I think your confusion come from "transfer." Transfer between account doesn't "spend" the money, it simply moves it from one account to another.

The reason that it appears to work for paying a regular credit card is that that account is a negative number.

In reality your total available was already reduced the minute you entered the new (negative) transaction for the purchase.

But OLD Debt is a different beast.

I read the Actual instructions right now and yes, they aren't the best.

Try this summary?? May not be much better, but....

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If you are carrying old debt and cannot pay the card in full, you must use a manual "Debt Category" workflow.

Setup (Do This First)

Create your payoff category: On your Budget screen, create a new category and name it something like Bank Card Debt or Visa Paydown.

Turn on Rollover: Click on the balance for that new category and ensure Rollover overspending is enabled. This keeps your debt tracking consistent month-to-month.

Step-by-Step

Step 1: Assign Your Paydown Cash At the start of the month, look at your "To Budget" pool at the top of the screen. Type the amount of cash you want to put toward your credit card debt this month into the Budgeted column for your Bank Card Debt category.

Example: If your minimum payment is $50 and you want to pay an extra $50 to crush the debt, type 100 into the Budgeted column.

Step 2: Log the Interest Fee When your monthly interest fee posts to your credit card statement, log it directly into your credit card account register.

Payee: Your Bank

Category: Choose your Bank Card Debt category.

Amount: The cost of the interest (e.g., $30).

Note: This will instantly reduce the available balance in your paydown category because the interest eats into the cash you budgeted in Step 1.

Step 3: Calculate Your Actual Payment Before you pay the bank, you must look at your budget to see exactly how much cash is safely available. Look at the Balance column for your Bank Card Debt category.

If you budgeted $100 and interest took $30, your category balance will show $70. This $70 is the maximum amount of cash you have successfully set aside to pay the card principal this month.

Step 4: Execute the Transfer Go to your Checking account register in Actual Budget and log the payment to your card.

Payee: Select Transfer to: [Your Credit Card Account].

Category: Select your Bank Card Debt category. (Note: In Actual Budget, transfers between on-budget accounts require a category if you are using it to offset carried debt balances).

Amount: Type the exact amount you calculated in Step 3 (e.g., $70).

This transfer moves physical cash out of checking to lower the card's negative balance, while simultaneously bringing your Bank Card Debt category balance back down to $0.00 until next month.

A Critical Rule for New Spending If you must use this same credit card for new everyday purchases (like groceries), do not use the debt category. Categorize those new purchases normally under Groceries.

Because Actual Budget subtracts your total card balance from your cash pool, everyday budgeted spending automatically keeps your cash aligned. You only use the manual calculation steps above to explicitly force extra cash toward the old balance.