Add the Tags Report for Transaction Tagging

[heather]

Overview

Tags are a great way to organize your financial data. You can easily add the Tags Report sheet with a few manual steps.

The Tags Report:

1. Lists the tags you’re using on your Transactions sheet.
2. Shows you the sum amount for transactions that use that tag.
3. Gives a total count of the transactions using that tag.
4. Offers a tag dropdown to show you transaction details for a specific tag.
5. Provides a summary of the categories where that tag is used for a transaction.
6. Shows the total count of transactions using the selected tag organized by category.
7. Offers custom date range tag review

How to Get the Tags Report

1. Install the Tiller Labs Solutions add-on
2. Open the add-on and choose “Add a Solution”
3. Click on Tags Report
4. Choose “Add to spreadsheet”

The Tiller Labs add-on will add the Tags column to your Transactions sheet to the far right (scroll right horizontally) and add the Tags Report sheet.

Tip: You can click the column letter and drag the column to the left to rearrange it so it’s closer to the Category & Description columns.

Tagging Transactions

The Tags Report comes to life after you start tagging transactions on the Transactions sheet. The Tags on the Transactions sheet are distinct from those you can also use on the Categories sheet.
Read more about using Tags on categories.

You can use a single tag or multiple tags for a transaction.

To use multiple tags for a single transaction simply separate each tag with a comma with no space in between the tags.

How to use the Tags Report

After you’ve tagged some transactions you can start building analysis on the Tags Report sheet. You should see the list of tags you’ve used so far populate into the All Tags list starting in cell A9.

You can then select a tag from the dropdown list in the middle of the Tags Report to review all transactions associated with your selected tag and get a summary of the total amounts and counts of the tag used organized by category.

Customize the date range if you only want to view data for a specific time range or you can choose “All Dates” to see all tagged transaction data.

Troubleshooting

If you have a question or need help first search the community to see if someone has already asked and if not click here to quickly post a question about this report in the Get Help > Spreadsheet templates category.

Be sure to customize the title of your post with keywords about the issue or question so others can easily find the Q&A in search.

[jonorlin]

Some additional notes about the Tags report:

Tags can be used for lots of purposes. You can tag business-related transactions with a business tag. If you have just 1 food category, you could tag food transactions with Dinner or Breakfast or Coffee etc. If you have 1 travel category, you could add a tag with the name and date of the Trip such as Seattle July 2019.

You could also tag transactions with the word Follow Up and quickly get a list of which transactions you want to follow up on.

If you manage properties, you could use tags for the addresses of each of your rentals.
See here for more.

The possibilities are endless. Share below how you use tags. It might help others.

Also, this new Tags Report fixing a problem that was in the prior version. In the past, if you used the tag NY, the details report would also include any cases where you used a tag like NY June. This doesn’t happen anymore. Only exact tags are matched.

If you want to use tags in your use reports, check out the formulas in A9, E9 and J8. If interested, I can provide more info on how they work.

[heather]

One way I’ve started using this new tags report is for reimbursements. I am often reimbursed for work related expenses so I used “paid” or “unpaid” as a tag that quickly helps @Janelle identify which transactions for which I’ve already been reimbursed and which are outstanding.

[andhess]

Any suggestions for making transactions with a certain tag be hidden from reports?

Ideally I could have a sheet for tags just like categories and I could specify which tags should hide.

[jonorlin]

Hi @andhess,
You would need to update the formulas on each report to filter by the hidden tags and, as you mention, you would need a tags sheet similar to the Categories sheet to define which tags are hidden. The current tags report generates its list from looking at existing tags. And as new tags are added, the order of the tags on the Tags Report sheet could change. So defining 'Hide From Report" tags there wouldn’t work.

Would it be possible to use the existing Hide From Report features in the Categories sheet to achieve what you want from a Hidden Tags? Maybe you could share more details about your use case for this.

[Blake]

Yes, please let us know what you are trying to do. Tags might not be your best option. Blake

[andhess]

Hey @Blake and @jonorlin, thanks for the interest.

Here’s the thought process (for context, I’m coming from Mint where this is a supported workflow):

Tags allow for more flexible metadata grouping and with tag exclusion, would be more robust at excluding items. For example, reimbursable purchases from work (which can cover a wide range of fields) can all be covered without having to have a bunch of additional categories (e.g. restaurants; restaurants-work; airfare; airfare-work). I could just categorize and then exclude.

I am going to go forward with just a more extensive category list because it would be too complicated to built out the functionality with tags. To be fair, I’ve recognized that I can do this with just adding more categories all along, but am just a bit worried about having so many categories.

[jonorlin]

Hi @andhess,
Thanks for sharing your thought process. I can now see why you want the ability to hide tags.

One other option you might consider. Create just one category called Reimbursable Expenses. And of course, hide that category from reports. Then use tags to label transactions in that category. I doubt you have a budget for reimbursable expenses by category. So this would allow you to exclude those expenses in the budget but still have a way to keep track of the categories/tags with the Tags Report.

Jon

[Blake]

@andhess

The very most important thing with Tiller are your categories. They are the key. Do not worry about having too many categories, I have 340.

A few comments:

1. Note the Hide column in the Categories tab.

2. You mention reimbursable items. You have tons of options here, all based on what you want to see. You can have one income category for when you receive reimbursement. You can have one or many separate expense categories. You could have one income or expense category and code all reimbursable items to it (this would ultimately net to zero). Another option is all of the above but code the category as transfer. If you code as income or expense, you can select Hide as an option.

3. Wise decision to not build out any additional tag functionality. I think you would constantly be tinkering with it to keep it working.

4. As I initially thought, I do not think tags is your best option for what I think you are trying to do. Categories is the better way to go.

5. Mint only has three tags (tax related, reimbursable, vacation), and they are by transaction as you note. Tiller probably has no limit on the number of tags and they are by transaction as well. So, Tiller’s tags are probably more robust than Mint’s.

6. I often use the description column to accomplish what I could get from using tags. Just personal preference.

Thanks,

Blake

[heather]

Hi @andhess,

One more opinion thrown in here. If you use Tags in the Transactions sheet you can get the granularity you want from the Tags Report (be able to see a breakdown of the spending per tag), but categorize all those work expenses using “Reimbursable” and hide that category from your budget on the Categories sheet (I’m assuming that’s where you want to hide it).

Heather

[Misken]

Love this report and continue to love Tiller.

I noticed this note: “A summary of the categories used for transactions using the tag “[TAG]”. Transactions that have not been categorized are not included.”

However, the report IS including un-categorized transactions. I am fine with this but just wondering if this is a bug.

[heather]

Thanks for letting us know @Misken. We’ll take a look and see what we can figure out.

Heather

[jonorlin]

Hi @Misken,
I’m glad you love this report! I find it useful too.

The note about un-categorized transactions not being included refers only to the Category Detail results in the 3rd section on the right. That section lists the Category, Total and Count by Category. Un-categorized transactions are not included in this list. (I’ve tested it and I don’t see un-categorized transactions here. Do you see otherwise?)

On the rest of the sheet, in the All Tags and the Tags Transactions Details sections, un-categorized transactions ARE included in the results. Which is what you are likely seeing.

These rules seem to be the appropriate behavior for the report.

Jon
cc @heather

[Misken]

Ahhh! Got it and thank you @jonorlin for the explanation. Makes sense!

[jonorlin]

We have an updated version of the Tags Report, V1.01, which now handles tags correctly if they have apostrophes in them. Go to the Tiller Labs Add-on and update your Tags Report to get the new sheet.

Jon

[heather]

We’ve closed this topic for replies. If you have a question or need help first search the community to see if someone has already asked and if not click here to quickly post a question about this report in the Get Help > Spreadsheet templates category.

Be sure to customize the title of your post with keywords about the issue or question so others can easily find the Q&A in search.