Accounts

Use Accounts to create, rename, close, reopen, import, export, and delete accounts. Review balances, transactions, and rule references before you remove an account.

Open it from Budget Setup → Accounts (/accounts).

Budget impact: Account changes remain staged for review until you Save. Account notes save immediately.

The Accounts table: five accounts with balances, on- or off-budget, open or closed, and how many rules reference each.

Balance, budget treatment, status and rule references on one row - so the question “what depends on this account?” is answered before you touch it.

It shares the editing model every Budget Setup page uses.

What you get beyond Actual Budget

Create in bulk - paste tab-separated rows straight from a spreadsheet, or import a CSV.
Set a starting balance as you create it. The Balance column stays editable while the row is staged.
Bulk close, reopen, and delete with a single action across selected accounts.
Organise accounts into groups and move several accounts between them at once.
See which rules reference an account and jump straight to them.
Impact-aware deletion - every close and delete shows the balance, the transaction count and the rule references first. A non-zero balance gets its own warning.

Create an account

Select Add Account to open the form drawer.
Enter a Name.
Optionally set an Initial Balance (seeds the account’s starting balance on creation).
Choose on-budget or off-budget with the toggle.
Optionally choose an Account Group, where supported, including groups you have staged but not saved. Groups with an off-budget-only class are unavailable for on-budget accounts.
Choose an Account Class, or leave it Unclassified. If the selected group has a class, the account inherits it. Off-budget-only classes are disabled for on-budget accounts.
Select Add Account to stage the account, group assignment and its class.
Select the page’s Save to create it in Actual. Its class is then saved in Bench against the returned account id.

To create several at once, use the bottom Add Rows / paste flow - the Balance column is editable there so you can set each new account’s initial balance inline.

Balances, closing, and deleting

Current balance is live - aggregated through ActualQL, refreshed roughly every 60 seconds or when you press Refresh. Negative balances go red.
Open and close accounts individually or in bulk (close, reopen).
Deleting or closing always confirms first, with the balance, the transaction count and the rule count in front of you. Money still in the account gets a budget-consistency warning.

Account classes

Each account can be given a class, so Bench features know what kind of account it is.

Assets: Cash, Bank, Vehicle, Property, Investment, Retirement, Other Asset.
Liabilities: Credit Card, Loan, Other Liability.

There are ten classes. An account you want Financial Insights to ignore is not a class: turn off Include in Financial Insights for it instead (see below).

Vehicle, Property, Investment, Retirement and Loan require an off-budget account. For an on-budget account, these choices remain visible but gray and unselectable under an Off-budget accounts only heading. Credit Card requires an on-budget account, so its purchases count as spending: for an off-budget account it is gray under an On-budget accounts only heading, and Financial Insights does not unlock while a card is off budget. Choose another class, or turn off Include in Financial Insights for the account. Cash, Bank, Other Asset and Other Liability allow either placement without warnings. Savings uses Bank, and mortgages use Loan; there is one classification level. Retirement covers retirement accounts, pension funds and superannuation, separately from general investments.

Click an account’s Class cell and choose a class, or Unclassified to clear it. A class is a label only. It is separate from the type and subtype Actual keeps on its own accounts, it never changes balances, transactions, budget mode or transfers, and it is never written to Actual. Classes on existing accounts are saved in Bench for the open budget straight away, so they do not wait for Save and are not part of Undo. A new account’s class stays with its draft, participates in undo/discard, and saves only after Actual returns its permanent id. If creation fails, the draft and chosen class remain. If only the class save fails, its selection and error stay on the real account; Save retries the class without creating the account again.

Set a class on a group. In the Manage Groups dialog, choose a class for the group. Its accounts then show that class as Inherited and cannot change it; change the group instead. If some of those accounts already have their own class, Bench lists them and asks you to confirm, because the group class replaces theirs. Moving an account out of the group does not bring a cleared class back.

A group containing any live on-budget account cannot be given Vehicle, Property, Investment, Retirement or Loan, and a group containing any live off-budget account cannot be given Credit Card. An empty group can take any class. Groups with one of these restricted classes are visible but unselectable when moving on-budget accounts, including a mixed bulk selection. A new account inheriting a restricted class cannot be switched on-budget. CSV imports that would put an on-budget account into a restricted group are rejected before any accounts are staged; adjust the CSV and retry.

Each class has an icon next to its name. New account classes can be edited in the drawer or staged table before Save; new groups must be saved before they can be given a class. Use the Class filter, including Unclassified, to find accounts that still need one.

Classify several at once. Select the accounts and choose Set class… in the selection bar. Accounts that inherit a group class are left unchanged; Bench tells you how many. New accounts’ choices stay staged until creation succeeds; existing-account choices save immediately to Bench. If any selected live account is on-budget, the five off-budget-only choices (Vehicle, Property, Investment, Retirement and Loan) are disabled for the selection, and Credit Card is disabled when any selected account is off-budget.

Click the Class header to sort: assets first, then liabilities, then unclassified accounts.

The guide

The Guide button at the top of the page opens a guide inside Bench: what each class and each Financial Reporting treatment means, why they matter (the same balance reads differently as cash, a fixed deposit, an investment or a debt), where Bench uses them (Financial Insights, Assets, Credit Cards and Bank Reconciliation), and how to get every account ready quickly with groups.

Financial Reporting

The Financial Reporting column says how each account counts in Financial Insights. It sits next to Class, and it is the only place to set it.

Class	Counts as	Your input
Cash	Cash & cash equivalents	Off budget: optional Uncategorized entries are income
Bank	Cash & cash equivalents (default), on or off budget	Optional: mark Fixed / restricted deposit; off budget: optional Uncategorized entries are income
Vehicle, Property	Fixed asset	None
Retirement	Retirement holding	None
Investment	Investment	Optional: Accessible money
Other Asset	Holding (default), Accessible money or Fixed asset (a tangible asset you hold and revalue, such as gold or a collectible)	Optional: pick one
Credit Card	Credit card liability (on budget only)	None
Loan	Loan liability	None
Other Liability	Liability	None

Nothing here is required. Financial Insights unlocks when every account has a class and a placement that class accepts; none of the choices below are needed for that.

A Bank account stays a Bank. By default it is Cash & cash equivalents: checking, savings and other balances you can readily withdraw, on or off budget. Mark one as a Fixed / restricted deposit when the money cannot readily be withdrawn, such as a term deposit. It remains an asset and counts toward your net worth, but it is left out of cash and the cash buffer.

An Other Asset is a Holding unless you pick Accessible money or Fixed asset in the Financial Reporting dropdown; only one can apply, and a Fixed asset wins. A Fixed asset is the only Other Asset the Assets module accepts.

Account settings. The settings button in the Financial Reporting column holds the yes/no choices that apply to the account:

Accessible money (Investment, set here; an Other Asset picks it in the Financial Reporting dropdown): the balance counts as money you can reach. The cash buffer’s (i) then gives a second figure, “With accessible investments”, next to its cash-based main figure.
Uncategorized entries are income (off-budget Cash or Bank): money in with no category, such as interest, counts as income in Financial Insights, in its own row “Interest & income in off-budget accounts”. Money out stays an unidentified movement.
Include in Financial Insights (off-budget accounts only): turn it off to leave the account out of every figure. It then needs no class. On a group, the same setting is in Manage Groups for groups whose accounts are all off budget; an account left out by its group shows “Excluded by group” and is changed on the group. If a left-out account is on budget (or its group has a class, which then decides), Financial Insights does not ignore the saved setting: it blocks until you include the account again, which the settings button still offers. An account that takes its group’s class follows the group’s setting, and its own is kept but does not apply. A left out of Financial Insights shortcut beside the class filter counts these accounts and filters to them.

A saved setting counts only while it can apply. If you change an account’s class or placement so a setting no longer fits, Bench keeps it but ignores it until it fits again. A new account is set up after you save it. A closed account with no transactions and a zero balance needs nothing.

Choices and settings are saved in Bench, per budget, and apply at once. They are never written to Actual and do not change balances, transactions, budget placement or transfers.

Grouped view

Use the No grouping / By group / By class toggle in the toolbar to cluster the table by account group or by class. Each cluster has a heading with its name, how many accounts it holds, and the total of their balances under the Balance column. A Total row closes the table.

Select a heading to collapse or expand it. Collapsed accounts are left out of select all, paste, and keyboard navigation, so a bulk action never touches rows you cannot see. A new, unsaved account is always shown.
Groups are listed by name. Classes follow the class list: assets first, then liabilities. Accounts with no group or class come last.
Filters and sorting still apply inside each cluster, and totals add only the accounts that match.
Debts are negative, so a heading that contains loans or cards can show a negative total. The balances come from Actual and are added exactly, in minor units.

Choose No grouping to return to the flat table. The choice is a display preference.

Account groups

Account groups are named collections that Actual shows together in its sidebar. Bench supports them on Actual 26.9 or later; on an older server the Group column and controls do not appear.

Assign an account: click its Group cell and choose a group, No group, or New group….
Move several at once: select the accounts, then use Move to group… in the selection bar.
Manage groups: select Manage Groups in the page toolbar to create, rename, or delete groups. Names must be unique, ignoring case.
Deleting a group keeps its accounts - they become ungrouped. The dialog says how many are affected first.

Like every other account edit, group changes are drafted and written only when you Save, and Undo reverses them. New groups are created first, then accounts, and deleted groups last.

Groups cannot be reordered from Bench: Actual’s API does not allow it. Reorder them in Actual itself.

Filter and sort

Filter by name, status, budget type, whether any rules reference the account, and group. Sort by name, status, budget type, group or class. Staged rows ignore the sort and stay at the top until you Save.

Notes

Every row has a note button beside the name. Notes render as Markdown, edit inline, and save immediately - nothing to do with your staged edits.

Import and export

Export accounts to CSV or import them (staged before saving). CSV columns:

name (required), offBudget, closed.
group (optional, account groups only) - the group’s name. A name that matches no existing group stages a new one. On a server without account groups the column is ignored.

Exported files include the group column when the server supports groups, and a trailing class column once account classes have loaded (an inherited class is exported too). Import treats the class column as informational and does not stage class changes. Set classes on imported drafts in the table before Save, or on saved accounts afterward.

Common problems

“Can’t change the account type” - correct. It is fixed at creation.
A delete warns you - read the dialog. Money left in the account affects budget consistency.
A new row stays highlighted - it is staged, not saved. Press Save.

Editing, review and save - the shared editing model
Rules - how rules reference accounts