Actual Budget Helper Scripts

This is a collection of useful scripts to help you manage your Actual Budget.

• Requirements
• Configuration
• Installation
• Scripts:
  • Sync Remote Banks
  • Loan Interest Calculator
  • Tracking Home Prices (Zillow's Zestimate)
  • Tracking Car Prices (Kelley Blue Book)
  • Tracking Investment Accounts
  • Tracking Bitcoin Price

Requirements

• Actual Budget
• Node.js (21.6.2+)
  • @actual-app/api
  • dotenv
  • jsdom

Configuration

Create a .env file in the root directory with the following content (or you can copy the example.env file):

ACTUAL_SERVER_URL="https://<Actual Budget server URL>"
ACTUAL_SERVER_PASSWORD="<Actual Budget server password>"
ACTUAL_SYNC_ID="<Actual Budget sync ID>"
# allow self-signed SSL certs
NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0

# optional, for encrypted files
ACTUAL_FILE_PASSWORD="<file password>"

# optional, if you want to use a different cache directory
ACTUAL_CACHE_DIR="./cache"

# optional, name of the payee for added interest transactions
INTEREST_PAYEE_NAME="Loan Interest"

# optional, name of the payee for added interest transactions
INVESTMENT_PAYEE_NAME="Investment"
# optional, name of the cateogry group for added investment tracking transactions
INVESTMENT_CATEGORY_GROUP_NAME="Income"
# optional, name of the category for added investment tracking transactions
INVESTMENT_CATEGORY_NAME="Investment"

# optional, for logging into SimpleFIN
SIMPLEFIN_CREDENTIALS="<credentials - not the setup token!>"

# optional, for retrieving Bitcoin Price (these default to Kraken USD)
BITCOIN_PRICE_URL="https://api.kraken.com/0/public/Ticker?pair=xbtusd"
BITCOIN_PRICE_JSON_PATH="result.XXBTZUSD.c[0]"
BITCOIN_PAYEE_NAME="Bitcoin Price Change"

Installation

Run npm install to install any required dependencies.

Setup with Docker

This assumes you already have a working version of Docker installed and have cloned the repo to a location of your choice.

Build the container image:

docker build -t actual-helper ./

Test if the Docker container works correctly:

docker run -itd --name actual-helper actual-helper
docker exec actual-helper node sync-banks.js

If it is working correctly, the bank sync should run.

Scripts

Note that most of the scripts utilize account notes to set configuration on each account. The scripts will find all accounts that are configured and update them all in a single call.

Sync Remote Banks

This script will sync all remote banks that are configured in Actual Budget. This can be used in place of clicking the "Sync" button in the Actual Budget app and will ensure your accounts are always up-to-date with GoCardless/SimpleFIN.

To run:

node sync-banks.js

It is recommended to run this script once per day or week.

Loan Interest Calculator

This script calculates the interest for a loan account and adds the interest transactions to Actual Budget.

For each account that you want to automaitcally calculate interest for, you need to edit the account notes and add the following tags:

• interestRate:0.0X sets the interest rate to X percent (note: be sure to enter the rate as a decimal and not a percentage)
• interestDay:XX sets the day of the month that the interest is calculated

As an example, if your loan is at 4.5% interest and you want to insert an interest transaction on the 28th of the month, set the account note to interestRate:0.045 interestDay:28.

You can optionally change the payee used for the interest transactions by setting INTEREST_PAYEE_NAME in the .env file.

To run:

node apply-interest.js

It is recommended to run this script once per month.

Tracking Home Prices (Zillow's Zestimate)

This script tracks the Zillow Zestimate for a home. It adds new transactions to keep the account balance equal to the latest Zestimate.

To use this script, you need to create a new account in Actual Budget and set the account note to zestimate:<Zillow URL>. You can find the Zillow URL by searching for the home on Zillow and copying the URL from the address bar.

For example, if you want to track the Zestimate for a home with the URL https://www.zillow.com/homes/123-Example-St-Anytown-CA-12345/12345678_zpid/, set the account note to zestimate:https://www.zillow.com/homes/123-Example-St-Anytown-CA-12345/12345678_zpid/.

Optionally, you can also specify if you only own a portion of the home by adding an ownership:0.0X tag to the account note. For example, if you own 10% of the home, add ownership:0.10 to the account note. The script will then use that percentage to track the home's value.

You can optionally change the payee used for the transactions by setting ZESTIMATE_PAYEE_NAME in the .env file.

To run:

node zestimate.js

It is recommended to run this script once per month.

Tracking Car Prices (Kelley Blue Book)

This script tracks the Kelley Blue Book value for a car. It adds new transactions to keep the account balance equal to the latest KBB value.

To use this script, first you need to use the KBB website to find the value of your car. Be sure to select "Private Party" for the value. It should show something like this:

Then right click on the price and select "Inspect" to view the page HTML. From there, grab the URL for the image:

Then for your Actual account, set the following tags in the account note based on the values in the URL.

• kbbURL:https://upa.syndication.kbb.com/usedcar/privateparty/sell/?apikey=XX-XX-XX-XX-XX
• kbbZipcode:XXXXX
• kbbCondition:good (or whatever condition you want to use)
• kbbMileage:XXXXX (miles on the car, no commas)
• kbbDailyMileage:XXXXX (if given, will auto-update the mileage based on this daily average)
• kbbVehicleid:XXXXXX
• kbbOptions:XXX,XXX,XXX,...

You can optionally change the payee used for the transactions by setting KBB_PAYEE_NAME in the .env file.

To run:

node kbb.js

It is recommended to run this script once per month. Note that you will have to periodically update the mileage in the account note.

Tracking Investment Accounts

NOTE: This script only works with SimpleFIN accounts.

This script tracks the value of an investment account. It adds new transactions to keep the account balance equal to the latest value. This requires connecting to SimpleFIN to grab the reported account balance, so that the script can update the transactions to reflect that balance.

Note that I have some rules set up on the accounts that the script assumes. First, all payees are set to the same name "Investment". Second, any money I add to the account to fund it I set the category to something different. In my case, since I am funding these with my paycheck I categorize them as "Paycheck" but the key is to set a category different from the ones the script will utilize. Then all other transactions are categorized as "Investment".

There are three tags you can set in the account notes:

• calcInvestment - this is the tag that tells the script to track the balance. You will want this on each account, and then optionally one of the following.
• zeroSmall - this is a helper tag that will zero out any small transactions (less than $10). This is useful for accounts that have a lot of small transactions that you don't want to track. For example, one of my accounts shows dividends as separate transactions, so I use this tag to ignore those as my account balance does not actually change when those occur (they are reinvested).
• dropPayments - this is a helper tag that will zero out anything in the payment column. One of my accounts lists stock purchases as separate transactions, so I ignore those as my account balance does not actually change when those occur. But these are typically larger payments and I want to keep small payments (interest accrued) so I use this tag on that account instead of zeroSmall.

Note that the code has a function named shouldDrop that might need to be modified. This function lists transactions whose note contains certain strings that are targeted when using zeroSmall and dropPayments. You may need to update this to add additional notes to look for.

You can optionally change the payee used for the transactions by setting INVESTMENT_PAYEE_NAME in the .env file.

You can optionally change the category group used for the transactions by setting INVESTMENT_CATEGORY_GROUP_NAME in the .env file.

You can optionally change the category used for the transactions by setting INVESTMENT_CATEGORY_NAME in the .env file.

You can optionally store the SimpleFIN credentials generated from your setup token by setting SIMPLEFIN_CREDENTIALS in the .env file.

To run:

node track-investments.js

It is recommended to run this script once per month.

Tracking Bitcoin Price

This script tracks the value of Bitcoin. It adds new transactions to keep the account balance equal to the latest value. There is one tag you can set in the account notes, BTC:X, where X is the number of Bitcoin you own, eg BTC:0.01 You can optionally change the API endpoint used to retrieve the Bitcoin price, an example for retrieving the price in GBP is:

BITCOIN_PRICE_URL="https://api.kraken.com/0/public/Ticker?pair=xbtgbp"
BITCOIN_PRICE_JSON_PATH=".result.XXBTZGBP.c[0]"

To run:

node sync-bitcoin.js

It is recommended to run this script once per day or week.