Hi! I know everyone is different, but I was just wondering how long it took people to categorize their transactions when they started using Tiller and how long it took them to set up all their AutoCat rules? How many rules do people have that use AutoCat? I’m following the videos and guides, and playing around with the different ways to do things.
Hi, @LearningAsIGo,
To create my AutoCat rules, I found it easiest to use the words sent by the account in the “Full Description” of the transaction and created my rules as new transactions were entered.
I use the rules sparingly and only for transactions that occur regularly. For example, anything we buy at our local Whole Foods comes in as “Whole Foods UNI X0111” in the Full Description. My AutoCat rule shortens the Description to “Whole Foods” and categorizes it as Food. The majority of my rules are applied to insurance payments and utilities.
Hope this helps,
Becca
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Hello!
If you are just coming into Tiller, my advice would be to give it a best effort, and know that you are going to add or subtract some categories in the next months. That may take a little backtracking, but honestly won’t be that big of a time sink.
I think I am year 4 of Tiller, and I just removed a category for 2025 that got 0 new transactions last year. It happens!
If you have a bunch of historical data, and it seems overwhelming to categorize it all; feel free to just do last month, and ignore or delete the rest. Making yourself a huge amount of work up front could be a reason to stop budgeting altogether, which is probably not what you want.
For Autocat, I would recommend doing those as they come in. Like @Rebecca.S above, I am a fan of looking at Full Description for patterns. No need to have to think about possible future transactions right now. Just today I added a couple of new autocat rules, and I have been carrying mine over since the beginning.