Introducing a New Tiller Foundation Template Experience

News & Announcements
1

Originally published at: Introducing A New Tiller Foundation Template Experience - Tiller

One of the key takeaways from Tiller’s team gathering in Seattle last November was a goal of simplifying the Tiller Foundation Template. 

We were responding to a clear message from some of our customers: “this needs to be simpler.” 

So today we’re launching a new Foundation Template experience that streamlines setup and provides faster spending insights to help you reach your financial goals. 

NEW Spending Trends Sheet

Spending-Trends-Hero-Blue-GS.jpg2400×1600 383 KB

Thousands of people already use Tiller to track their finances in one place. But because spending is the foundation of healthy finances, we wanted to make it even easier for you to see where your money is going each day, month, and year. 

So we’re replacing the Insights sheet with an all-new Spending Trends sheet in the updated Foundation Template. This new sheet provides the fastest, simplest way to see all your spending in one place.

Before you even categorize any transactions, the Spending Trends dashboard shows what you spent yesterday, last week, and last month, along with a quick pulse of your net worth.

Spending-Trends-Detail-Close-1.png1617×431 48.3 KB

Once you’ve categorized your transactions, you’ll also see your income and expenses neatly grouped into your custom categories. You can customize the time period for this view. You’ll also see your current cash flow for your selected period.

Spending-Trends-Insights-Detail.jpg1900×1150 49.8 KB

New Help Slides 

This Spending Trends sheet also includes interactive “help slides” to help you get started with the Foundation Template. 

Simpler categories out of the box

We believe only you should decide how your transaction categories are named and organized. However, we also know picking categories can be a roadblock to gaining clarity about your finances. 

“What categories should I use? How should I categorize credit card payments?” These are common questions our team hears daily. So when you launch a new Foundation Template, you’ll now start with a simpler set of default categories that immediately provide insights. 

These categories focus on a group structure that supports 50/30/20 budgeting and includes groups for Needs, Wants, Freedom, and Giving. 

A Transfers group with a Credit Card Payments category helps keep credit card payments organized.

These categories support upcoming workflows for tracking savings and debt payoff goals. 

And as always, you can easily customize these categories and add new ones as desired. 

Fewer Sheets for a Focused Start

Budgeting isn’t for everyone. Many of our customers simply want to see where their money is going. 

So we’ve now hidden the Monthly and Yearly Budget sheets and collapsed the budget columns in the Categories Sheet to focus on Transactions and Spending Trends. 

While they’re not visible by default, the Monthly and Yearly budgets remain easily accessible in every Foundation Template. 

A more flexible Accounts sheet

We’ve also updated the Accounts sheet so it’s less likely edits and customizations will break other solutions dependent upon it. The previous version of the Accounts sheet for Google Sheets would break if a row was rearranged or deleted. New formulas now protect this sheet from most edits. 

How to get the new Spending Trends sheet

If you’re already using the Foundation Template, it’s easy to install the Spending Trends sheet. You don’t need to start over with a new spreadsheet. 

Simply follow the instructions in this Help Doc. 

Share your feedback

We’d love to know what you think about this new template experience and the new Spending Trends sheet. Share your thoughts and feedback here in the Tiller Community. 

If you find a bug or have an issue, please reach out to our support team using the Messenger tool in the lower right corner of the Tiller Console at https://my.tillerhq.com. If you have a feature request for the Foundation Template log in to the Tiller Community and add it here.

4 Likes
2

I love the new spending trends sheet. This is so valuable to see average daily expenses.
And I’m really excited to hear about the adjustments to the Accounts sheet to allow for customizations! :heart:

4 Likes
3

I am very excited to try this. I have 3 years of data in my sheet, custom categories, subcategories, multiple pivot tables, and custom worksheets. Is there a guide to porting over?

2 Likes
4

The new changes look good and sound good. I added the new Spending Trends to my Google Sheets Tiller Budget sheet. How do we incorporate the new Accounts page you described in the overview of the new changes? I’ve broken mine a few times and had to unravel the issues.

1 Like
5

@buzzmaster1 you can get the new Spending Trends sheet using the steps here: Using the Spending Trends Sheet | Tiller Help Center

We’ll have it available in the Templates section of the Tiller Money Feeds add-on soon!

Glad you’re loving it so far @Kathryn

@clemmonsnc you can “update” your Accounts sheet using the Tiller Money Feeds add-on > Templates feature, just be sure to choose the “Archive existing” option so you don’t lose your customizations. Then you’ll need to copy/paste those from the Archive to the updated Accounts sheet.

1 Like
6

So I do not need to actually port over to a new workbook? Just import the new worksheets? I was assuming there were more changes behind the scenes. Do I need any other new sheets?

1 Like
7

This sounds amazing! I’m really hopeful that US Bank has a good connection again. Tiller is the best when it works and heartbreaking when it doesn’t.

8

This looks like a great update. Can’t wait to check it out this weekend.

I was wondering if this template brings support for catetgory grouping? Sometimes you may want to group categories together and/or have a category name used multiple times under different groups. Right now I create category names like Group name > Category name and it works, but it’s rather clunky.

1 Like
9

Hi Heather - Thanks for including me in all the updates. Alas - still appears that all your efforts are still going into Google Sheets tho.

Any plans to provide this in Desktop Excel for those of us who cannot access affordable or reliable internet?

abi

11

This is so cool, Heather! You may recall helping me think through how to do some of this on my own in another thread. I love that it is already a build-in template now, and I don’t have to tinker with my bootleg version as much.

I need a minute to nerd out about the signs being all positive. :nerd_face: SO beautiful I want to cry :face_holding_back_tears:

Thanks!

12

First thing, loving SpendingTrends, goodbye Insights.

Secondly, will there be a post explaining the differences in the new Accounts page?

13

Hi @buzzmaster1 - nope, you don’t need to port everything over into a new spreadsheet. If you’re using Excel your Accounts sheet is already good to go. Nothing else really changed in the template. The main thing is the new Spending Trends sheet replaces the Insights sheet in the default experience for new people and it should work seamlessly with your existing Foundation Template sheet.

@kim.dushinski we’re hoping US Bank will be working again soon too!

@imthenachoman this does not introduce support for what you’re describing.

@abiwoodbridge this update is also for Excel. There are steps in the guide linked above about how to move the Spending Trends sheet into your Excel workbook.

Welcome @NihilistNick :wave: glad you found those instructions easy and are enjoying the new dashboard :slight_smile:

@racroc8 thanks for this feedback, glad you’re stoked about it! And I wish I could say I remember that other thread you mentioned but I’m reading so much all the time it’s hard to keep track!

@diogo6 glad you’re loving Spending Trends! The Accounts sheet change is pretty simple but powerful. Rather than having each row in the hidden area to the right have a formula in it, that if re-arranged would break the whole sheet, we’ve moved the formulas that populate that hidden area to the header row so re-arranging or deleting rows won’t break the Accounts sheet and anything “downstream” of it. One thing to note is that if rows are moved above row 2, this will still alter the data validation rule on column A just due to some odd Google Sheets behavior we can’t control.

14

Any advice on how to fix this error?

Screen Shot 2023-08-02 at 9.08.28 AM
Screen Shot 2023-08-02 at 9.08.28 AM918×346 27.6 KB

15

Wow, this is super complicated. I’m totally lost

16

If I want to take advantage of the new updated accounts sheet coding how would I implement that into my current spreadsheet?

17

Hi,
Can I add the Spending Trends Sheets to my existing Monthly Budget spreadsheet?
Thank you.
Kind regards,
Thomas

18

I am continually getting a server error a few seconds after hitting the Insert button. Suggestions?

19

@jointthings try reformatting your Amount column in the Transactions sheet as currency to see if that fixes it. It’s seeing text somewhere in the Amount column there instead of a number.

@norm.thiele - there isn’t anything you necessarily need to do if you don’t want to use the Spending Trends sheet you can continue using your existing sheet. Let us know how we can clear up your confusion.

@jcntn52 you can get the new Accounts sheet by “updating” it using the Tiller Money Feeds add-on for Google Sheets > Templates option. Just be sure to archive existing Account sheet in that process when prompted. Then copy paste customizations from archive into the new version. If you’re using Excel, nothing new there, it wasn’t as brittle.

Yes, @thomas.machold - you just need to follow the steps here

@debfellows1989 - which template are you trying to insert?

20

Our active Tiller Foundation Template. I’m hesitant to put the url here but can email it.

21

Hi @debfellows1989 please just write in to support using the chat in the lower right corner of the Console at https://my.tillerhq.com - I’m not quite sure what you’re meaning here but definitely don’t want you to share your sheet link here.