Bundle Export / Import

Bundle Export / Import moves all six master-data types at once — Accounts, Payees, Categories & Groups, Tags, Schedules, and Rules — as a single ZIP. It’s the fastest way to snapshot a whole budget’s structure or seed a new budget from an existing one.

Open it from the Export / Import buttons in the Budget Overview page header.

What you get beyond Actual Budget

Actual Budget has no single “export all my structure” action. Bundle Export / Import adds:

• One-click whole-budget portability — every entity type in one ZIP, each as a CSV using the same format as the per-page exports.
• Dependency-aware import — entity types are staged in the right order so rules and schedules resolve the accounts, payees, and categories imported alongside them.
• Staged, reviewable, single-undo import — nothing is written until you Save, and the whole bundle is one undo step.

Export a bundle

1. On the Budget Overview, select Export.
2. The dialog lists all six entity types with live counts and checkboxes (pre-selected). Deselect any you don’t want.
3. Watch for dependency warnings as you change the selection:
   • Selecting Rules without Payees, Categories, or Accounts warns that the export may not be portable.
   • Selecting Schedules without Payees or Accounts warns the same way.
4. Download to get a single ZIP, budget-bundle-<label>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.zip.

Entity data is loaded on demand when the dialog opens, so the export always reflects current server state.

ZIP contents:

budget-bundle-<label>-<date>.zip
  ├── accounts.csv
  ├── payees.csv
  ├── category-groups-and-categories.csv
  ├── tags.csv
  ├── schedules.csv
  └── rules.csv

Each CSV uses the same columns as that entity’s per-page export — see the individual entity guides for column details.

Import a bundle

1. On the Budget Overview, select Import and choose a .zip produced by Bundle Export. Partial bundles (a subset of the CSVs) are valid.
2. Review the preview — each detected entity type with its row count, before anything is staged.
3. Confirm to stage. Import processes entity types in dependency order (categories first, rules last) so name→ID resolution for Schedules and Rules picks up Accounts and Payees staged earlier in the same operation.
4. Review the result summary — staged count, skipped count, and any parse errors per entity type — and use the quick-navigation links to jump to each entity page and review the staged rows.
5. Click Save in the top bar to write everything. The entire bundle import is a single undo step.

Bundle import stages a lot at once

A bundle can stage many rows across every entity type. Review the per-entity staged rows before you Save, and consider exporting the current budget first as a known-good snapshot.

Common problems

• A portability warning on export — you selected Rules or Schedules without the entities they reference; include those types, or accept that the target must already have matching names.
• Rows were skipped on import — check the per-type result summary for parse errors or unmatched references.
• Nothing changed after import — imported rows are staged; click Save to persist them.

Related pages

• Budget Overview — where Export / Import live
• Managing your data — per-entity CSV import/export