Docs: Trim Balance History

About Trim Balance History

Tiller’s data feed adds new balance records to the Balance History sheet sometimes more often than once per day. As time passes, the balances dataset can become very large, causing decreased spreadsheet performance.

The Trim Balance History utility removes extraneous balance history entries by trimming them down to a single balance entry for each day, week, or month (for each account). The frequency you’d like to see is configurable. You can choose all accounts or a single account for trimming.

How to use Trim Balance History

  1. Open (or Install) the Tiller Community Solutions add-on from the Extensions menu at the top of your Tiller-powered Google Sheet.
  2. Navigate to Tools > Utilities > Trim Balance History. The workflow will check for compatibility issues.
  3. Leave “All accounts” selected if you want to trim all accounts or choose an Account from the Account(s) dropdown list.
  4. Choose your frequency from the Balance History Frequency dropdown list. You can choose to keep one balance history entry per day, week, or month for all or a single account. If you’re trimming one account at a time, you can choose a different frequency option per account.
  5. Click the Trim button.
  6. Before deleting the Balance History entries, you will get a confirmation dialog— e.g. “Ready to trim 174 Balance History rows. Are you sure you want to proceed?”
  7. Click Yes.

Be aware that modifications from the Balance History Pruner can only be undone using Sheet’s Version History tools.

How Trim Balance History works

  • The trimmer will always preserve the most recent balance history entry for all accounts.

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 tool in the Google Sheets 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.

2 Likes

This works great! Thanks for the awesome guide!

1 Like

Thank you. Please can you add a section or a link on how to schedule this trimmer?

@altered-ego,

Sorry, I just removed those references. The Trimmer doesn’t have a schedule feature right now. The original version that was a separate add-on did and I repurposed the content but forgot to remove those references.

1 Like

My question is why to I need any balance history?

Maybe I use my sheet differently than others or I don’t understand the need for balance history. I need to know my current balances. I have my statements that have monthly balances and enough detail to build a balance for any point in time if needed (although I can’t think of why I would need to).
I only use this sheet for tracking budgeted spending. No investments are tracked here.

I ran the tool and I went from close to 15,000 to a few hundred balances.

Hi @pixel.dick,

Balance History is a core sheet where we add data from our data provider about the balances of your accounts so if you want to see the balance on a given day you need a Balance History sheet for us to pull the balance data in.

Does that help?

Heather

Some users like to chart net worth. Balance History is the essential data set to perform this charting.

It’s possible to run Tiller without a Balance History sheet, but be aware that the Balances sheet that shows current balances requires the Balance History sheet for this data. If you delete Balance History, you won’t be able to see you current balances.

Feel free to hide the sheet.

Randy

Thanks for your input. I wasn’t thinking of getting rid of the sheet. Rather trimming back to the minimum. Since I track net worth in another sheet. I will keep it small.

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