Full Comparison

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• Envelope budgeting — the default cash-control workflow
• Tracking Budget — the traditional income/expense forecast workflow
• Settings — where to change Budgeting Method

Designing your categories — a starting framework

The right categories are personal, but here's a framework that works for most people. Start broad and refine. Fewer categories is better to start - you can always split later.

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• How Budgeting Works — To Budget, overspending, and the monthly workflow
• Categories — adding categories/groups, merging, and notes
• Returns and Reimbursements — when money should flow back to a category

On Budget vs Off Budget: choose the right account role

Actual makes a distinction between accounts that affect your monthly budget and accounts that are only tracked for net worth. Before adding any account, ask: should spending from this account affect my budget, or do I only want to track its value?

That decision determines whether the account should be On Budget or Off Budget. Everyday spending accounts are usually On Budget, while investments, loans, and large assets are usually Off Budget because they are for tracking only.

Adding your accounts

When you first open Actual, a large Add Account button is shown in the centre of the screen. Clicking it starts a simple wizard. You can add more accounts at any time using + Add account at the bottom of the sidebar.

For each account, enter the current balance shown in your bank's app. Start from the beginning of the current month, or another recent date, instead of going far back in history. That balance becomes the opening transaction in Actual.

📍The Add Account button — shown prominently when you first open Actual, or available in the sidebar at any time.

📍The account creation dialog — choose a name, account type, whether it's On or Off Budget, and enter the current balance from your bank's app.

📍A completed account form — clear name, correct type, On Budget selected for a checking account.

📍Once created, accounts appear in the left sidebar. On Budget accounts show at the top; Off Budget at the bottom.

Transfers: moving money between your own accounts

When you move money between two accounts you own - checking to savings, or paying a credit card - use a Transfer instead of a normal transaction. If both accounts are On Budget, it does not need a category because the money stays inside your budget. If one side is Off Budget, the On Budget side needs a category.

📍Click "Make Transfer" in the payee dropdown to see your accounts and choose the destination.

📍A completed transfer — both entries are linked. Updating the note in one automatically updates the other.

When do I categorize a transfer?

A transfer means moving money between your own accounts. The category rule depends on the account types: are both accounts On Budget, or is one of them Off Budget?

Read later

• Accounts & Transactions overview — On/Off Budget accounts and adding accounts
• Transfers — transfers between accounts and transfer categories

The mental model: credit cards hold negative dollars

In Actual, a credit card is just another account - but it holds negative money. When you create the account, its balance is negative (what you currently owe). As you make purchases, the balance gets more negative. When you pay the card, positive dollars from your checking account cancel out the negative ones.

The most important thing to understand: your budget categories are updated at the moment of purchase, not when you pay the bill. When you buy $50 of groceries on your Visa, your Groceries category decreases by $50 immediately. Paying the card later is just accounting - moving money between accounts.

Tracing a purchase end to end

Let's trace exactly what happens when you spend $50 on groceries with your credit card, then pay the card at month end.

Paying in full each month — the full workflow

📍End-of-month budget — every card purchase has been categorized. No category is overspent, so the full statement can be paid.

📍After the Transfer payment — the card balance moves back towards zero. Budget categories unchanged.

📍The budget after payment — identical to before the payment. This confirms the concept: spending was recorded at purchase time, not at payment time.

If you carry a balance (paying minimum payments)

If you can't pay the full statement balance one month, you are carrying debt. This is a more detailed workflow than this lesson, but the big idea in Actual is to separate old debt from newly funded purchases.

• Create a "Credit Card Debt" category group, with one debt category per card.
• Set those debt categories to Rollover Overspending so the negative card balance is not counted twice.
• Categorize the starting balance, interest/fees, and any purchases you will not pay on the next statement to that card's debt category.
• Record the actual payment as a Transfer from Checking to the card, and always pay at least the statement minimum.

Read later

• Credit Cards and Actual Budget — the core mental model
• Paying in Full — official example for paying the statement monthly
• Carrying Debt — detailed workflow when you cannot pay the full statement

The main ways to get transactions in

Choose based on your bank's capabilities and how much automation you want. Most people end up using File Import as a weekly habit, or Bank Sync if their bank is supported.

Connecting Your Bank: Bank Sync

Bank Sync is optional. If your bank and regional provider are supported, you can connect the account and click Bank Sync to fetch new transactions. It does not remove the need to review: you still categorize transactions, check Rules, and reconcile accounts.

Importing a CSV file from your bank

📍The CSV import screen — map each column to the right field. The preview shows how Actual will interpret the data before you commit.

Transaction anatomy: what each row means

Once transactions are inside Actual, your main job is review and cleanup. You do not need to edit everything, but you should understand the key fields so you can categorize, search, and reconcile confidently.

Split Transactions: one transaction, multiple categories

Sometimes one bank transaction contains multiple kinds of spending. Example: one supermarket trip includes groceries, household supplies, and a gift. Instead of creating separate transactions, split the transaction into child lines, each with its own category and amount.

📍Split Transaction controls — add split lines, distribute the remainder, or unsplit when needed.

Payees, tags, and bulk editing

Three features that make managing transactions much faster once you have real data coming in.

Payees — cleaning up ugly bank names

Banks give payees names like TARGET DEBIT CRD ACH TRAN CO ID:XXX15170. From More → Payees, you can rename them, merge duplicates, and set default categories. Actual also learns from your renaming and creates Rules automatically - so you only clean up each payee once.

📍More → Payees: search for all variations of a payee name to merge them into one clean entry.

📍After merging — all variations become one payee. Click the name to rename it to something clean like "Morrisons."

Tags — cross-category labels

Add #hashtags to any transaction's Notes field to group transactions that cross categories. Useful for tracking the real cost of a holiday (flights in Transport, hotels in Accommodation, meals in Eating Out - all tagged #spain2025).

📍Type # in the Notes field to add a tag — you'll see autocomplete for existing tags.

📍The Tags management page (sidebar) — assign colours to tags and view all transactions for any tag.

Bulk editing — update many transactions at once

Check the box on the left of multiple transactions, then use the toolbar to change category, payee, notes, account, or delete them all at once. Use Filters first to narrow down to exactly what you want to change.

Filtering transactions

The Filter button above any transaction list lets you narrow what you see using multiple stacked conditions. This is far more powerful than text search - you can combine date ranges, categories, amounts, payees, and tags.

📍The Filter dropdown — choose from date, category, payee, amount, account, notes, and tags. Combine as many as you need.

📍Multiple stacked filters — here filtering by a #tag + category + year to find the total cost of running a specific car in 2024.

📍Save filters you use regularly — click "Unsaved filter" → "Save new filter" to give it a name.

Handling duplicates

If you enter a transaction manually and then later import the same one from your bank, you'll have a duplicate. Actual gives you a way to merge them cleanly.

📍Select two matching transactions and press G — Actual merges them into one, keeping the most reliable version.

Reconciliation: verifying your records against your bank

Reconciliation is the habit of comparing Actual's transaction list to your official bank statement and confirming they match. It catches missing transactions, accidental duplicates, and amounts you may have mistyped.

📍Click the green balance in the account header to see Cleared vs Uncleared totals — helps you know where the discrepancy is before you start reconciling.

Read later

• Importing Transactions — Bank Sync, file import, CSV, and manual entry
• Connecting Your Bank — Bank Sync and supported providers
• Merging Duplicate Transactions — duplicate merging and kept-transaction logic
• Split Transactions — splitting one transaction across categories
• Payees, Tags, Bulk Actions, and Filters — transaction cleanup and management tools
• Reconciliation — matching accounts and locking transactions
• Transfers — important when importing both sides of a transfer

What a rule is: an "if → then" instruction

Every time a transaction is imported, Actual runs it through all your rules in order. A rule has two parts: conditions (when to fire) and actions (what to change). If all conditions match, all actions are applied.

The most common use is cleaning up ugly payee names and setting categories automatically. For example:

This turns AMAZON.COM*5C7QC7MH0 AM 10/26 into "Amazon / Shopping" every single time - automatically.

Actual writes most rules for you automatically

You don't need to build your rule library from scratch. Actual watches your behaviour and creates rules based on what you do:

Condition types and available fields

Conditions can check: imported payee, payee, account, category, date, notes, amount (inflow or outflow). All string matching is case-insensitive.

Actions can set: payee, category, notes, account, date, amount, cleared status. They can also append or prepend text to notes.

Rule stages: controlling the order

Rules run in three stages. Knowing this prevents confusion when multiple rules affect the same transaction.

Viewing and managing your rules

Schedules: recurring and expected transactions

Schedules help you see upcoming transactions before they happen: salary, rent, subscriptions, loan payments, or credit card autopay. They can be recurring or one-time, and can be entered automatically or left for manual approval.

📍Schedules overview — recurring or expected transactions appear here so you can see what is coming before it happens.

Read later

• Rules — conditions, fields, stages, and automatic rules
• Rules Examples — custom rules and Bank Sync transfer examples
• Schedules — recurring and expected transactions
• Rule Action Templating — experimental advanced rule actions

The Reports dashboard: your financial mirror

The Reports section is separate from the budget page. Where the budget page tells you what you planned to spend, Reports tell you what actually happened. After even a month of use, the reports reveal things about your spending that will surprise you.

📍The Reports Dashboard — multiple widgets give you a complete financial overview. The dashboard is fully customizable; you can add, remove, and resize widgets.

Cash Flow: "Did I save money this month?"

Cash Flow only looks at On Budget accounts, showing their balance over time along with separate income and expense visualizations. It gives you a picture of how income and spending affected your available money.

📍Cash Flow — focuses on budgeted accounts, meaning money available for your budget.

Net Worth: "Am I building wealth?"

Net worth is everything you own minus everything you owe - cash, investments, property equity, minus debts, mortgages, and loans. It's the single most important number in your financial life, and it should trend upward over time.

📍Net Worth over time — includes all accounts (On Budget and Off Budget). Add your mortgage and investment accounts as Off Budget accounts to see the full picture.

Spending Analysis: expense trends over time

Spending Analysis tracks and compares your expenses over a selected period. Use it to see trends, fluctuations, and areas of high spending or savings - not just the single biggest category you spent on.

📍Spending Analysis — compare expenses across a selected period to spot trends, fluctuations, and areas of high spending or savings.

Calendar card: income and expenses by day

The Calendar card displays daily income and expenses in a calendar format for a selected period. Use it to spot payday, rent, subscriptions, or any days that are unusually heavy on the budget.

📍Calendar card — a quick daily view of income and expenses.

Custom Reports: when the question is specific

Custom Reports let you analyze transactions as a table or chart: Bar, Line, Area, Donut, or Table. You can analyze Payments, Deposits, or Net, split results by category, group, payee, account, or month, and save the report back to the Reports page.

📍Custom report examples — bar, line, area, donut, and table views. Build once, save to the dashboard.

Experimental Reports: advanced reports for later

These reports are experimental, so they may have bugs, missing functionality, or change later. Do not start here in your first month; read about them when your data is more mature and you want deeper analysis.

Read later

• Cash Flow graph — budgeted accounts and available-money movement
• Net Worth graph — all accounts and net worth
• Spending Analysis — expense trends and high-spending areas
• Calendar card — daily income and expenses
• Custom Reports — tables, charts, filters, and saving reports
• Crossover Point report — experimental financial-planning report
• Budget Analysis report — experimental budget-number analysis

Keep Actual Simple: Your Weekly Rhythm

The goal is not to build a perfect system. The goal is to keep your numbers trustworthy enough to make better spending decisions. A simple weekly habit is better than a complex setup you stop using.

Which budgeting workflow fits you long term?

Do not treat Tracking and Envelope as two steps in one graduation path. Both are valid, but they answer different questions: do you want to compare plan vs reality, or control available cash before spending?

Keyboard shortcuts and power features

This is not the full official shortcut list; it is the useful daily set. Open ? inside Actual whenever you need the complete list. On macOS, use Cmd+K for the Command Palette.

Full official reference: Keyboard Shortcuts.

Operational topics you will need later

These are not part of your daily routine, but they matter once Actual becomes your real financial system. Know they exist now, and come back when needed.

Experimental Features: use carefully

Experimental features are optional tools that are still being developed. They may be incomplete, change later, or be removed. Do not make them the foundation of your beginner workflow.

Common questions answered

Where to go next

• Tracking Budget official documentation
• Envelope Budgeting guide — official details for the cash-control workflow
• Rules documentation — full reference for advanced automation
• Schedules, Split Transactions, and Connecting Your Bank — practical transaction references
• Backup, Restore, and Syncing Across Devices — safety and operations
• Budget Templates (experimental) — auto-fill budget amounts each month
• Experimental Features and Multi-Currency — read only when needed
• Community Discord — the fastest way to get help from real users
• GitHub — report bugs and track new features