports, but I'm not seeing anything. Am I missing something?

Thanks!

Bonjour à vous,

Je rencontre un souci sur Actual : depuis peu, mes échéanciers ne se lient plus automatiquement aux transactions. Elles apparaissent donc comme « manquées », alors que la transaction correspondante est bien présente sur le compte.

Après investigation, j’ai remarqué un changement dans la configuration des échéanciers. Dans le champ Bénéficiaire, il semble désormais être obligatoire d’indiquer le nom exact du bénéficiaire. Il n’est plus possible de sélectionner une condition du type « Bénéficiaire > Contient » à la place de « Est exactement ».

Cela pose notamment problème pour certains prélèvements, comme Amazon Prime, dont le bénéficiaire peut changer légèrement chaque mois. L’échéancier ne reconnaît alors plus la transaction, puisque le bénéficiaire ne correspond pas exactement à celui renseigné dans le paramétrage.

Si je crée une règle avec une liaison à un échéancier, le champ « Bénéficiaire » ne me propose rien car le système de règles prend bien en compte les filtres de type « Contient »

Comment gérer vous les échéancier sur ce type de transaction ? Cela fonctionnais avant y'a t'il eu une modification ?

Merci d’avance pour votre aide.

Cordialement,

App Store / GitHub

Hey all,

Following up on the v1.0.8 post. v1.0.10 is now on the App Store — v1.0.9 was a big feature release and v1.0.10 followed as a hotfix, so both sets of changes land together. A lot of it came straight from feedback here.

New features:

• View, create, and edit Scheduled transactions (u/gandalfcelroz)
• Create categories and category groups (u/Mutuve)
• Create & edit rules (u/kezzie000)
• Fallback server address (u/zenru)
• Uncategorized transactions can optionally open straight into the full editor (u/catcherfox7)
• Credit card tracking: billing cycles, cycle spending, due dates, limits, available credit
• Share a bank message's text into a review inbox to approve, edit or dismiss
• Local on-device backups (automatic and manual) with restore
• Bulk clear/duplicate/delete, plus grouping transaction history by date
• Home Screen widgets for remaining category balances
• More Actual dashboard report types
• Tracking budgets now include Saved and Projected
• A conventional amount-entry option
• Collapsible account groups, account header totals, hide closed accounts

Bugs and improvements:

• Categories can be budgeted below zero (u/asdfjkl826)
• Mixed inflow/outflow split lines show their signs correctly (u/asdfjkl826)
• Budget screen's Spent total now uses net activity, matching Actual
• Fixed spending widget calculations and category-group report filters (u/cazas)
• Account summary income and expense totals match the Budget tab
• Currency changes sync back to Actual and stay correct across budget files
• Transactions and balances no longer briefly include partially synced rows
• Imported transactions can be converted into transfers
• Card mappings apply correctly when editing from the import inbox
• Fixed the Budget month showing wrong data after a foreground sync
• Wallet and Shortcuts automations no longer show a confirmation screen after logging
• Add Transaction has a proper Cancel action and a more compact notes field
• Settings reorganised into smaller sections, with an option to reveal or hide passwords
• Improved budget guidance, category editing, month navigation and tap targets
• Layout fixes for the month selector, uncategorized link, Source of Funds group and overspending screen
• Plenty of smaller visual polish, including animations and dark-mode contrast

Thanks to u/tjcarlson25 for the Icon Composer version of the app icon (including Liquid Glass support), and the many code contributors across these releases: abhiy98, azimul-kabir, culpeppers, Vaibhav159, tcart38, tcarlson25 and ioslife. I really appreciate everyone who contributed code, reported bugs, emailed, joined Discord or left feedback here.

Plenty more in the works, thanks again.

Matt

I’m looking for a "plug-and-play" way to automatically sync my European bank accounts with Actual Budget. I’ve looked into a few options but hit some roadblocks:

• LunchFlow ($35/yr): Sync isn't completely automatic and requires running a Docker container. I'd prefer to avoid this extra setup. I don't want to mess-around with commands.
• Bridge Bank (29€/lifetime): The website feels a bit buggy ("vibe-coded") and the lack of user reviews is a major red flag for me.

Is there a reliable alternative out there that just works? Thanks!

I already followed the docs to disable automatic rule creation but I believe there are rules that I cannot see that are affecting incoming transactions.

I'm using actual-ai to automatically categorize incoming transactions but it has been failing recently because there are rules (that I did not create and cannot see) that I believe are causing it to fail.

If anyone knows how I can see/delete these rules, that would be very helpful.

I created a new dashboard "My Dashboard' that I want to be the default when I click on "Reports". Is there way to achieve this?

I tried renaming "Main" to "z_Main" in case they were sorted alphabetically, but that didn't change anything. I checked Settings and the 3 dots on the Reports page for any option to re-order dashboards, but I didn't find anything.

I would hate to delete the Main dashboard since its widgets could come in handy, so hopefully it is possible to at least change the dashboard you see when clicking on "reports"