HELP with Canadian banks-what is the status on the new providers!

Hi,
i am using Desjardins as one of my 3 banks, the 2 others are working 85% of the time but desjardins answers but only gives the account total, NO transactions.

I don’t hear or read anything about the new providers, what is the status and does Tiller expect resulution of these issues by moving us to the new providers ?

Thanks in advance and please keep us informed, it’s really making the experience veray bad, the rest works so good that it’s a shame not to be able to use the full potential of Tiller.

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I’m right there with you, I dont know why it seems Y* and Tillers relationship seems to have soured without explanation or remedy, but I guarantee there’s story that is not being told publicly for a reason.

I hope it’s not bad API coding or inexperience from the Tiller team, i don’t see any updates and it’s frustrating.

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I enjoy Tiller when it works, but without the automation of transaction imports, it’s unusable for me. I just don’t have time to do manual imports. The Yodlee relationship has allowed Tiller to own-off the problem to someone else, at least they think. I don’t pay Yodlee, I pay tiller. Like any other customer, I expect a working service/product. I even understand sometimes I need to be patient but when it has worked flawlessly before, I know its possible that it can work. And then when its broke I expect a fix in a reasonable amount of time. This hasn’t been reasonable and its a shame because this otherwise is a great product, but the Achilles heel is going to take it down if they allow it to continue.

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And they’re is no answer from Tiller…

I don’t know the Canadian context, but in the US context, it’s important to keep in mind that the source of connection failures is often the fault of the banks themselves, which do various things to make it challenging for the aggregators to gather data (and when they change something about how users access their data, the aggregators have to figure out a new way to work around whatever new obstacle they might have created). So, I get the frustration, but the issue here may be with neither Tiller nor with Yodlee.

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If the problem is my bank and Tiller/Yodlee can’t or doesn’t want to deal with my bank, they should tell me the issue so I can deal with the bank myself. If my bank is reluctant to help, it may be time to change banks. However when my bank has not seemed to be an issue on other platforms, that tells me that it’s possible to work with my bank already. But support here lately has been a black hole that lets you submit issues with no timeline on a remedy. Issues have been resolved in the past with no explanation of the source of the issue. Anybody who expects me to keep my mouth shut and sit on my hands when I’m paying for a service should probably explain why they expect me to be tolerant of a service that doesn’t perform. Where in the world is that the standard with the exception being the US postal service? I’m not the only one here with issues. This is a fairly common problem.

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Who has told you to “keep your mouth shut and sit on your hands?” If I’m not satisfied with a service, I stop paying for it.

Thats an excellent plan with the exception being the service is paid for in advance.

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In another thread on here within the last couple of weeks, somebody from Tiller indicated that they can offer a prorated refund for customers who have reached their breaking point. It was posted in a public forum, so I don’t think they’re trying to keep it a secret.

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@dmetiller , we never said it’s a secret, but we are entitled to get some updates, don’t you agree ?

What does the ‘Beta’ mean near your name in the forum ?

Sure. And there have been updates (or updates that there is no update in some cases) sprinkled throughout this forum. Here’s what @heather wrote in a thread nineteen days ago: “We don’t have any updates here. We still can’t offer troubleshooting support for Canadian institutions!” Unable to add TD Canada Easy Web connection - #8 by heather

Could these updates be more centralized somehow and better communicated? Yes, but honestly, given the size of the Tiller team (which I take to be very small), I think I’d rather them focus on building out capabilities that will eventually reduce the need for lots of customer support (most importantly, the integration of additional aggregators).

I imagine the “Beta” is next to my name because I am part of a beta testing group for Tiller. Can’t think of anything else it could mean.

@heather Can you give us new on the bank testing ?

Thanks

The situation with Canadian institutions is not unique to Yodlee. The other aggregators we are evaluating have told us that they’re also not working well on their platforms either.

We don’t have those institutions disabled in our system with Yodlee because sometimes they do work, and we’d rather people have access to them so they can at least try. However, it was clear that the connections to this institutions was really unstable and our support efforts with Yodlee were futile so we decided to stop providing troubleshooting support for Canadian institutions and have tried to set the expectation that things just may not work.

If you want this to change pressure the Canadian government to move faster on implementing open banking regulations that will force the banks to build access that’s reliable. Yodlee indicates that these changes are in the works, but until these institutions offer an API / OAUTH based connection they’re just not going to be reliable.

So the new aggregators we’re testing aren’t the answer to this issue.

We’re also not the only one experiencing this issue. You can read more about this on a different tool’s site.

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That PocketSmith post is really good and helpful. Sadly, you could find-and-replace Canada with US, and it would serve as a pretty good explanation of why reliability of data feeds from some US institutions remains a persistent issue.

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Thanks @heather for the update, it’s really unfortunate that the situation is not resolved and at least it gives us information on why.

I am glad you are letting the Canadian banks still active, out of 3 banks 2 are ok 97% of the time and one only gives me the amount in the account… No transactions are going thrue, maybe it will resolve over time (we need to be hopefull).

So now that we know theyre are problems, can you point me (us) towards the best way to download the CSV from the account for me it’s the credit card transcations and be able to upload them in the transaction list easely ? and maybe add some intelligence so as not duplicating uploaded transactions.
Thanks in advance !

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Hi @peterkingster you can use the steps outlined in this guide to upload your transactions manually into your sheet. How/where exactly you would download your transactions in the first place depends on what your bank has available to you.

There is the experimental Tiller Community Solutions add-on Manage Duplicates workflow, otherwise you can refer to this guide for more tips on handling duplicate transactions in your sheet.

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Hey fellow Canucks, it looks like it is time to explore other options to Tiller. This is a kick in the gut after spending two months getting setup on Tiller, and then a few more months getting involved with the community and trying out all the solutions created by other uses. But without feeds, we are left in limbo. I manually uploaded HSBC credit card transactions for months. Not easy.

Tiller support was so helpful before and one of the key reasons that I chose to subscribe. Now I’m sitting in the dark, with no idea where my financial life it at. Reading about new templates etc is useless when we don’t have any data.

What alternatives have you found? Why are we paying for a Google sheet with no feeds?

Hi, I’m from south central British Columbia. I’ve been using Tiller for around 5 years. At first my Canadian bank syncing (VanCity and CIBC) worked very well with only a few hiccups that were solved within a few days. These bank feeds are now pretty useless (ie they don’t work). I don’t attribute this to TIller, rather, I think it’s the Canadian banks that are getting more difficult to work with. It seems when mult factor authorization was implemented by many Canadian banks the feeds started to get unreliable. I had to reauthorize every day it seemed and the syncs started being broken more often than not. The USA is has a standard in place for secure open banking (OAUTH) where you set up the link with your bank and it stays until you revoke it. More and more of their banks are adapting this standard. Canada has “plans” for the same type of system but it’s taking forever for it to be implemented. When it is, (I think in a few years) Tiller will probably be able to support Canadian banks much better. One weak link in the Tiller system has been having only one aggregator - Yodlee. Many other budget apps (YNAB, Monarch) have several to work from (Plaid and MX). I’ve been using YNAB concurrently with Tiller and my YNAB syncs are most of the time up. But having said that, my VanCity sync is down with YNAB and looks to remain that way for a while. I think Tiller is aware that this issue is turning away clients and is working hard to find a multi-aggregator solution. Even if they are successful in this, I think syncing will be better, but not like it should be. But until OAUTH is set up in Canada and the Canadian banks support it, I wouldn’t hold my breath for reliable Canadian syncing. Although, I do have faith that the engineers and programmers at Tiller are up to the task. I would consider any delays by Tiller as them not wanting to release a crappy solution. They’re pretty good at what they do. Until then, I have added a sheet in my Foundation sheet that automates manual entry so it’s easy to do. I’ve tried manual import, but it’s simply easier to enter the transactions in my “form” than to fuss with the manual import. I have done a LOT of looking and the only solution I’ve found workable is YNAB, but it is far to rigid in it’s “rules” for me.
You might want to check out this link to a very good explanation of one companies issues with Canadian syncing. Posted by Tiller - Click here
Jim

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I live in Calgary. I am not having any issue with RBC, but I am with Manulife. Although I think is more an issue of the link to the spreadsheet.All my Manulife account information is correct and appears to be populating to Tiller and even updating the correct amounts. I’m sure it can be fixed but I’m not getting any ideas on how to fix it. If anyone knows , please let me know.