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Actual BenchActual Bench

Glossary

Use this glossary when a term in the documentation is unfamiliar. Terms with a dedicated guide link to it.

Products and connections

Section titled “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.

Budget concepts

Section titled “Budget concepts”
  • 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.

Working in Actual Bench

Section titled “Working in Actual Bench”
  • 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 Health and the Data Browser.
  • SQLite - the database format budgets and metadata use.
  • Integrity check - a deep SQLite validation in Budget File Health.

Budget Sync and FX

Section titled “Budget Sync and FX”
  • 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.
  • Remembered-server vault - optional saved server credentials encrypted with a user passphrase.
  • Unattended-sync vault - optional HTTP API credentials encrypted for server-side scheduled sync.
  • SYNC_VAULT_KEY - the operator environment secret that enables and encrypts the unattended-sync vault; it is unrelated to the remembered-server passphrase.
  • Unattended sync - safe-only server-side sync that runs with the app closed (HTTP API or Direct mode).
  • Auto-pause - a flow automatically pausing after repeated failed automated runs.
Section titled “Related pages”