Actual Budget

What Actual Budget is

A company rarely has a lot of money, and that is exactly why every hundred kronor matters. Actual Budget is a program where you allocate the money you actually have before you spend it. Every krona in the account gets a job: materials, marketing, trade fair fees, buffer. When a category is empty it is empty, and you see that before you buy instead of afterward.

The program keeps everything on your own computer. No bank is connected automatically, no service reads your numbers, and you do not need an account to get started. That is an advantage when it comes to a company's finances, and a risk if nobody makes a backup; more on that at the bottom.

Install on Windows

1. Go to actualbudget.org and click Download.
2. Download the file for Windows. It is named something like Actual-windows-x64.exe.
3. Double-click the downloaded file. Windows shows a warning that the file comes from the internet; choose More info and then Run anyway.
4. Start Actual from the Start menu and choose the option to begin with an empty budget (it was called Start fresh in the latest version, but the name of the button can change) when the program asks.

Install on Linux Mint

Download the file that ends in .AppImage, for example Actual-linux-x86_64.AppImage. An AppImage is not installed, it just runs, but Mint will not run it until you give it permission.

1. Right-click the file in the file manager and select Properties.
2. Go to the Permissions tab and check the box that allows the file to run as a program.
3. Close the window and double-click the file.

That checkbox is the whole difference between something happening and nothing happening at all. If you skip it, the file opens in a text editor, or nothing happens.

Three things to do first

1. Set up an account with the right balance. Click Add account and enter what is in the business account today. A wrong starting balance makes the rest of the work pointless, because every figure you enter afterwards builds on the first one, and a budget that says there are four hundred SEK left when the account is actually empty is worse than no budget at all.
2. Create categories that match your business. Purchases, shipping, trade fair, printed materials, and one called Unforeseen. The last one always gets used.
3. Allocate the whole balance. Actual shows a line at the top that says how much is unallocated. Work until it reads zero. That is the whole point of the method: money without a job disappears.

The most common trap

There is a version of Actual that runs directly in the browser without anything being installed. It is tempting, and the project's own documentation advises against it for long-term use for a simple reason: the budget is saved in the browser's own storage. If someone clears browser data, switches computers or uses a private window, the whole budget is gone without warning.

Install the program instead, and export a copy of the budget file after every time you have worked in it. It takes ten seconds. Put the copy where the rest of the company's files are, not on the desktop of whoever happened to be sitting at the computer.

If you want several people in the company to see the same budget at the same time, a server is required, and then it becomes a completely different project. Instead, run it so that one person owns the budget file and shares the screen when you have a meeting.