BUG File name is now synced across all devices when changed

BUG DESKTOP Fix a bug where undoing a "hold for next month" budget action showed inaccurate amounts temporarily.

BUG DESKTOP Maintain focus when editing a transaction and switching to other apps

BUG MOBILE Sometimes the app would crash on the settings page with specific settings. It shouldn't crash now!

BUG MOBILE Fix regression on Android apps where app would render underneath status bar

BUG MOBILE Fix problem with certain Android devices where text was aggressively truncated

FEATURE Do an initial sync when opening the app so your data is always up-to-date

FEATURE You can now export transactions to CSV by viewing an account and clicking "Export". If you have applied a filter, only those transactions will be exported.

FEATURE The default font has changed to Inter on all desktop platforms

FEATURE The budget table has been rewritten! The design is similar, but a lot has changed and paves the way for more improvements. I wrote a blog post going into details about it. Many interactions like the animation has changed.

FEATURE The drag-and-drop experience when reordering categories has been greatly improved

FEATURE You can now collapse budget summaries for a more condensed view

FEATURE You can now add notes to categories and months

FEATURE The maximum number of budget months you can view at once has been bumped up to 6 (used tot be 4)

FEATURE If you enter an amount more than 2 decimal digits, it now rounds to the nearest amount. For example, 2.428 would be rounded to 2.43 and 2.424 would be rounded to 2.42. This applies to results from math expressions as well like 4.40 * 1.06

FEATURE You can click on the income received amount in the budget to view transactions for that category

BUG This is a quick followup release that fixes QFX/OFX importing. 0.0.117 accidentally broke it, but it should work again!

In addition to the features and bugfixes below, this release introduces a new version of Actual: on the web! This is experimental, but please try this out and let me know if any problems.

Features

• Importing CSV files! You can finally import transactions from CSV and choose which fields to map onto.

• Preview imported transactions Importing other file types will open the same preview modal as you see above, allowing you to see the transactions you are about to import and provide options like customizing the date format.

• Inline math expressions Wherever you enter an amount, you can enter a math expression like "100.00 - 55" and it will evaluate it. This applies to transaction amounts, budget amounts, and whenever you transfer money around on the budget page.

Bugfixes

• (Mobile) If the cleared switch hasn't been changed, new transactions are uncleared by default instead of cleared

• (Mobile) Fixed a few bugs with refreshing transactions after changes

• (Mobile) Fixed deleting a local file that isn't syncing anymore

• (Mobile) Fix date logic for timezones like Australia and be more resilient to daylight savings changes (this caused problems sometimes loading a budget)

• (Mobile) Improve drag & drop experience when editing categories

Features

• You can now click on a category's "spent" amount in the budget to see all the transactions that make up that amount

• If the sidebar is hidden, the ability to make it appear by hovering over the left edge no longer works. You must open it by hovering the menu icon in the top left. While this isn't quite as nice, previously the sidebar would appear when trying to interact with UI elements near the left edge (such as deleting a transaction)

Bugfixes

• Electron, the framework internally used to run Actual on all platforms, has been updated. Please get in touch if you run into any strange bugs in the new version.

• After navigating away and back to the budget, the multi-month picker in the top left would disappear. Now it's always there (if there is room for multiple months)

• Sometimes the "cleared" total in the reconciliation message wouldn't update — it's always correct now

• Sometimes data in the transaction table would be left unformatted (such as "0" instead of "0.00"). This has been fixed!

API

• This release includes a small change to the importTransactions method. It used to only return ok indicating that it was successful. Now, it returns an object describing the transactions that were added and updated, or an error if it occurred. Read the updated docs.

See this twitter thread for videos of all the new features and polish!

Features

• The sidebar can be hidden to give more room for content. When content becomes fullscreen, you can access the sidebar by hovering over the left edge of the app. (video)

• The account page has been redesigned, and it now includes a "cleared" flag for all transactions. You can view the cleared/uncleared totals by clicking on the account balance. This expanded view will persist in the future. (video)

• A workflow for reconciling accounts. You can now enter a number and using the cleared flags, figure out why your account doesn't match your bank's. (video)

• The control for the month picker in the top left of the budget page has been updated

• All numbers now are fixed width. This makes them easier to scan vertically and compare them

• When importing files, it will now show a matched icon on transactions that it matched and changed something. If it updates the date, or clears it, etc it will show a matched icon on the left.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an important bug where sometimes logging in would create an addition file instead of show your existing files

• The autocomplete control stays anchored to the input if it shows above it

• Payee rule changes are always saved, regardless of how you close it (like if you clicked outside to close the popup, now it will save!)

• (Mobile) The budget screen on mobile has been tweaked to give more room for data. The font size has been decreased along with a few other things.

Please read the blog post for a more information about these changes. This a big update that gets ready for bank syncing and improves the experience all around. This is also the first version where a free plan is no longer available. In the desktop app, you must login to use the app. See the blog post for more details.

If you want to continue using the current version for free, stay on 0.0.112. Read the blog post for how to do that.

Moving forward, while Actual is still completely a local app and will support e2e encryption, we are starting to rely more on the cloud by default. All files default to being cloud files, which provides far better experience when setting up new devices. It also opens up the possibility of a web version of Actual, where you sign in, download your file and use it for a session in a browser (decrypting the file if needed).

This is also the first version to feature an Android app!

Desktop

• The file manager has been redesigned to make it clearer how to open up the action menu for the files. The whole page features a new design as well.

• When deleting a file, now you can choose whether to delete it across all devices or just delete it locally.

• All users must be logged in to use the app. There is no more free plan available. You will see a login screen if you are not logged in.

• The tutorial has been removed temporarily while the app is updated for bank syncing. In the future, the app will feature more gradual guidance. Users are now encouraged to read the docs on the website.

• You can no longer manage your account inside of Actual. It will take you to a browser to manage it on the web, which ensures that it's always up-to-date and removes duplication.

• On Window, the certificate has been updated. The last one had expired. Unfortunately, for a short time you may see a SmartScreen warning when opening the app until the app gains back reputation.

• Internally, there is a lot of reliability and performance improvements:

  • The syncing layer has been greatly improved to handle edge cases which previously caused issues. It is much closer to 100% reliability.

  • The database now has the ability to handle distributed schema migrations, which gives me the ability to add features which require changes to the database (this was previously hard due to how the app syncs across devices)

  • The database calls have been optimized and more of them run in a transactional manner. Not only does this provide the reliability improvements above, it's a lot faster (I blogged more here about i)

  • The backend in the desktop app is now bundled into a single file. This should help with startup time, and it also offers performance improvements since the code is now compiled with optimizations.

  • Because of bundling and other optimizations, the app is generally smaller (up to 15% depending on OS after installation)

Bugfixes

• Better error messages when importing transactions that have invalid dates. If a transaction happens to have an invalid date already, the UI no longer crashes

• In some OSes, users were not able to pick a YNAB4 file to import from the system dialog. This has been fixed.

• Fix a regression with focus management when adding a new transaction by pressing "enter" when focusing the payment amount. Now it properly focuses the date field after adding.

• Fix deleting an income category

Mobile

• Android is now available! You can download it here

• The budget page design has been tweaked to give more vertical space and simplify interactions. The "to budget" value now shows in the appear left, and the action menu icon is now in the header.

• Modals have a new design which takes up the fullscreen and has the same UX as the transaction screen

• Important: the transaction screen has changed. Changes are no longer saved on swipe back. Swiping back cancels any editing, and now you must press the "save changes" button to save them. This makes the UX the same as when adding a transaction. Also, the save/add button now is always shown.

• The accounts page has been redesigned to show more information about the accounts.

• The file list screen has been improved to make it more clear how to open the action menu for each file. When deleting a file, you also now have the option to either delete the file across all devices or just delete it locally.

• Remove the several step process for creating a new file and immediately land in the app. Start work on onboarding the user within the app.

• There as been major improvements to reliability and performance of the syncing layer. A couple critical bugs have been fixed in addition to improving how changes are applied generally.

This is another small release only for desktop with a few fixes and tweaks. I've also updated the roadmap on trello see check it out and file any new bug/feature requests.

A quick note: have you had problems with deleting categories and transferring them to another one? I'd like to hear from you. I'm looking into a common error reported, but haven't been able to reproduce or find anyone who has that problem. What happens is you delete a category and transfer its budget over, the category gets removed but the budget doesn't update. If you restart Actual, the deleted category is back. This is because an error occurred while deleting and it wasn't actually deleted.

Desktop

• When importing transactions and matching them with existing ones, previously the system would look back 10 days and try to find a transaction that matches. Since we relaxed how it matches payees a while ago, we've tightened it up to only look back 5 days. A transaction will only match another if the other one exists within the last 5 days.
• Fix a bug on Windows where sometimes the budget page would start shaking. This happens when the window happens to be a specific size.
• Sometimes the "an error occurred, sorry!" notification wasn't showing up when something went wrong in the backend, making you think everything worked when it really didn't. It should now always show when something goes wrong (which is rare).
• Ignore any payee rules that have an empty value. Now if you have a contains rule that's empty, all future transactions won't match to it.

This is a bugfix release that focuses on improving stability. These are the most common bugs reported in our error tracking system.

Desktop

• Properly handle file names with special unicode characters (like emojis) when uploading the file to the cloud
• Fix crash when opening the payee modal under certain circumstances

Mobile

Important: Fixed a critical bug from 0.0.109 which was looking in the wrong place for your files. It now looks in the correct place.

This means you will see a different list of files after updating. You should see your files before the 0.0.109 release again, but that means you won't see any files you've created since then. Luckily, with the new cloud files feature, they should be uploaded and available for download again. If you're migrating old files to the new cloud files, read the release notes: https://actualbudget.com/release-notes/

Please contact us if this causes any important data loss.

• We've defeated the darkness and you can now see text within inputs in dark mode. The last update inadvertently made the text respect your dark preferences and disappeared. Sorry!
• Fix closing a modal with the "close" button
• Don't allow dates like "12/30/209" which are valid but with a year of 209. No time traveling allowed.

🎉 Introducing cloud files!

This update includes a complete rework of how syncing is set up across devices, as described in Simplifying syncing with cloud-based files. Syncing has always worked well across devices, but setting up syncing has always been a bit of a pain. It required two devices to connect directly to each other, causing all sorts of problems depending on your network conditions. Now, your files are directly uploaded to the cloud and when you log in on a device, all of your files are immediately available for download. All you have to do is select one and open it.

The documentation for setting up syncing has been updated, so you should go read it.

Up next: bank syncing, custom reports, and many other smaller features!

Migrating old files

Existing files are not automatically converted into cloud files. You will need to set up syncing again on your devices to upgrade to the new system. Please read the docs about how to do this.

If you used a custom location for files, please read this

In version 0.0.106, we introduced the ability to customize where files are stored. You will need to set this location again. Due to a bug, in certain circumstances the feature causes users to see no files listed. In this version we reset the location preference and changed how we implemented this feature to be more robust.

You will not see your files listed if you used this feature before. All you need to do is change the location back to where they were stored before. (Unfortunately, right now this means you need to create a budget first so you can go into settings and change it)

All features and fixes

• Cloud files (see above)
• Introduce end-to-end encryption
• Fix several bugs with reordering categories and groups. It should be more stable now.
• Many other small bugfixes.

Desktop

• Fix edge cases where importing transactions would resolve to transaction in other accounts, causing them to be skipped in the import

Mobile

• Fix several bugs with reordering categories and groups. It should be more stable now.
• The backend in the mobile app now runs using a different technology called nodejs-mobile. Please report any behavior that has unintentionally changed.
• Improve the adding & saving transaction workflow. When adding a transaction, swiping back now won't do anything. You need to explicitly press the "Add transaction" button. When saving, swiping back still automatically saves changes, but there is now a "cancel edits" button if you don't want to save them.
• Sometimes there were cases where the transactions list would not be updated after syncing change. It should always show updates now.

This is a small update for desktop:

Features:

• Implement a "cover overspending" option in the menu when clicking on a category balance in the budget. This is essentially the same thing as transferring money, but in reverse. It allows you to take money from another category to cover overspending.
• Relax transaction matching. Previously, it would only match transactions if the dates were relatively similar, the amounts were exactly the same, and if the payees were relative similar. Now it will match regardless of the payee (only check date and amount), but it will still prefer the payees to be similar. That means if there are multiple transactions with the same amount, it will at least to attempt to match the correct one.
• Revamp settings page
• Provide the option to customize where files are stored (see "global" tab in settings)
• Add cmd + , shortcut to open settings in macOS
• Implement a lot of internal UI changes to prepare for the automatic bank syncing feature.

Bugfixes:

• Fix problem where buttons are in the "hover" state even after you click on them
• Fix number formatting. The 0.0.106 accidentally broke alternate number formats.

This is a small followup release to 0.0.104 which caused a couple regressions. That release included a lot of changes so this release is focused stability.

Regression fixes:

• Certain categories and categories groups that have budget data over a year old caused problems when deleting them and transferring data to another category. Old data was in an unexpected format, and the new budget system handles it correctly now.
• Fix the overspending screen in the tutorial. Previously it would crash the UI.

Bugfixes:

• Fix a bug where sometimes the UI would crash when creating or deleting an account. This is a rare edge case but it should (hopefully) never happen now.
• Make reopening an account undo-able
• Show a loader when force deleting an account instead of closing the modal immediately. If the account has a lot of data, force closing it may take some time you shouldn't be able to interact with the UI while it's deleting it, or there will be errors. Once force closing is finished, the modal will automatically close.

First of all, I want to say sorry. There's no excuse to wait months between releases, and I'm really sorry about that. This is a big release and everything ended up being wrapped into it, but I took it slowly because making sure your data is safely upgraded and works smoothly is of utmost importance to me.

A completely new budgeting backend

This release has a totally new budgeting backend. I'll blog about this soon, but basically the entire budget used to be implemented internally as a spreadsheet, even with it's own custom language! The original idea was to expose this to the user and allow customization of the budget formulas, but I've learned a lot since then. I still have ideas related to this, but it was silly how complex the previous implementation made everything.

It made everything in the budget slow. If you had a couple years worth of data, adding a category would lag between the time you pressed enter and it actually showed up in the budget. Same with deleting a category, or anything else.

This has been completely fixed. Now, all of the interactions with the budget are instant. The backend is insanely faster, and the frontend has been meticulously optimized to make it feel even faster.

The new budgeting backend should be transparent to you - the budget should work exactly the same way as it did before, and your data should be exactly the same. Let me know if it's not.

This release also has a few other huge features, such as syncing between any devices (desktop-to-desktop), and API, and more!

Brand new site

Along with all these big changes, a new website has been release! This is a total redesign and reflect Actual's values a lot more accurately.

The main reason this happened is I need to write documentation for the API. One thing led to another and now there is a full documentation site about how to use Actual. This will be expanded more over time.

Desktop

Big improvements in the budget UI

While the budgeting backend allows the budget to update much faster, on the frontend I optimized it even more. The whole UI is now optimistically updated, which means when you make a change it doesn't even wait for the server. It just instantly updates the UI locally.

Additionally, the hover state for budget rows was removed. This allows more specific interactions with the values themselves. When you hover over a budget amount, a faded textbox will appear making it clear that you can edit it. The values in the balance column are now more clearly clickable. This tweaks will always feel instant regardless of the number of categories. (Previously, the row hover state would lag with a huge amount of categories)

Revamp how you interact with categories

You can now edit categories and category groups by hovering and clicking the the drop down menu to reveal several actions. This will make it easier to add more actions in the future, and fixes the confusing interaction of renaming category groups.

A big thank you to Henri Maurer who has helped contribute on this release and implemented this feature!

API

Another major feature: Actual now has an API! Read the docs on the website.

This gives you full access to your data. The main use case is to write custom importers (if your bank gives you transactions in a specific format), but you can write anything on top of it. This is considered experimental and will stabilize over time.

Improved syncing setup (including desktop-to-desktop)

Previously, only the mobile app could discover a desktop device by reading a QR code with the camera. That flow is simplified now, and Actual uses something called multicast DNS to discover devices. The desktop app puts itself into "broadcasting" mode and another desktop or mobile app will automatically discover it when setting up a new synced file.

See Setting up syncing.

Option to disable auto-update

If you want to stay with a certain version of the app for any reason, you can now disable auto-updating in the settings.

Support for Catalina

The new macOS version Catalina requires apps to be signed in another way, which is funny because the app is already properly code signed. I guess Apple really wants to control everything. Now the app is "notarized" by Apple which means they won't freak out when you try to run it.

Bugfixes

• Fix highlighting new transactions when importing
• Fix various styling issues with reports
• Tooltips/dropdowns are now dismissed with mouse down instead of mouse up (thanks Henri!)
• Remove shortcuts for moving left/right in the budget, tab/shift-tab now move up and down (thanks Henri!)
• Fix off-by-one date errors with OFX/QFX files if importing from certain timezones
• Cash flow graph doesn't include off-budget accounts in the balance line
• Improved YNAB4 import support. The import should be very robust now and import all of your data correctly.

Mobile

The mobile app benefits from the new budgeting backend as well. The performance problems were even worse on mobile devices, but now loading a large budget from another device is far faster, as well as working with the budget.

Ability to reorder categories

To celebrate the new budgeting backend, the mobile app can now reorder categories. Move them around and even move them between groups. Just go into edit mode and drag them around. It sounds silly, but previously it was just too slow on mobile devices to do anything with categories. Now that it's all fixed, you'll be able to do everything on mobile. (deleting a category on mobile is coming soon)

Desktop

• Fix "keep negative spending in category" for rolling over negative spending. This was a regression with the undo feature.
• Fix regression where the month selector could get stuck in the "small" mode where months were only displayed with the first character of each month (that wasn't on purpose!)
• Many critical bug fixes with payees and default categories. Previously, deleting a category that a payee used as a default category would cause all sorts of problems. No more wreaking havoc on your data.
• Pressing escape when editing a transaction's category could accidentally split the transaction. This has been fixed.
• Cash flow report no longer shows on-budget transfers as income or expenses

Mobile

• Only show open accounts in the accounts list. You don't have to stare at that closed account forever.
• Fix bugs in syncing: it's now as robust as ever! If you've seen sync errors, it should be much more stable now.
• Bring app code up to parity with desktop, bringing in several backend performance improvements

Desktop

• Undo: Fearlessly edit your data knowing that a undo is a keystroke away (cmd+z on mac, ctrl+z on windows/linux)! Undo will revert changes to anything, including the budget, transactions, payees, accounts, etc. Redo changes with shift+cmd+z (shift+ctrl+z on windows/linux).

• Improve budget page performance: The budget page now persists in memory so navigating back to it will always show your budget instantly. The backend has been tuned for better performance.
• Searching for transactions should feel faster: Searching performance has been improved.
• Fix "Restart App" button when app crashes: Now the app will actually restart.
• Fix importing transactions with empty payees: If an imported file contains transactions with an empty payee description, previously it might match it with a the wrong payee. Now it just leaves it empty.
• Improve payees merging workflow: merging payees is much faster and will consistently scroll you to the right final payee. Other small bugs have been fixed in the Manage Payees screen.
• Fix bugs in syncing: it's now as robust as ever! If you've seen sync errors, it should be much more stable now.
• Fix bugs with transfers: When moving a transfer transaction to a different account, the transfer in the other account will appropriately update. Force closing an account will also "unlink" any transfer transactions.
• Implement anonymous usage tracking: The app will send basic usage statistics anonymously to Actual's servers. We use Fathom which focuses on privacy and host the data ourselves. The only thing tracked is number of users and pages viewed. You can opt-out in settings:

Mobile

• Also contains the fix for off-budget transactions (see below)

Desktop

• The recently released payee feature sometimes caused off-budget transactions to effect the budget. This has been fixed, so you can confidently ignore the budget again.
• Fixed importing certain OFX files that were missing fields.
• Add ability reopen accounts, in case you accidentally close that all-too important account like I did.

Work is heavily underway for undo and an API, stay tuned!

Desktop

• Fix the linux build! You should no longer see a "glibc version not found" error.
• Update the internal mechanism for communicating between processes. This is big internal change and the only noticable effect should be improved performance. If you notice anything wrong, please contact us or join our Slack.
• Make account field editable and enable transactions to be added on the "All Accounts" page
• Make the date input always respect the current date format
• Don't show a negative sign in the budget totals row if the amount is 0
• Fix bug where recently added transactions could not be split
• Fix about window
• Title-case payees with non-latin character betters. Now, KÖLN will be title-cased to Köln instead of KöLn.
• Properly create a transfer when importing transactions and automatically matching on transfer payees via rules
• Always show the "create new payee" menu item at the top of the list of the payee autocomplete. Sometimes it wouldn't be shown.
• Improved notification style
• Show closed accounts in sidebar instead of on "All Accounts" page
• Make the account header section always have consistent height regardless of contents
• Fix a regression from 0.0.98 where closing an account didn't properly create a transfer transaction
• Fix a bug where sometimes creating a new local account wouldn't show the existing balance

Important note: the new payees feature requires your data format to be updated. You can only do this on desktop, and on first run you will be prompted to perform the update. After updating, syncing the mobile app will update your mobile budget (it may take a while to sync). Make sure you've downloaded the latest mobile app. Your transaction data will look wrong until you've completed this update.

• An experimental linux build is available
• Payees are now first-class and can be autocompleted, given default categories, and will be automatically matched via rules. You can manage them through a powerful payee editor where you can merge payees and change their rules. All existing payees will automatically be upgraded to be compatible, and payees have been integrated on both desktop & mobile apps.
• Title case all payees when importing
• Redesigned keyboard interactions with transactions. Enter/shift+enter go up and down, removed arrow key movement, and greatly improved UX around interacting with dropdowns
• Make adding new transactions more intuitive as well: pressing enter in either the payment or deposit field will add it
• Always properly add new category groups at the end of list, and fix styling issues with that workflow
• Add a confirmation step when deleting a group, because it was just too easy (undo will come later!)
• Allow date formats to be entered as just MM/DD, so 5/3 would be interpreted as May 3, 2019
• Fix a bug where sometimes similar categories couldn't be selected ("Work" and "Work Expenses")
• When loading a backup, disable syncing so that it doesn't sync with the latest data. You will need to re-setup syncing across all devices if loading a backup.
• Show the available backups if a budget fails to load. This gives the user a chance to downgrade to a previous version of Actual if an update goes wrong and messes up data.
• Add the undocumented ability to search specific transaction fields with the format field:value, so amount:120 would show all transactions with amounts of 120.00, and payee:target would only search the payee, etc
• Fixed a bug where sometimes transaction search results didn't reflect the latest text entered by the user
• Fix a bug where navigating away from the cash flow or net worth graph would crash the app
• On macOS, change the behavior of closing the window so that it doesn't quit the app. Also change the "Close Budget" menu item to "Open Budget", and change the keybinding from cmd+W to cmd+O to show the budget list. This frees up cmd+W for the native behavior of closing the window.
• Fixed a bug where a "Sync Error" would appear even though no error occurred Improved stability of filtering and splitting transactions
• Many other small bugs fixed

Desktop

• The "Show Running Balances" option for accounts now persists for each account
• Fix a few small bugs in the subscription process, like calculating the number of days remaining in the trial (isn't daily savings the worst?)
• Fixed a bug where a split transaction could be modified during a file import causing that account to be permanently broken. Effected accounts should display now. You may see an "orphaned transaction" with a red background that you need to delete. The underlying cause for this bug has been fixed.
• Added some better internal logging to debug some obscure errors being reported. No personal data is transmitted but these errors will now better point to the source of the problem when they are logged.

Desktop

• Fix file type detection when importing files (make it case-insensitive and allow arbitrary characters in the filename)
• Support the macOS mode where scrollbars are always shown
• Fix bugs when creating an account when the Starting Balance category has been deleted
• Improve the workflow for deleting a category and transfering to another category, and make sure all of the values in the budget are updated after transferring
• The category typeahead now also matching group names
• Fix a few bugs with YNAB4 importing
• The payee typeahead no longer selects the first item by default, so you can enter a payee even if it matches an account in the dropdown
• Fix transaction count when adding or deleting transactions
• Avoid losing focus on an input when the app goes into the background