Glossary

Short definitions of the terms used across this documentation. Where a term has its own guide, a link is included.

Products and connections

Actual Bench — the independent companion app this documentation describes.
Actual Budget — the budgeting application Actual Bench works with.
Actual Server — the server that hosts your Actual Budget data.
actual-http-api — a separate API server that Actual Bench can connect through in HTTP API Server mode.
Direct Actual Server mode — connecting to your Actual Server and running Actual’s engine in the browser. See Connecting.
HTTP API Server mode — connecting through actual-http-api. See Connecting.
Browser worker — the in-browser process that runs the Actual engine in Direct mode.
CORS — the browser rule set governing cross-origin requests; relevant to Direct mode.
Cross-origin isolation — the secure browsing context (COOP/COEP headers) Direct mode requires.

Account — a place transactions live (for example a checking account).
On-budget account — an account included in budgeting.
Off-budget account — an account tracked but excluded from budgeting.
Payee — who a transaction is with.
Transfer payee — a system-managed payee representing an inter-account transfer.
Category — a budgeting bucket for transactions.
Category group — a group of categories (income or expense).
Schedule — a planned one-time or recurring transaction.
Tag — a label attached to transactions.
Rule — automation that changes transactions based on conditions.
Rule stage — when a rule runs: pre, default, or post.
Condition / Action — the “when” and the “what changes” parts of a rule.
Template / Formula — advanced action modes (Handlebars templates; Excel-style formulas).
Budget mode — Envelope or Tracking, the two Actual Budget budgeting styles.
Budget cell — a single category × month value in the budget grid.

Staged change — a local edit not yet written to the server.
Draft Changes — the panel/summary of pending staged changes.
Save — write staged changes to the server.
Discard — revert staged changes to the last saved state.
Preview — a dry-run that classifies items without writing (Budget Sync).
Apply — write the selected safe items from a sync preview.
App Health — the diagnostics page for Actual Bench’s metadata database and scheduler.
Metadata database — the server-side SQLite store (under /data) for Actual Bench workflow data.
ActualQL — Actual Budget’s JSON query language, used in the query workspace.
Budget snapshot — an exported copy of a budget, inspected read-only by Budget File Tools.
SQLite — the database format budgets and metadata use.
Integrity check — a deep SQLite validation in Budget File Health.

Flow — a saved one-way sync definition between a source and target.
Source / Target — the origin and destination of a flow.
Mapping — the app-owned link between a source item and its synced target item.
Marker — a durable target-side stamp (imported_id) recording that an item was synced.
Duplicate candidate — a possible duplicate on the target, held for review.
Review queue — where uncertain items collect for manual handling.
Run history — the record of a flow’s past runs.
Safe item — an item safe to apply automatically (a new create or marker-match repair).
FX rate — an exchange rate used to convert amounts during cross-currency sync.
Currency pair — a source/target currency combination on the FX Rates page.
Rate override — a manually entered rate for a specific date.
Locked rate — a rate captured at first sync that won’t silently change.
Immutable rate snapshot — the stored rate and amounts kept with a converted transaction.
Vault — the encrypted store for unattended-sync credentials.
SYNC_VAULT_KEY — the environment secret that enables and encrypts that vault.
Unattended sync — safe-only server-side sync that runs with the app closed (HTTP API mode).
Auto-pause — a flow automatically pausing after repeated failed automated runs.