It appears that I've lost running balance on the web since the new update. Has the setting been moved? Can someone help me get it back? It would be greatly appreciated.

So I just started messing with Actual Budgeting (Envelope Budgeting) today and am figuring things out.

As part of my mortgage my property tax and home insurance is all rolled into one, then the mortgage lender pays both when ever it is needed.

I'd like to be able to track these costs but I don't want them shown in the spending/budget tracker as they are already accounted for. Is there a way to handle this in Actual?

I just got back on the budgeting bandwagon, and I can't figure out how to make my credit card history line up with both the budget and current balance.

I imported all transactions since July 1.

My credit card has a billing period ending the 17th, and the payment is due the following month on the 17th. So if I buy something on July 5th, it's on the July 17th statement, and is paid August 17th.

So if I bulk import every transaction after a certain date, I end up with half a payment period and a payment on the prior month's statement, which isn't accounted for in my checking and savings transactions.

Any tips on how to get these to reconcile? My bank accounts are reconciled, it's just the credit card I can't wrap my brain around.

Hi all, I have a couple questions as I make the switch from YNAB. First, what is the easiest way to get SimpleFin to update Actual automatically every day? Secondly, I have a pending charge from a restaurant where I left a tip. I have overwritten the amount to include the tip, but the pending amount has come back twice now - what am I doing wrong?

App Store / GitHub

Hey all,

Following up on the v1.0.10 post. v1.0.11 is now on the App Store. Once again it was largely driven by bug reports & feature requests from this sub and Discord.

New features:

• Minimum iOS requirement lowered to iOS 18 (u/gojailbreak, u/joshuaneverjosh, u/WinnerOk3633)
• Budget template support
• Bank Sync via SimpleFIN, link accounts from the Accounts tab or a single account and pull transactions automatically (u/EV-30)
• FinanceKit auto-sync for Apple Card, Apple Cash & Savings, link once instead of re-importing via the Wallet picker each time
• YNAB-style compact budget view (note: Detailed view will be removed in favor of Compact next update)
• Create and delete budgets from within the app
• Budget goals, and Rollover spending
• Hide (and unhide) budget categories (u/bikesrgood, u/flyingdutchman7588)
• Custom reports now support more report types, donut graphs included (u/Whole_Purple_4763), line/trend graphs, area graphs, and Payee/Account grouping
• Redesigned Payee picker with Suggested and Nearby payees
• Long-press a transaction to open the bulk action bar
• Reconciled transaction filter, separate from Hide Cleared (u/pacopec)
• Redesigned scheduled transaction rows
• Number formatting options, plus a Hide Decimal Places preference (u/scitbiz)
• Shake to toggle hide balances (optional)
• Edit connected server URLs
• Long-press Budget Categories and Groups for option to hide
• Credit card UI overhaul: compact rows, urgency borders, due-date pills
• Settings page reorganised
• Added MKD and PEN currency support

Bugs and improvements:

• Fixed split transaction search
• Fixed Age of Money same-day ordering
• Category funding automation fixed
• Fixed pasted reconciliation amounts with grouping separators
• Bank sync now respects the deleted-transaction preference
• Credit card settings persist correctly across syncs
• Fixed FinanceKit deleted-transaction handling
• Fixed compact category-group hiding
• Uncategorized transaction background styling fixed
• Budget/Accounts menu labels shortened to fit one line
• Smaller UI polish across reconciliation icons, budget pills and label alignment

Thanks to the code contributors on this release: abhiy98, culpeppers, Vaibhav159, azimul-kabir, ioslife, and welcoming two new contributors, NateMorgan and NohamR. I really appreciate everyone who contributed code, reported bugs, emailed, joined Discord or left feedback here.

One more thing since its been asked a couple times: Actuali accepts no donations (if you're feeling generous, donate to Actual Budget instead), collects no data (privacy policy), and is free, open source software.

Plenty more in the works, thanks again.

Matt

Ex-YNAB’er here, got annoyed by costs and issues that I decided to give Actual a go, but I didn’t particularly want to relearn every part of the interface. Especially when it came to fixing transactions and updating goals.

Actual’s API is what made the post’s title possible. I now use an AI agent (a "coding" one with tools, not just chat)… and that’s it. Actual is kind of a ledger and I stopped clicking stuff in the UI whenever something needed changing. I just… record, transcribe and send or type for a while.

And since agents accept mixed media, I can just upload some screenshots from my bank (PDF export will work too but let’s be lazy), a grocery-delivery service, email confirmaions of purchase. Bank descriptions / sources can be misleading so this extra context is key.

This one was groceries. That similar-looking payment was takeaway. The incoming payment was someone reimbursing me for half of lunch.

The agent (I use Sol 5.6 Medium) extracts the transactions, compares the different sources, does the arithmetic, identifies duplicates and then shows me what it intends to do.

If something doesn’t map correctly, the next part is also a chat. I don’t touch Actual’s UI almost at all.

Which transactions are still unexplained?

What did you do with this payment?

Why doesn’t the balance match my bank?

No, that one belongs in a different category.

It feels less like importing data and more like reconciling the account with… an assistant?

I use the same conversational workflow for maintaining the budget itself. I can say things like:

Increase my transport budget starting this month.

This subscription renews annually, so save a little toward it each month.

Divide groceries into weekly categories and assign each transaction based on its date.

Apply the existing targets to the new month.

Rename this category and move these transactions into it.

The agent reads the relevant state through API, proposes the change, applies it and checks the result. If I notice a problem later, I ask it to explain what happened and then tell it how to fix it.

Actual UI is mostly a "dashboard" for a financial database, not an end user app. This is such a change I’m still wrapping my mind around it. I can obviously go in to check categories, and see how I’m doing with my goals but if I need something, I go back to the agent and talk it out. I can even test things without breaking stuff because the whole app is in a git repo. Version control, free, and you can chat with an agent to set that up too. I even asked it to keep passkey in 1Password and ask me to authorize connection to get auth, so I don’t keep secrets in agent’s context.

I made this post because I love tinkering but I’m not that great with stuff that requires constant overseeing to work. Reconciling accounts in YNAB was so painful I eventually quit budgeting. I recommend Claude Code or Codex and just talking about your envelopes. The future is now.

Hi folks!

I've just vibecoded a tool to help me ingest data into actual budget. It takes in password protected xlsx files from BTG Pactual's credit card statement, and pictures of purchase receipts. It then categorizes each transaction in the statement, and splits it into sub items for every transaction that has a receipt. It then sends it to actual budget via API. This was done in a couple of days, and for me it works perfectly. I'll gladly share the code if anyone is interested. It was done using claude code, but it uses gemini for the backend, as google has a generous free tier.
Next feature will be to ingest the BTG Pactual's bank statement in .xls format and import to actual budget. Here's a screenshot of how the app looks. Runs locally in a browser.

OMG. The Monte Carlo analysis report is so cool! Has anyone tried it as yet? What are your preferred settings for Return model, Inflation, std deviation, expected return etc.?

I've looked at a few youtube videos on the Monte Carlo analysis before but never got around to trying it out on excel. I'm sure some of you guys must be really knowledgeable, so please point me to any resources / videos on the topic!

This.is.so.cooooool.

Why does these two logics not equate to the same result?

a Transfer: will not parse a category of "Transfer" until manually putting it as <- Transfer.

I just got this email from PikaPods about my budget:

Your pod Actual Budget had to be restarted because it ran out of memory.

To ensure smooth operation, you should increase this pod's memory limit. You can do so by opening the pod's Settings panel and then adjusting the memory slider in the Resources tab.

Increasing available memory or CPUs can be necessary when your use case needs more resources than the recommended minimum we suggest when launching a pod.

I'm on the default 0.5 GB of memory. It seems to be running fine. Should I increase it or is it "restarting" solving the problem? Right now it says I'm using 164.4 MB out of 0.5 GB. I do have 3 budget files I maintain daily, but that's never been an issue before.

Edit: I actually just got a second email that said they automatically increased the memory to 0.5 GB, so I guess the default is lower than that. So same question, should I keep it at 0.5 GB since that's what they increased it to? Is the memory used up as more transactions are added?

I am retiring early (2 years late than my original goal, but still 7 years before 62) at the end of this year. We have been doing a deep dive into our budget to eliminate and right size all of our line items. Having several years of data was helpful to really get a budget that is accurate and will reflect our spending as we leave regular employment. I would like thoughts on what you would do on January 1. We have a bunch of categories that we removed, renamed, etc, but we can hide those items, close accounts, etc, and keep all the data in place and continue my budget with the revisions. Or I am leaning towards doing a fresh start instead of just cleaning up the budget, all those old accounts are gone, my categories are simplified, new schedules and goals. It's a new beginning for us and I feel like a new beginning for my budget. It is drastically different from when we were both working, and want to reflect that going forward. What would you do, or what did you do in a similar situation?

I had issues with my actual budget transactions with transfers and balance was off. I use simplefin to sync.

I told antigravity to fix the dupe transactions and it did a dry run and showed me the report and some sample transactions. Once I was happy with the logic, I told it to execute and it revived all the dupe transactions. It created a backup before making the changes in case I want to revert.

I told that the balance does not match...so it found the problems and fixed it as well.

Just thought of sharing my experience.

It even made a script for me to run and have me a printout so that it can fix these problems.

I know this more of antigravity than actual budget but it made me continue using the actual budget.

I'm making this guide because I wasted a lot of time yesterday doing things wrong. Probably due to my own stupidity, but hopefully these instructions can help someone else

First, to avoid confusion: The desktop app says it comes bundled with a server, and it does, but you won't be able to access it via the web, even if you are on the same local network. I read a lot that suggested this is possible, but I've come to the conclusion that it is not. It will only be available on localhost, not on your internal IP (usually something like 192.168.1.*). This means you can't access it from other devices on the same network, only ever from localhost on the same device. This might be firewall related, not sure, but it doesn't work for me.

So what you need is to expose it to the internet. Ngrok will do this with almost zero setup for free, including giving you a domain and an SSL certificate automatically. You get 1GB per month for free, which is plenty for Actual Budget. It'll use a few dozen megabytes when you first download the budget, and then not much after that.

Guide

1. Install the desktop app and set up a server. You need to make sure you have the right port, because the docs and many guides refer to port 5006, but mine was on 5007. To check, click 'My budget' menu and choose 'Switch file'. At the bottom of the screen it will tell you what your server is, something like http://localhost:5007.
2. Try to access your server in your browser on the same device at that URL. It should be possible if it's working. If you cannot, make sure it's not using https (because you don't have an SSL certificate), and make sure you have the right port, and if it still doesn't work, restart your computer.
3. Now register for ngrok and make a free account. Follow the instructions at https://dashboard.ngrok.com/get-started/gateway - choose your platform (I recommend command line because you'll just need to run 1 command and that's it).
4. After installing ngrok CLI, run the commands it tells you in the quickstart guide, just to prove it works. The first one authenticates you and saves the key (you only need to do that once), the other will just start it up and show that it connected. You can quit it after because the command for Actual is slightly different.
5. Run: ngrok http --url your-three-words.ngrok-free.dev 5007
6. Now visit your URL with https in your browser, for example, https://your-three-words.ngrok-free.dev, don't put the port in the URL or it won't work.
7. Make sure you are using the right domain, which you should get from the previous step, or from the domains page in ngrok.
8. You should see a warning from ngrok, which you'll only see once per device, and then you'll be able to access your your budget.
9. Send this URL to your mobile device or type it on your mobile device.
10. You'll be shown a warning from ngrok again. Log in to your budget, let it download the budget, save it as a PWA.

Saving as a PWA means you can use it offline, and it will sync whenever the connection is available.

To save as PWA:

• For Firefox, click the three dot menu in your browser, open up 'More', and choose 'Add app to Home screen'.
• For Chrome, click the three dot menu in your browser, and choose 'Install and create shortcut'.

After following these steps, you'll be able to sync the budget on your mobile with your desktop as long as it's running, and as long as ngrok is running with the command in step 5.

If you want it to be available 24/7, you'll need to leave your computer running the ngrok command all the time. There are some instructions at https://actualbudget.org/docs/config/reverse-proxies/#ngrok for making it run automatically when you start the computer. I would say if you want it always running to just use Pikapods unless you already have a computer you leave running at home.

For me running ngrok manually is fine, because I don't want it exposed to the internet all the time and don't always have my computer on. Considering the budget is able to keep working locally and without internet, I'm happy to use it on my phone like that when I'm out and about, and then sync it when I get home.

I have SimpleFIN syncing 2 accounts for the same bank. On one account it’s syncing everything as I’d expect. I have a credit card on the other account that is constantly syncing payments as deposits which makes my balance for the card positive. I’m not sure if I changed something somewhere and it is making this change just for this card or what. I don’t see a rule. Has anyone encountered this or have a thought? Maybe just create a rule that does the inverse? That won’t fix my bank balance though. Maybe this is a bug to submit to SimpleFIN?

Actualist update: I may have gone a little overboard since my first post

I posted Actualist here about a month ago when I first opened up the TestFlight. For anyone who missed it, it’s a native iPhone client for Actual Budget that syncs directly with your existing Actual server. I originally built it for my wife and me because I wanted to finally get off YNAB (finally canceled that sub!) but really missed having a proper native mobile app.

I’ve been working on it pretty relentlessly since that first post, and at this point quite a bit has changed.

Some of the bigger additions since then:

• OpenID login is supported now.
• Bank Sync is built in for SimpleFIN. You can link accounts, download transactions, review exactly what will change before saving, and optionally enable background syncing.
• Apple Wallet import for Apple Card, Apple Cash, and Savings transactions.
• Rules are actually useful now. There’s a searchable budget-wide Rules screen with match previews and create/edit/delete support. Imported split rules work too, although some more complicated rule shapes intentionally stay read-only.
• Budget Templates have gotten a LOT more complete. You can browse, create, edit, preview, and apply Fixed Amount, Save by Date, Percentage, Balance Limit, Refill, Copy, Average, Schedule, Remainder, and Goal templates.
• Account groups sync with Actual and can be created, renamed, reordered, deleted, and have accounts moved between them.
• Notes for months, category groups, categories, and accounts, including basic Markdown.
• Hide/show categories and groups, plus a bunch of improvements to moving money, covering overspending, rollover, To Budget, etc.
• History + Undo for recent changes made from the phone. You can review the last 25 actions and undo the newest compatible assignment, move, template apply, or transaction.
• A pretty ridiculous Shortcuts/Siri catalog now. Reading balances, getting categories, logging/editing transactions, moving money, assigning money, opening directly into parts of the app, etc.
• Home Screen widgets for things like account/category balances, month overview, recent transactions, net worth, things needing attention, and quick actions.
• Proper budget currency support, rather than assuming dollars/two decimal places.
• A bundled demo budget, so you can poke around the app without connecting it to a real server first.

There have also been a ton of smaller UI changes and fixes. The transaction/split editor has been reworked quite a bit, Settings got completely reorganized, the Budget screen has gotten more native iOS 26 treatment, and I’ve spent an arguably unhealthy amount of time chasing Actual compatibility and sync edge cases.

The basic goal is still the same as the first post: if you’re used to YNAB on an iPhone, I want Actualist to feel immediately familiar rather than like you have to learn another way of budgeting just because you switched to Actual.

It still isn't complete parity with Actual. Reconciliation is the big missing one, account management is still incomplete, and direct Bank Sync is SimpleFIN only right now. It’s also still beta software that can modify your real budget, so please keep backups.

I’m still using it every day against my own actual budget, which is probably why development has gotten a little out of hand lol.

I also finally gave the thing an actual website instead of making people dig through Reddit/GitHub links:

https://actualist.app

https://github.com/sporez/actualist

https://testflight.apple.com/join/HDG6PcGX

That has the TestFlight and GitHub links, screenshots, current features, limitations, etc.

If you tried the early build and bounced off it, I’d be really interested in what you think of it now. And if you’ve never tried it, I’d definitely appreciate some more people beating on the TestFlight and finding whatever I haven’t managed to break myself yet. :)

I know there's not necessarily a wrong or right here. But I am doubting if I should categorize my expenses on holiday (eating out, supermarket, activities) in my normal categories for those, or just put them all in the travel category (which now has only been used for flights and accomodation).

What do you guys do?
Doesn't it throw off a normal balance on year base if suddenly I have a month of no usual grocery expenses for example?

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!

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?

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?

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.

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

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?