Bill Management

Google Sheets Show & Tell
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Never Miss A Bill Again!

Okay my Tiller friends. If you are into managing your bills and money like I am, you know Tiller is an amazing tool. It is always evolving and being on top of the latest features is exciting.
Keeping track of your bills is just as important. Solutions do exist -Like entering a biller name, the amount due, and the due date into your Google Calendar only to have to do it every month, Ugg. Because let’s face it, recurring bills come with different amounts and slightly different due dates.

There is now and add on called BillReminder HQ (only $10.00 per year) that hooks up to your

  1. Google Sheet
  2. Google Calendar
  3. Google Phone (or iPhone or Android)

Example of my workflow
Go to the mailbox (yes I still get some of my bills this way)

Open my snail mail, check the transactions and balance due as well as the previous payment
making sure not to have any late fees!

Open my phone, click the Homescreen app for BillReminder HQ and enter 3 things

  1. Biller Name
  2. Amount Due
  3. Due Date

Once you press enter, it updates your Google Calendar and your Google Sheet

Insert your Google Sheet into your Tiller Workbook.

Your Google Calendar notifications give you a look ahead at your week, now including your upcoming bills and the amount due, Hooray! Never miss a bill again!

You have the ability to mark a bill as paid, or delete the bill once it’s paid. Hooray! A clean workflow.

*Note about the author –I do not work for Tiller or Billminder HQ, simply a dedicated paying user of Tiller and Billminder HQ who has been searching for a bill minding solution that does what I want. I met KeMonte’ Jones by trying his app and was not completely satisfied with the solution, so I wrote to him! In a clear and concise letter explained what I was looking for and he delivered the goods. Together we troubleshooted and he and his developer made this wonderful tool in just a few short weeks; A wonderful collaboration.

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Nice, I will have to take a look. Just to clarify, can it update the Tiller sheet directly or is it a dedicated Billreminder sheet?

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It’s a separate sheet.

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Nice, I’ll check out the BillReminder HQ add-on.

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Why don’t you just set up an automatic payment from the biller or use bill pay from your bank? Both of those will allow you to never forget to pay a bill again and the transaction will show up in your Tiller sheet.

I set up a separate checking account that I pay bills out of and whenever a withdrawal is initiated, I get an email to let me know. That way I can see how much is being pulled and from who. Plus this method is free!

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Just signed up. Thanks for the recommendation!

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Thanks for your input. I have been looking for and asking for this solution from the inception of online bill pay. The services of bill pay from the bank has three day float and setting up payments for multiple accounts monthly is inconvenient. Seems that everyone has there own method of organizing and paying bills and the billers and banks have there own methods as well. I am “old school” and Like to keep my money in my account until the bill is due, so I run it close. Email reminders and sms messages work, but only for the companies that are online. What do you do for the landscaper, the pest control guy, and the cleaner. I control my money and will never use the service of autopay. I always look for free solutions, but This setup with billereminder works well for me and Is worth not $10 a month, but $10 a year.
I found Tiller because QuickBooks doubled their price 2 years in a row. Tiller gives me complete control of my transactions, filtering data, and I own the workbook. The service is world class, responsive, and proactive to the users experience, worth every penny of the annual subscription.
With Respect,
CML

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I 110% agree with the complete control, one of the reasons I love Tiller! I’ve also found that everyone handles things differently with their money which is awesome. Was just curious :slight_smile:

For me, I actually don’t use Bill Pay either and instead just do auto-pay for each bill as required. I haven’t ran into an instance where the biller didn’t have an auto-pay option. Basically the way I handle it involves the following:

  1. Estimate the amount of bills per month then add a little padding (lets say bills would estimated to be $950 for ease of math).
  2. On the first of the month (or a day after I get paid), transfer $1000 (the extra padding) to a separate checking account (I use Capital One).
  3. Setup all auto-pay through the billers to withdraw from that one separate bill checking account each month - this way it doesn’t matter which day of the month the bill is due. I know the money is there and the bill will be paid.
  4. Setup email notifications anytime a withdrawal is made so it’s not dependent on the biller, just my bank to keep an eye on it (as well as shows up in Tiller).

Using this solution has worked well for me because I don’t have to think about my bills or when they are due. I just check the email when a withdrawal is made to make sure it is correct or at least makes sense for the fluctuating bills (ie. electricity didn’t double in one month).

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Hey, Thanks for sharing…you’ve given me some things to think about.

CML

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Want to make money by spending money and paying your bills? Here is what I do.

I pay everything I can with a credit card. I set up credit card auto pay with my vendors (using my online account) for all my recurring bills. I turn on paperless billing and email notifications; i.e., no paper. You can move money to a separate account like @mcentire08 does if that helps.

When the credit card bill comes due, pay it off in full. This allows you 30 days float.

I run everything I can through a credit card, not just my monthly recurring bills. Groceries, gas, restaurants, everything.

So, here is what I make by doing this. Of course, how much you make is directly related to the credit cards you use and how much you spend so your amounts will vary.

My main credit card provides 1.5% cash back on all purchases. I have a few other credit cards that have higher percentages on certain items at certain times of the year. For 2020, I have made $917 so far. I added my mother as an authorized user on my main credit card so she runs most of her purchases through that credit card. I made $2,517 in 2019; $1,458 in 2018; and $1,029 in 2017. (Now you know why I have so many Tiller categories). Some of these amounts include promotions, points for poor customer service, etc. The four year total is $5,921. Almost $6,000. Plus, it is all legitimate, legal, and tax free. Sweet.

In late 2019 my mother had an extraordinary expense item of $20,000. I used the 1.5% card and made $300 on just that one transaction. My 26 year old son has the same 1.5% credit card and he has made $182 so far this year.

Warning - Do not attempt this unless you are very responsible with your money and using credit cards.

Cheers,

B

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Dave Ramsey would not be happy with you Blake. :joy:

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@richl

You must be recalling one of his recent rants, no doubt.

Cheers,

B

While there are definitely instances where Ramsey is right, it’s also very possible to earn rewards and use them to your advantage. If you get a no-fee, cash-back credit card, only use it for regular purchases you’d make anyway (like gas and groceries), and faithfully pay your balance in full, for example, it’s hard to argue that you’re worse off getting a free 1% to 2% back in cash rewards on those purchases.

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Ha, I was just kidding Blake. I use my CC for everything too.

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I know you were but you bring up a good point. B

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Some good suggestions in this thread. May I offer another?

I only have one checking account that I use to pay regular bills. I pay everything electronically, but still push the button on the transactions each month so I can enter a manual transaction in Tiller. I do email bills everywhere I can to save paper. The challenge for me is mostly just remembering when everything is due. Fortunately my bank allows me to set up my own label for each account, so I just preface the monthly bills with “m/DD”, where DD is the day of the month the bill is due, “q/DD” for quarterly bills, and “y/MMDD” for annual ones. That way the monthly bills sort out before the quarterly ones, which sort out in the list before the annual bills. So my work is reduced to scanning the bill-pay account list on my bank’s website a couple of times a month to see what’s due in the next couple of weeks and work through the scheduled payments.

Admittedly my system is still pretty manual. Forgive me; my mom was a banker and rabid about tracking every inflow and outflow. I still reconcile my checkbook each month and like to see the bill before I pay it.

Anyhow, works for me. I know it’s not as fancy as some of the other things that you folks mentioned, but still, seemed worth mentioning.

Cheers,
Jeff

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Quick reminder that BillReminder is a third-party tool that has not been vetted by the Tiller Money team.
Please perform your own due diligence before using this product.

Thanks for sharing your workflow, @chris.larson1967.
From the thread, it looks like there is a lot of interest in bill tracking solutions.

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Just thought I’d share with the folks in this post that Tiller introduced a new Bill Payment Tracker today. Basically, you can enter your bills in the setup section and then you get a list of your upcoming bills. When you pay one, you check it off and it disappears from the upcoming list.

It doesn’t integrate with Google Calendar, but it does work with your Transactions sheet to provide some historical data on past transactions.

Read more about it here:

https://community.tillerhq.com/t/bill-payment-tracker/5593/2

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