u/ayarem502

I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle investment accounts in Actual Budget.

I have:

• My chequing account → on-budget
• My investment account → off-budget

When I transfer money from chequing to my investment account, Actual requires me to assign a category because the money is leaving the budget.

For example:

Chequing → Investment account: $500

If I categorize the $500 as "Investments", Actual treats it as $500 of spending in the budget. This means I need to budget $500 to that category to avoid having the budget show an overspending/amount that needs to be covered.

But I'm not really spending the money - I'm simply moving $500 from my on-budget cash to an investment account that is still my asset, just outside the budget.

What's the intended way to handle this?