I was prompted to share my “Tiller Money” story. I had been a Quicken user since January 1989. Every few years I would update to the latest version. But after Quicken 2015 I retired and found that it was not worth it to me to get a new version. Then they made it a pay-as-you go rental rather than a purchase… I planned to stay with Quicken 2015. But when I purchased a new PC with Windows 11, I could not migrate Quicken 2015 to the new PC. Quicken help said I had to buy the new version or just keep my old PC. It wasn’t the money that irritated me, it was that they had unilaterally changed the agreement. That’s how I learned about Tiller Money. I like it so far. A lot. I have migrated some of my old data to Tiller by pasting it into the transaction spreadsheet after carefully arranging the columns. I found I could combine the quicken Payee and Memo fields by the formula (on Libre Office Calc) of (=A1 & " " & B1. ) the " " puts a space inbetween the two text fields. Otherwise it’s straighforward except every amount of 1,000 or more splits on the comma and has to be manually recombined. Not too many of those trx over $1000… With Tiller I like having all the data on one giant spreadsheet. I frequently use temporary filters to view a subset of my data. This is so MUCH for FLEXIBLE than with Quicken. I am in my 30 day trial and am working out bugs which is fun. By looking for Tiller’s errors I find my errors. I have a big pivot table that I use to check. If I find a positive number in the list you get when you double click a cell, you know to check and fix the transaction. When I get it all set up I’ll need another challenge. I love having one page that shows the balance of all my credit cards, accounts, and retirement funds. I don’t use the splitting tool. It’s easier just to add lines that shows date, description, category but no account. I put the category and amount into the added lines so that handles the income and expense analysis but in the line that mentions the account I just put the amount with a category that is neither income or expense. All my expense categories start with the letter e and all my income categories start with the letter I. The advantage of doing it that way becomes obvious w use. I could go on and on and if you are new to Tiller this does not make a lot of sense to you. I am happy to pay yearly for something that gives me the freedom to create my own solutions.
Thank you for taking the time to share your story Bob.
It’s been a month now and I think Tiller is doing everything I need. I made the account registers show the proper running balance by inserting a number at the beginning of this month. I had imported about 3 months of data and more in some accounts from quicken and the balances were off. With math plus trial and error I found the right adjustment number which fixed the balance. I had to do this for most accounts except for the credit cards that only had a few entries. I am also being creative with posting transactions in advance of when they clear. I like to see what I have planned. So when credit card XXX has a statement come in and it will be autopaid $2000 in 3 weeks, I make an entry: description is "AutoPay Credit Card XXX for $2000, the bank is the checking account, The date is the date the debit is expected and the amount is zero so that when the real one comes in I wont have two debits of $2000. This way I can see what’s coming without messing up the register with future activity. I do splits the same way. I’ll add lines to the register with the description, category and amount but label the account as “split.” If there are two splits, say at this store $30 was food and $40 was a donation of food, The actual debit of $70 wont be entered by me, it will post when it posts. I just put in the splits on the day I made the transaction. They show up on the income and expense pivot table but not on the check register. For me this is easier than the tool and more direct.
The power and flexibility of the spreadsheet!
Great post. Thanks for sharing Bob!
I am continuing to enjoy the flexibility of using a spreadsheet rather than Quicken. I keep track of our monthly income and expense on a pivot table. But at the bottom below the totals I have added prompts reminding me when the statements from my seven credit cards will be available to review. I have another list below that to remind me when monthly account statements for banks and brokerage statement will post online. I doesn’t belong there but it’s handy from a workflow standpoint. I could put these prompts in a different tab but I found it easier to put them on that pivot table.