Arca 1.4.0: bank connection and the Arca guide

Arca 1.4.0 connects to your bank. Transactions now arrive on their own, every day, without a CSV in between. It also comes with the first version of the Arca guide.

🏦 Bank connection

• Connect your bank through Enable Banking and Arca pulls your transactions daily. Supported: ING, ABN AMRO, Rabobank, ASN, RegioBank, SNS, Triodos and Van Lanschot. For your own accounts the Enable Banking account is free.
• Import starts with your bank. The Import page (the sidebar item is now "Import") opens with the Bank connection card; the CSV import sits under it for banks that are not covered yet. The sidebar shows when the last sync ran, and warns in orange when a consent has run out so you can reconnect in one tap.
• Link accounts the way you want. Each bank account goes to an existing Arca account, a new one, or is skipped. Reconnecting keeps your links and sync history.
• No duplicates. Rows you already imported from a CSV are recognised and skipped; transfers between your own accounts are detected for bank rows too.
• Sync runs once a day by itself. Sync now and Sync all are in Settings › Import, and an external scheduler can trigger it with BANK_SYNC_TOKEN if you prefer.
• Set-up walkthrough: Bank connection in the guide.

📖 The Arca guide

• Documentation for everything in the app, in plain language, at https://damianeickhoff.github.io/Arca/: installing, importing, planning, insights, settings, an FAQ and the roadmap.
• Settings › Help now opens the guide and the place to report a problem or idea.

✨ New

• Add anything from anywhere. A round black "+" beside the search field (desktop) and the orange button on the phone tab bar open one menu: Transaction, Recurring bill, Debt, Goal or Category. Ctrl/Cmd+N opens it too.
• Recent changes with undo in Settings › Data health: every import, rule pass, bulk move, deleted rule, merchant or category, and auto-detected recurring item is listed, and most can be undone with one tap as long as nothing touched the same rows since.
• Rules where you need them. The Automations panel is gone. Needs a category shows a "Worth teaching" strip for merchants that keep coming back; the category editor shows how many transactions each rule files and warns when another rule fires first; the rule dialog can test a rule on the last 90 days before you save it.
• Teach moment. After you pick a category in Needs a category or the Activity detail panel, Arca asks "Always file {merchant} as {category}?" and shows exactly what would move.
• Merchants with their own category and patterns. A merchant card now lists the patterns it is recognised by and the category it files to. Brand icon rules merged into merchants.
• One icon picker for categories, merchants, goals, debts and accounts: search across icons, brands and your own uploads, a live preview on a real transaction, colours and a size stepper for logos.
• Debts show when they are paid off. Each debt card says "Free in Mar 2028", updates live as you move the extra-payment slider and tells you how many months sooner that is.
• Insights overview rebuilt. A structured summary (headline, three facts and a tip) with or without AI, spending by group as bars instead of the donut, week-by-week with bills still due hatched on top, and a nudge when "Other" grows past 30%.

🛠 Fixes and polish

• Rules: saving a rule that already files under another category asks first; deleting a rule lets you keep its transactions or send them back to Needs a category.
• Categories: a name that already exists is flagged while you type instead of a generic save error.
• Default categories are seeded on the first run only (and on reset), not on every start.
• A brand-new installation now gets its category groups (Housing, Transport, …) from the start. Before, a first run without a prepared database ended up with every default category flat under "Other categories".
• Dialogs: a calm fade-and-settle on desktop instead of the slide from the bottom, sticky header and footer with a hairline, and headers that stay put when a dialog opens from a scrolled page.
• Settings sub-panels crossfade on desktop.

🐳 Installing and updating

Image: damianeickhoff/arca:latest (also 1.4.0) on Docker Hub, mirrored to ghcr.io/damianeickhoff/arca. On Unraid, Check for updates in the Docker tab. New database tables for the bank connection and the change log are created automatically on start.

As always: back up /data before updating.