Moving from Actual Budget to Nethaven: What Transfers

Moving from Actual Budget starts with deciding which records to carry over. Transaction history can provide spending and category records, but it does not reproduce the monthly plan you built around them. Keep your original records until you have checked the imported totals.

How do I export transactions from Actual Budget?

Open the account register and use its three-dot menu to export the transaction view. Check the accounts and filters included in that view. Follow Actual Budget's export documentation for the source app, then the Nethaven import guide for supported fields and limitations.

Keep the original CSV unchanged. A spreadsheet can alter dates, quoting, or decimal separators when saving. Upload the transaction export through Settings, then Import data, and inspect the preview before confirming. A database backup or a budget report is a different file.

Does budget history transfer?

No supported Actual Budget budget-history workflow is documented for Nethaven today. Only the YNAB import carries historical budget allocations. Zipping a budget report together with transactions does not establish compatibility. Keep old plans in Actual Budget or in a separate archive and rebuild the current month in Nethaven.

What can I carry over?

Nethaven reads Date, Account, Payee, Amount, Category, and Notes from supported transaction rows. Check split purchases carefully: the flat adapter does not preserve Actual's split structure or cleared state. Accounts and categories come from the transaction rows, so an account or unused category absent from the file cannot be recreated from it.

What needs rebuilding or checking?

• Current account balances need reconciliation. A flat transaction file contains activity and may not include the opening position.
• Nethaven infers transfer pairs from same-day, opposite-sign amounts across accounts. Review the warnings and unmatched payments.
• Recreate the current budget, scheduled items, and rules. A transaction mentioning a recurring charge does not recreate its schedule.
• Record portfolio positions and manual asset values separately through portfolio tracking.
• Recreate loan payoff details using the lender's balance and terms. Transaction rows do not supply a complete loan agreement.

How should I review the preview?

Compare the account, category, and transaction counts with the exported view. Check one expense, one income payment, and any transfer in each relevant currency. Review guessed account types and reconstructed balances. Stop before confirming if an amount is reversed or the wrong account is assigned.

For an illustrative check, a $100 opening balance followed by a $30 expense ends at $70. A file containing only that expense cannot establish the $70 closing balance. After import, reconcile against the source account before using the total for budgeting.

What should I do after importing?

Correct balances and account types, review transfers, then build the current month's budget. Add recurring bills through subscription tracking. Keep an encrypted backup of the original export until your records are reconciled, and remove unnecessary loose copies.

For another transaction-export format, see the Lunch Money migration guide. Check the original format before choosing an importer.