actual-server

This is the main project to run Actual, a local-first personal finance tool. It comes with the latest version of Actual, and a server to persist changes and make data available across all devices.

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Non-technical users

We are looking into a feature for one-button click click deployment of Actual. This will reduce the friction for people not as comfortable with the command line.

Running

It's very easy to get started. Clone this repo, install deps, and start it:

git clone https://github.com/actualbudget/actual-server.git
cd actual-server
yarn install
yarn start

Go to https://localhost:5006 in your browser and you'll see Actual.

Deploying

You should deploy your server so it's always running. We recommend fly.io which makes it incredibly easy and provides a free plan.

Create an account. Although you are required to enter payment details, everything we do here will work on the free tier and you won't be charged.

Next, install the flyctl utility. Run flyctl auth login to sign into your account.

Copy fly.template.toml to fly.toml. Open fly.toml and customize the app name on the first line of the file.

Now, run flyctl launch from actual-server. You should have a running app now!

Whenever you want to update Actual, update the versions of @actual-app/api and @actual-app/web in package.json and run flyctl deploy.

Note: if you don't want to use fly, we still provide a Dockerfile to build the app so it should work anywhere that can compile a docker image.

Persisting server data

One problem with the above setup is every time you deploy, it will wipe away all the data on the server. You'll need to bootstrap the instance again and upload your files.

Let's move the data somewhere that persists. With fly.io we can create a volume. Run this command:

flyctl volumes create actual_data

Now we need to tell Actual to use this volume. Add this in fly.toml:

[mounts]
  source="actual_data"
  destination="/data"

That's it! Actual will automatically check if the /data directory exists and use it automatically.

You can also configure the data dir with the ACTUAL_USER_FILES environment variable.

Configuring the server URL

The Actual app is totally separate from the server. In this project, they happen to both be served by the same server, but the app doesn't know where the server lives.

The server could live on a completely different domain. You might setup Actual so that the app and server are running in completely separate places.

Since Actual doesn't know what server to use, the first thing it does is asks you for the server URL. If you are running this project, simply click "Use this domain" and it will automatically fill it in with the current domain. This works because we are serving the app and server in the same place.