How does everyone manage the Categories tab?
For me, I realize that I need to create new categories from time to time, and I want to put them together in the same group, but inserting rows means that I always need to fix the validation which gets annoying when you’re still setting up your system.
I’m not sure I understand your question, @dylanth. The Categories sheet is designed to be customized/personalized with new rows. You should be able to add either new rows or just new categories to empty rows and those new categories should be available in the category data validation in your Transaction sheet.
Is this not working for you?
Randy
Hi Randy.
I guess I find myself needing to insert a new category row frequently. For example, I’m looking to budget 2020, and I realize I want to insert a parking category in my Auto group. If I put it down in a blank row on the category sheet as recommended instead of inserting a row in the auto group itself where I want it, my category sheet starts looking very disorganized. So, I insert a row within my other Auto categories so its organized where I want it, but I generally have to fix the validation on the transaction sheet
(https://help.tillerhq.com/en/articles/1550360-why-isn-t-my-new-category-showing-in-the-transactions-sheet-dropdown-list)
Just curious…how many categories do you have? I suspect you might have lots of categories.
I have dealt with this too. Try this. Go to Data Validation. Next to Criteria you will see “List from a range” and to the right of that you might likely see a range. In the help article you referred to, the range there was B2:B58. Make the 58 a bigger number to give yourself room to add more Categories in the future without having to go through the process you currently do. Making it 68 will give you room to add 10 more categories.
My range shows A2:A339. I have 334 Categories so my number is big. So, I have enough room to add a few more categories before I will need to increase my 339 number.
This should allow you to add your new category where ever you want to which is what you currently like to do.
Do you know you can sort your categories tab. Select the whole tab as your range then go to Data/Sort range. You may find this helps with your organization of the Categories tab.
Thanks,
Blake
@blake has a great point here, @dylanth. You can insert your categories in existing rows (without needing to do anything to replicate validation) and then use the Sort tool to realign the categories into your existing groups.
Good luck,
Randy
Thank you both. I’ve decided to add a Sort Order column to my Categories tab to give me some more precise control over the order when using the Sort function.
I currently have over 231 Categories in the categories sheet, partly because of five rental properties expenses tracked using Rental Manager. I noticed that the Yearly budget does not populate the Group category and subcategories name with S-Z i.e., S, T, U, V W, X, Y, & Z. This means category Group like UTILITIES does not show up in the Year budget. I reached out to support and was told the maximum Group and categories supported by Tiller is 200! But Other report sheets like savings budget reports etc show all the Group and subcategories including S-Z while the Monthly Analysis report is affected because it uses the Yearly Budget to generate the report. Is there a way to extend the yearly budget sheet formulae etc to cover more than 200 categories?
Also, is there a way to limit the rental Group and categories to the Rental manager i.e. without it appearing in the Yearly budget, Savings Budge, etc? . Any help will be appreciated.
@adekunledauda thanks for posting here. One thought that crossed my mind… how many rows do you have on the Yearly Budget sheet? The default template only has 184 rows and with groups and spacing that’s probably not actually enough to support 200 categories.
So if you add more rows and drag the formulas down from the budget and actual columns where it appears in cells above those new rows using the quick fill square that might solve the issue with the 200 categories.
I think you should post the content below as a separate topic specific to the Rental Property Manager sheet as this topic is specific to managing categories more broadly.
Thanks, Heather. That is exactly what I did. But the category does not show up despite the formulae cover up to row 1184