I hope you are well and in a good frame of mind today.
I’ve looked and don’t see an answer, so…
My 2024 Google sheet, based on the Tiller template, has 37 accounts. I thought, naively, that when I used the Tiller template to create my 2025 Google spreadsheet those accounts would come right over. After all, they are all (except my “cash” account") held on my Tiller console.
(1) How do I get my accounts to show up in the Accounts tab of my 2025 Tiller Google spreadsheet, with their balances and all that from the 2024 Google spreadsheet?
(2) Can I get my “Cash” account to migrate over, or do I have to manually copy the latest data for that account from the 2024 Tiller Google spreadsheet and paste it into the Accounts tab of my 2025 Tiller Google spreadsheet?
Hi, there. I think the standard advice for how to manage annual sheets is different than what you’ve done. Here is what I’ve generally seen prescribed (I haven’t done it myself because I just keep one continuously running sheet):
Make a copy of your existing 2024 Transactions sheet. Save that copy as your 2024 archive sheet.
Now that you’ve made an archive copy of your 2024 Transactions sheet, you can delete all of the transactions from 2024 from your original Transactions sheet.
You’ll then have a clean Transactions sheet for 2025 that retains all of your account connections since you are still using the original sheet. You’ll also still have the balance history from 2024.
Just curious - how many years worth of data do you have in your single sheet? Mine goes back to around 2019, so 6 years for me. Just curious how many years of data those who keep a single sheet have and how that impacts performance.
Thank you! I appreciate your prompt help.
On the other hand, dang! Not the solution I wanted to hear! I like the feeling of starting with a brand-new sheet each year…
So there’s no other simple way?
I only started with Tiller in September 2023, so a bit over a year. 4655 transactions. I haven’t seen any degradation in performance, and I’m inclined to keep going until I do.
Hmm. This strikes me as a pretty simple way. For all intents and purposes, you would be starting with a new sheet (except you’d still have your accounts connected, balance history, and categories without having to do any additional work).
Just one year. I’ve taken to creating a new Tiller Google spreadsheet for each year.
I use them only for keeping records of inflow and outflow, and for income tax data. I don’t do analysis.
Although I do recognize a need to plan and budget, I’m not doing so; I lack the energy and time.
From the Tiller console, select your 2025 Tiller spreadsheet and select all the accounts.
You may need to enable non-default things like auto-fill and perhaps add AutoCat, if you use that.
Manually add it using Tiller Money Feeds > Manual accounts .
You can’t edit the right-hand ‘hidden’ section of the Accounts tab - you could instead manually edit the Balance History tab, but the Manual accounts sidebar will do that for you.
Good solution, @Mark.S , though I’m curious if @cogreg will see this as simpler. Not trying to be difficult, but the standard advice I gave above seems easier, at least to me. Is there an advantage that I’m missing?
I would personally do it the way you suggested, that would be really easy for me. I was simply answering the question as asked
I think one advantage is maybe more psychological, where there’s the feeling of starting from a clean slate. Another might be if you feel there’s something wonky going on, but have never discovered the root cause.
I think the easiest way to do this with the outcome I think you want would be to create a copy of the 2024 Google Sheet, and save it as an archive of 2024. This copy would just be a Google Sheet and would not be connected to Tiller.
Then I would go back to the original sheet that is still connected into Tiller, and delete out all the 2024 transaction data and just rename the live one to 2025. Then you start clean with a new transactions sheet for 2025, but without having to re-set up any account connections or custom categories. Just delete all the rows in the Transactions sheet and you’re good to go.
Personally, I set up a new Live Profit and Loss sheet for each year (one tab for each one, labeled with the year), to have the same result of a “clean” view of the year, but I accrue all my transactions data across multiple years in the Transactions sheet. I have never noticed performance issues, and I currently have more than 10k transactions in there. The reason I like having all the Transactions in one place is that I also like to customize my Live Profit and Loss sheet, which by default shows every month in one year, to instead show an annual total for each year side by side. That way I can in one sheet reference what I spent on groceries in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 at a glance. I think Tiller gets more powerful once you can see these multi year trends, on top of your annual trends.
I have been using Tiller for a year but I imported and cleaned up mint data going back to Aug 2015 totaling 15,844 transactions according to the Insights tab.
Performance has been fine since Tiller made some improvements a few months ago. I’d archive and delete old transactions if there was a need.
