Background: I got screwed by MS office after they stopped supporting the money template, then I got screwed by Mint when they when poof. As to NOT spend another countless hours setting something up only to have it go unsupported, I am noticing that much of the stuff written in help seems to push us towards google sheets.
For instance, the very main tool it looks I will need the “community solutions” says This tool is works best with sheets being fed by the Tiller Money Feeds add-on for Google Sheets.
I see there are only 12 excel add ons but 45 sheets add ons. Is this the writing on the wall?
SO help a new guy out - before i go down and spend countless hours setting this up want to know if i should NOT use excel and go towards google sheets. and I am not wasting my time again on a soon to be obsolete platform. Opinions on this matter?
Tiller started on Google Sheets. It had a significant head start before Tiller started developing for Excel. Tiller has indicated that they are committed to developing both platforms going forward, but yes, at the moment, you’re going to find more of both Tiller-developed sheets and community solutions for Sheets than for Excel.
ok i was thinking it might be something like this. In that case, how can i get a google template into excel’? Will i loose the back ground connections if i just save it off into excel format? It is the property management one with many tabs.
Sheets and Excel use differently structured formulas and scripts, so it’s unlikely to work if you simply save a Tiller Google Sheet as an Excel spreadsheet. You’re best off using the sheets that are designed for the platform that you are using.
Yes Sheets has the greater headstart with Tiller starting out there like @dmetiller said.
I personally prefer sheets for this reason in that it has more templates currently available and there isnt some fee for office 365 or the older standalone Microsoft that i dont have to pay in addition to tiller subscription in order to have access to the features and process my finances.
Rewriting formulas to work in excel is also something I’m not up for so i chose Sheets since to me it seems to currently be the superior option.
The overall benefit to a service like Tiller is that even if (lord forbid) Tiller goes away, you still have your data that you can do as you please with and can, although a pain in the butt, manually update with from your banking institutions to keep going.
Like others have said, Google sheets was the original platform. However, Tiller has committed big to Excel since they announce it. Honestly I think both platforms have a future on Tiller.
Something to keep in mind is that Excel/Office YYYY one-time purchase software isn’t officially supported, since it gets outdated. Microsoft 365 and the free web-based Excel could be used, although I believe 365 is the primary development focus.
Thanks everyone. While its great to hear Tiller will support excel going forward, looks like the more robust templates I need are not there yet so if i want to proceed i must use sheets as I do not have the patience to make my own on top of the foundations template.
Speaking of which, it occurred to me quickly the “Tiller Service” service fee is for essentially a clone of a previous template and to use the API to tap banks into it (although interestingly free ones like APIs to Stock tickers still exist).
But all further development comes from individual users in the community not the Tiller team!
This is not criticism per se - just an interesting (genius?) model on what was once “included” with a MS Office subscription of course. To those running Tiller that saw the opportunity there, hats of to you - that is a business move right there.
I am still in decision mode and appreciate the free trial. TBH working off Sheets within a browser seems like a hard sell to me but I will have an open mind. The trust concerns with your data between MS and Google are pretty much equivalent at this point.
-Not all banks provide APIs. If only they did. See my post from earlier this week on how Tiller works and why it’s a challenge. But, yes, I suspect a significant amount of the Tiller fee goes to paying the data aggregator, Yodlee.
-I don’t think it’s trivial to get the data from the data aggregator and then fill our sheets with that data. Or at least I wouldn’t know how to do it.
-It would take me a long time to produce the templates that Tiller provides even as the basic included templates. I mean, I’ve looked at some of the formulas in them long enough to know that I’m happy to be paying somebody else to have developed and maintained them.
Personally, I loathe Microsoft products and do pretty much all of my daily work in the Google ecosystem, so I’m content to be using Sheets.
@Rocketghost - I think that after using Sheets for awhile and getting used to it, you will prefer it over Excel. I was skeptical for awhile, too, since it felt like a “browser” app couldn’t be as good as a desktop one. It just felt like a desktop one would be “sturdier” or have more functionality. But after fully switching to Sheets, I loathe opening up Excel. I hope that you have the same experience.
LIFETIME Excel user here … but I was forced to be introduced to sheets just a tad for work purposes. Started using Tiller (about 2-3 weeks ago) with what I know which was Excel. After getting everything “just so,” I put that same info into a Google Sheet and have been playing with that for this past week.
Ummm “WOW!” is all I can say! Its taking a bit of getting used to because things are just “different” between them but I can already see the advantages of using Sheets instead. Like @takeAtip-leaveAtip said, the Google sheet version updates in the background.
I have no experience with any financial tool such as Tiller, Mint, Rocket Money, etc., but have been using my own spreadsheet for well over a decade and yup - I can see Google Sheets being preferred by me EASILY in the future!
My guess is that bank aggregators (like Yodlee) wouldn’t give individuals the time of day. But companies like tiller can negotiate decent pricing and help “translate” or simplify the process of “connecting” to the aggregator’s APIs.
If you have the skill, time, and connections to DIY, then it could be a fun project. But I think most consumers need a company like tiller to pioneer all of that for them - hence a fee. And those aggregators have ongoing costs to maintain teams of people to ensure bank connections are maintained as well as infrastructure costs like servers, and teams dedicated to security. They pass those costs onto to tiller who passes them on to us with a markup. Doesn’t seem to me as sinister as your comment seems to imply (but maybe I misread you as being cynical when that’s not your intent).
And I get it. Subscription fatigue is real, but at least this subscription helps you keep other subscriptions in view.
I also see tiller as one less level of risk than mint or other budget apps. Going out of business is a risk for every company, but where mint has to change the interface / features for millions of user (and some will hate the changes), tiller can just create a new template and your existing one will still work.
@all As I am getting newly into budgets Tiller always made sense. I just found most budget apps (e.g. YNAB) are helpful more towards those paying down debt and living paycheck to paycheck it seems (in a non negative sense - just reality). I find using spreadsheets (Tiller or not) is more apt for higher net worth individuals, so indeed the templates for investments, cash flow, and retirement appealed to me. From that perspective it was quickly a no brainier that Tiller is still really a “Sheets” geared app, so i went over there. At least at the time of writign this (2/2024)
I agree the change has been an easy adjust. I do have to mentally adjust to linking the sheet as a bookmark versus an actual document into my very well curated file management system. There is also the sneaking suspicion google is more apt to “peak” at my data than MS given the primary business income streams. But so far its been an easy transition!
Rest assured you have found the right home for your personal finances yes it will take some getting used to, but once you are setup it is a breeze. I too came from other software and when the price tripled I said goodbye and hello to Tiller. The community is amazingly helpful and the product is robust and dynamic. Good luck on your journey. I was an excel guy until sheets blew by Microsoft in the cloud, by the time excel was good on the cloud it was too late. Tiller started using sheets and only recently adapted many of their solutions to excel. I understand your concerns, they are valid. Hopefully these words of encouragement make the transition fruitful.
This is not true. The Tiller team makes the solutions and also users make solutions too. That is the beauty…customers are willing to share their knowledge and the tools they passionately built. Who better to make things that other customers may want than another customer.
Great is example is the Debt Payoff Planner we just released (from Tiller) to replace the community version because we wanted to offer a supported debt workflow.
We’re also constantly iterating on the product and releasing new code though some if it is behind the scenes.
First, I use both Sheets and Excel, but I have a lot more experience with Excel and went that route. I’ve occasionally noticed a template I wanted to try only to find it’s not available in Excel. That said, my experience for the first 8 months has been seamless. I migrated from Mint before their announcement and every aspect has been an improvement.
Relative to this discussion, am I wrong to think it would be relatively easy to switch between the two? The only thing you really lose with a new instance of Tiller is the history, and you’d have that. So I’m hoping it would mainly be a matter of copying the transactions sheet. And possibly the budget history if you want that. What am I missing?
I spent the first year with tiller in excel, I have been using Microsoft for years so thought it would be easier. As I set up for the new year, I thought I would give google sheets a try. I used both in parallel for awhile but decided google sheets was more user friendly and as noted, many more add-ins. I finally made the switch because my excel file was corrupt and could not open. With the research I did, uncovered an issue with Microsoft using iPad to update, then going back to computer it was corrupt. In the end not worth sticking with excel. For what it is worth, google sheets a little slow in updating, but has been reliable.
