Budget Your Way to Freedom with Tiller
Are you a budgeter who loves a good spreadsheet? Do you like how budget apps tie in with your bank but they just don’t give you the flexibility like a spreadsheet does? I thought the same thing, and then I found Tiller. Tiller provides secure access to your reconciled banking transactions, all imported within your spreadsheet budget!
Tiller Login using an affiliate link (f you’d like to help a guy out):
https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=18709&awinaffid=955183&p=
Requirements to consider before continuing:
You should have comfortable knowledge of Excel and/or Google Sheets formulas and general row/column updates.
You’ll need to purchase a Tiller subscription separately (discussed in this article). Tiller is completely free for 30 days. After 30 days, Tiller is $79/year (just $6.58/month — no ads or hidden fees). Your card isn’t charged until the end of your free trial and you can easily cancel anytime.
You’re required to have a Gmail email address
You should be familiar with budgeting concepts.
Introduction
Congratulations for taking the steps towards financial wellness and independence! Knowing your money is so important. Knowing how much money you bring in and knowing where your money is going, is important. But if you’re a penny pusher, then you’ll want to know what money you have in your “pocket”, every single day.
This article does a few things. It shows you how you can use a predefined monthly budget as a starting point, adjust it to fit your needs, and then add a money feed to it, to give you access to your bank transactions. All in one place! But building on that, the monthly budget has predefined formulas, that aggregates the bank transactions, and shows you how well you’re sticking to that budget…DAILY.
There are several web and mobile applications that do a great job at doing what this application does. They aggregate bank transactions and allow you to setup a budget. If you’ve budgeted for years using Excel, then this application should fit right into your normal way of budget thinking.
Getting Started: Creating A Budget
As a starter template, I have provided you a base budget in Google Sheets. Having your budget in Google Sheets allows you to access from anywhere. You can access it by going here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TgffMFNj2BrmOvJPGlBztXHHBuGeV2Ner_oQoqBWI_E/copy
The first thing you’ll want to do is make a copy of this by going to File -> Make a copy:
Once you have created your own copy of the budget, you can begin setting up your budget.
Creating Your Budget: Starting with the Month
When you open your Budget Template, you’ll see several tabs along the bottom:
Template: The budget spreadsheet that you’ll use to design your typical month.
Pending Trans: A list of transactions that affect your balance but haven’t cleared your bank yet.
Unordinary Expenses: A running tab of yearly items that happen throughout the year, that are hard to budget for on a monthly basis. This is optional and only used if you find it informative.
Clicking on the “Template” tab, you’ll see several key areas:
There is a section for the month “at a glance”. This is where we will start. After changes are solidified, we will adjust the Weekly section to match the Month.
Let’s start with the “Month” section:
In columns B-E, you’ll see a “month at a glance” budget template. Here is where you enter your monthly net income from all sources (in the top section), followed by a monthly list of expenses (middle section). You can use the cells in column B to track the payment date (optional).
For the list of expenses, change the names and dollar amounts to suite your needs. Note: be intentional with these names, and keep in mind that later, you’ll be assigning bank transactions to the same category when the transactions get imported via Tiller. You can add or remove rows as needed by using your Excel skills. If you need to add rows, I would suggest copying the entire row from one row to another. This will retain the formulas, so you won’t have to fix them later.
Note: There is a category at the bottom of the list of expenses labelled “Pending Transactions”. Please do not delete this. This will be an important line item later, when we begin importing transactions.
At the bottom, you’ll see “Total Expense”. Total Income minus Total Expenses should equal Zero, based on the Dave Ramsey “Give every dollar a name” philosophy. This tells you that you’ve given every dollar earned a name and that you have a balanced budget.
Column F is a running total throughout the month. As the month progresses, the number will show positive or negative, meaning you’ve underspent or overspent in that category. Ignore it for now.
Creating Your Budget: Setting up Weeks within the Month
To the right of the Monthly Budget, you’ll have 4 separate columns. These indicate each week of the month:
You’ll notice that each week has the same list of categories. While all weeks have the same category list, each week will need a corresponding amount that adds up to the monthly amount. Entertainment has a weekly amount, while the Electric bill occurs only once (in a specific week).
Also, for each week, there is a heading for a date. The first week (column H1) will need to be the date of your 1st paycheck you receive for the month. Changing this will resolve the other 3 weeks by default, since they are spaced out by 7 days. Change these weekly dates, if necessary, to match your paycheck dates.
The monthly template provided is a list of 4 weeks because I get granular. Your situation will probably differ, though. You may be single and paid bi-weekly, monthly, or semi-monthly. Or you have a significant other who is paid differently (or the same) as you. I have found it is helpful to get granular by the week, but you can certainly use your Excel skills to adjust this month to suite your needs by add or subtracting weeks. For instance, if you are paid bi-weekly, there will be 2 times during the year, where a month will contain 3 paychecks (26 pay periods for the year). The same is true when you are paid weekly.
Begin populating each week with the amounts each category needs to satisfy the monthly amount for that category. Add the amount that corresponds a bill being paid or an expense that is coming due. You’ll populate each week to match the monthly total. When you’ve completed this step, ensure you’ve got all money allocated to the weeks. The easy way to do this is to note that at the bottom of the 4th week, you’ll see a “Monthly Net” number:
This is a summation of all weekly totals and should be zero, indicating all 4 weekly totals equal your monthly budget total. If it’s different than zero, double-check your weeks and amounts by comparing it to the monthly budget.
If the “Monthly Net” number is now zero, then you now have a monthly budget setup and all weeks have money distributed throughout the month. One final thought to do is to make sure each week is balanced. Ensure that you don’t have any negative numbers for the weekly totals. You can’t spend what you don’t make, so your totals should be zero or above. Move amounts between weeks until you balance the weeks. Your monthly net should still equal zero.
Your Money: Today and Tomorrow
If you notice between weeks, there are a few hidden columns:
Expanding these columns, you’ll see 2 columns labelled “Today” and “EOP”:
Today: A total of reconciled transactions summed up based on the category.
EOP (End of Pay Period): A subtraction of the budgeted amount minus the “Today” total for this category. It indicates how much money is left to spend before you the next income is received. You’ll see that at the bottom of the “Today” column, there is a “Totals” amount. Note: Later on, you’ll see that this will match what you see in your bank account, since this column is a running total of all reconciled transactions pulled in from the Tiller Feed (coming up soon in the next section). You’ll also see a total at the bottom of the EOP column. This indicates how much money you’ll have in your account if you spend all budgeted amounts. This should ALWAYS be a positive amount.
Lastly, there is a line item in the weekly budget called “Pending Transactions”. This is a summed amount that indicates un-reconciled, non-cleared transactions that are not a part of the Tiller Feed. Tiller only pulls in cleared items, so there was a need to account for items yet to clear, so that you have a clear picture of your financial wellness for the week. The zero dollar you see in the “Today” column for this item is a formula that pulls in the total from the “Pending Trans” tab:
This way the “Today” total shows you both reconciled and uncleared transactions, and this number should ALWAYS match your bank account as of “today”. Add/remove items from pending, as they clear your bank account and become a part of the Tiller Feed transactions.
Final Notes
You have now completely setup a templated monthly budget!
Having this established, you can confidently duplicate this budget over and over, to create an actual month. Before you do that, however, let’s turn our attention over to setting up the money feed from Tiller.
Tiller: Setting your Money Feed
With your monthly template created, you’re now ready to move onto the Tiller side of this. Before proceeding, you’ll need your Gmail email address.
Proceed to Tiller HQ and sign up for Tiller Feeds. I have an affiliate link, if you would be so kind as to use it to create an account:
Once you login (you must have a Google account) and pay for the subscription fee, you’ll see a homepage that asks you to “Create a Spreadsheet”
Click the button to “Start with Google Sheets”
You will be taken to a short instruction page, where you can watch a good video on the power of Tiller. When you’re ready, click the “Use Template” button in the upper right corner.
A Google Sheet will be created for you and saved to your Google Sheets account. It contains many out-of-the-box tabs along the bottom, but you’ll be looking for 2 main tabs for this example:
The 2 tabs you’ll utilize the most are “Transactions” and “Categories”:
Transactions: This tab is where the Tiller Feed pushes reconciled transactions to daily.
Categories: This is a list you’ll modify and add to, and when the Transactions tab gets populated, you’ll have a chance to assign each transaction to a category based on this tab’s items. You’ll only need to worry about columns “Category” name and “Type”. “Group” is optional.
Change the Categories listed to match the income and expense list in your monthly budget before you proceed.
Just a note about Tiller. Many financial applications partner with independent companies that handle the aggregation of data. You Need a Budget, EveryDollar, Mint, and Personal Capital are a few others who do the same. Tiller does the same thing. It does not directly control the account data you link to or the data associated with those accounts. They partner with a company called Yodlee (https://www.yodlee.com/).
Tiller Extensions
Tiller utilizes the “Extensions” feature of Google Sheets. An extension is like a mini-program that runs inside of Google Sheets to perform an action. The Tiller Money Feed is an Extension. Upon initializing your new spreadsheet, you’ll see a box on the right that you’ll want to setup:
Click the “Sign In” button to start linking Tiller to your bank accounts. Only link the accounts you want to pull in transactions, so that you don’t clutter up your monthly budget. Don’t worry, though, you can always link more accounts later.
After you’ve setup your feed, you can access these this add-on at any time by going to the menu and selecting Extensions -> Tiller Money Feeds -> Launch.
Merging your budget with Tiller
At this point, you have 2 separate Google Sheets created: your monthly budget and a Tiller Foundation Template. We need to merge the two next.
The monthly budget you’ve setup initially is already pre-configured with formulas, to use the Tiller “Transactions” tab and the “Categories” tab.
Go into your monthly budget spreadsheet. For each tab in your monthly budget sheet, click the arrow caret and say “Copy To -> Existing spreadsheet”.
A popup will appear asking which spreadsheet you’d like to copy this to:
Click on the “Recent” spreadsheet list, choose the “Tiller Foundation Template” spreadsheet and hit “Select.
You should receive confirmation that your tab has been copied to the “Tiller Foundation Template” spreadsheet.
When you go over to the Tiller spreadsheet, you will see a new tab called “Copy of Template” in the far right of all the tabs. This is where the monthly budget was copied.
Rename this tab to become “Template” by clicking the arrow (caret) on the tab and say “Rename”. Rename it to “Template”
You’ll need to perform the same process for the “Pending Trans” tab.
After the Merge: Begin using It
Now that your monthly template has been brought into the Tiller spreadsheet, you will be referring to the Tiller Foundation Template for the rest of this tutorial.
With your “Template” tab selected, you will now want to create a true, working month. You don’t want to modify the template, as it is the baseline for all months. Duplicate it and rename it. For example, if next month is “October”, duplicate “Template” and rename it to “October”.
When it gets duplicated, setup your paycheck dates. Remember at the top of the 1st week, there is a date (column H1). Set this date to be the pay date. For the other weeks, verify that the date at the top is the pay dates for the rest of the month. Formulas are based on this date, so it’s important!
Now let’s turn your attention to the Tiller Feed. Click on the “Transactions” tab. When you went through the process of linking your bank accounts in the Tiller Feed setup, you should see a list of reconciled transactions in descending order:
If you don’t see this list of transactions, then open up the Tiller Feed, by going to the menu and saying “Extensions -> Tiller Money Feeds -> Launch”:
The sidebar will open and you can simply click on the “Fill Sheets” button:
From this add-on, you can do several things, like manage the connected bank accounts, manage your subscription, and explore other add-ons. You can even auto-categorize transactions after they get pulled into the “Transactions” tab. With experience (and help from the Tiller support community), you will gain confidence in using these features.
Select “Fill Sheets” to trigger Tiller to pull down reconciled transactions and fill your sheet with transactions.
Now that you see the transactions, you’ll notice that the “Category” column (column D) is empty. But you’ll notice that each line item is a dropdown list of categories that you can choose. This allows you to select a category to assign to each item, assigning a category to each transaction. Click the arrow and you’ll see a list of categories. This list of categories is managed on the “Categories” tab of the spreadsheet. If you already pre-defined your list earlier, you can simply choose a category for each transaction here. If you haven’t, go to the “Categories” tab and defined what categories should be a part of this listing.
By assigning a category, you tap into the power of the formulas outlined in columns next to the budgeted weeks. Your transactions should look like this when you assign categories:
When you’ve assigned enough categories to transactions to make up a paycheck’s worth of transactions, go back to your month. You will notice that the “Today” and “EOP” columns for the week begins to fill out. In the example below, column K summed up all transactions for each category from the “Transactions” tab between the date of this week and the beginning of the next week. That’s why making sure the dates of each week are so important. The formulas in columns K and L then know which transactions should be summed up.
What column L does (EOP) is show how much is left for each category. For the example above, I spent $550 in Entertainment transactions (actually I overspent), so there is zero left to spend in that category. I have yet to spend money for Groceries (i.e., transactions with that category), so my “Today” shows nothing, while the EOP shows that I still have $150 to spend.
So far, we’ve seen reconciled transactions pulled in by Tiller. But throughout the week, you may have transactions that haven’t cleared the bank yet. You can head over to the “Pending Trans” tab and enter those. For example:
I made a few purchases today, and the bank shows them as pending. By entering them here, my budget reflects the total in the “Pending Transactions” line item of the budget:
In the Totals row, for the “Today” column, $944.24 shows as the total. This represents all reconciled transactions and all pending transactions. Therefore, this number should match what your bank account shows. If not, you’ll want to find out why.
In the Totals row, for the “EOP” column, $659.24 shows as the total. This represents how much money will appear in your bank account at the end of the pay period, if you continue the path of spending and paying bills.
To the right of all the weekly budgets, you’ll see a rogue date:
Since the formulas of each week construct a date range and are dependent on the next week of your next paycheck, there was a need tell the last week of the month what the next paycheck date is. Since the next paycheck date falls in the next month, this date simply provides a parameter for the formulas of the last week of the month. Make sure you set this appropriately.
Lastly, if you’d like to change the name of your spreadsheet, you can. Tiller initially created “Tiller Foundation Template” as the budget. If you’d like it to be more like “Budget”, then click the title of the spreadsheet and change it:
