Migrating from YNAB to Actual Budget

Compatibility

Actual imports a budget exported from YNAB (nYNAB) as a JSON file. Actual handles credit cards and funds budgeted for future months differently, so the guide spends most of its length on cleanup after the import.

Before you switch

1. Export the budget to JSON. The guide lists a community-run web exporter, which may be unavailable if YNAB restricts it, and three methods that use your own YNAB Personal Access Token: the API documentation site in your browser, the ynab-export terminal tool, or curl against https://api.ynab.com/v1/plans/<plan id>.
2. If you create a token, copy it from the top of YNAB’s Developer Settings page: it is shown only once, and the shortened version in the table below it does not work.
3. In Actual, close the current file from the drop-down menu, select Import file, choose nYnab and pick the JSON file.

Pitfalls

• Credit card debt shows up as overspending. Actual does not carry debt the way YNAB does. Move overspent transactions to a Credit Card category, set Rollover overspending on its first overspent month, and assign each historical month the amount YNAB put toward paying the card.
• YNAB’s Credit Card Payment categories do not exist in Actual. Spending stays in its category and a card payment is a plain transfer. Money YNAB held in an out-of-sync payment reserve lands in To Budget.
• Ready to Assign in YNAB counts funds budgeted in future months, and Actual’s To Budget does not. To make them match, use Hold for next month on each affected month.
• Actual does not allow duplicate category groups, or duplicate categories in a group, and renames them with a -1 suffix. Old hidden categories are a common cause: show hidden categories, then merge or delete the duplicates.
• An import that fails with a not-ynab5 error means an older Actual. Update it, or change the leading "plan" key in the JSON file to "budget".