Moving from YNAB to Actual Budget
Assembled from both records. Nothing here is an opinion — it is the difference between two rows, written out.
Your data — read this first
YNAB records transaction export as Yes, so take the export first. Actual Budget imports transaction history, so what you exported comes with you.
- Transactions
- Yes
- Balance history
- Yes
- Budgets
- Rebuilt by hand
- Rules
- Rebuilt by hand
- Attachments
- ?
Transactions, balance history and attachments are Actual Budget’s own import attributes. Budgets and rules never transfer between two apps in this index.
What you gain
- Free tier No → Yes
What you lose
- Goal tracking Yes → No
- Trends Yes → No
- Partner or household Yes → No
What is unchanged
- Account aggregation, Manual accounts, Edit transactions, Create manual transactions, Rules engine, Mass edit, Split transactions, History import, Export, Budgeting, Rollover budgeting, Recurring transactions, Net worth, Balance history import, Reports, Offline access
33 attributes are Unknown on one side and left out. Gains and losses are a diff of the two records.
How to do it
- Export from YNAB first
Take the transaction export while your subscription is live. The record says export is available.
- Import before you connect anything
Import the file first. Connecting banks first creates duplicates that then have to be merged one by one.
- Connect accounts
Find out which of your banks fail before you are billed. Actual Budget reaches banks through SimpleFIN, GoCardless, Enable Banking, Akahu, Pluggy.
- Rebuild budgets and rules
No app in this index imports another’s budgets or rules. Budgets are quick; rules are worth rebuilding as transactions arrive rather than all at once.