This is will be the first time I’ve used Tiller into a new year (ie. I started Jan 1, 2024) so I apologize if my questions are basic or obvious. With the end of the year coming up, what needs to be done to roll from 2024 to 2025 in Google sheets?
Do you need to start a new transactions sheet?
Do we need to create a new Google Sheets document for 2025?
Will we be able to compare 2024 expenses to those we see in 2025?
I’m not sure what needs to be done but I would like to be prepared
Great questions. I will be going through a new year for the first time too!
Take a look at this help guide which should cover all your questions. Although it has video examples for the years 2022 - 2024, the steps still apply for 2025.
For my personal take:
This will be my third or fourth year-refresh with Tiller.
I have always made a copy of my current year sheet, named it “Tiller 2023” or something memorable.
I will reference old sheets just a few times a year. (“What did I spend on gas last year?”/etc)
Then on my tiller-linked sheet, I head to Transactions and delete all the data rows that are from that old year, and leave any ‘new year’ transactions.
Other things that I clean up:
Balance history (all but the most recent handful of rows), Budget Journal (pretty much everything)
Planning for the new year for me just means putting previous year ‘Live Profit & Loss’ sheet side by side with my current year ‘Categories’ sheet to get my budget in a realistic place.
Then adjust for any big ticket things. (“Probably won’t have that surgery again this year.” )
Good idea to see if there were any unused categories that you may want to remove or update as well.
I love having just a single year at a time, while keeping my old years as reference. Also, the sheet runs pretty snappy when it is all fresh and clean.
I saw that guide, and it is super helpful - just wondering how to set it up to do a rolling length of time, since adding 12 new columns every year has a limit, and if I try removing the previous year, everything breaks (budget amounts for that year go to zero, etc.)?
I would recommend keeping all your transactions in the same sheet, and allow multiple years to accrue there. (So no action needed to accomplish this.) I think this is when Tiller starts to get more powerful, because you can start to look at trends over the years and better understand things like overall spending trends (are your groceries going up consistently, what is a typical year for car maintenance, etc.). If you search this forum, you will find the instructions for how to take the monthly Live Profit and Loss and turn it into an annual year over year comparison, which is super helpful. Once you have a full year of data you can also make good use of things like the Budget Plan add-on to create your 2025 budget from your 2024 data. If you haven’t yet discovered the Live Profit and Loss (monthly) sheet, I recommend adding that, and then duplicate it and configure one sheet for 2024 and the other for 2025 (by setting the start month to 1/1/2024 and 1/1/2025 respectively).
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