Hi y’all, my wife and I got tired of needing to gather around the PC to categorize transactions together, so I made a web/mobile app that allows you to categorize and add notes on the go.
It’s mostly a work-in-progress, but she and I have been using it with no problems for the last few months. I’m working on adding new features and cleaning up bugs, but I’d love to get feedback from the rest of the community. Below, you can find the current features, planned features, and a link to request more. Let me know what you think. <3
How cool is this??? Honestly, I don’t have a need for a mobile version but… I love this in my browser for a quick isolation of everything that needs categories.
Sounds interesting! I get nervous authorizing my Google account on a website I don’t know much about. Can you speak to what the implications are of authorizing your site to access my worksheets?
That’s an awesome question, and something I spent a long time considering before sharing this with other folks.
It’s set up so that it only requests only the absolutely required permissions from Google. If you go through the auth process, you’ll see the specific permissions needed from Google. Here’s a screenshot of mine after the fact.
So, basically it will only be able to read/write the specific Google sheet you give it access to. That’s the minimum needed for the app to work, but I realize that’s still a lot of data that the app will have access to.
It also only communicates with Google directly from the browser. There’s no backend on my end in between you and Google.
Wow, @tater. This is really cool. On-the-go categorization makes so much sense: get those categories input when the data is top of mind… when you have a spare second…
I took it for a spin a few days ago and it worked really well. The setup was easy. The scopes were relatively narrow. The user interface was responsive and intuitive. It addresses a core need for many users. You’ve done a nice job!
I understand why you’ve released it the way you have— and making it freely available is very generous…
But, given that the source code is not public, I would definitely encourage users to read your documentation+blog post and ask questions before authorizing spreadsheets with critical personal data.
The Tiller Builder Rewards Program doesn’t include script-based or non-spreadsheet solutions. That said, our Tiller team is really inspired by what you’ve shared and, given your enthusiasm for Tiller, would like to award you with a spot award of a two-year subscription extension and also a Tiller waterbottle.
Thanks so much for the kind words. And I really appreciate y’all’s generosity! It’s really nice of you to give out the subscription, and I’m pumped about the water bottle (I love swag!!).
You’re spot on about the importance of understanding how the app handles your data. It’s a lot of trust you need have that it isn’t harvesting your sensitive financial data. The blog post goes into a bit more detail, but I did limit the scopes as much as I could, and the web app only communicates from the browser directly to Google.
Actually, for those more technically inclined, I’d suggest providing a fake default empty Tiller sheet (or your real one, if you want) and watching the network logs in the browser. You should see that requests with data are only ever passed back and forth between you and Google sheets and Google analytics (just so I can track page views/interactions and use that data to make the app better).
In fact, I went to great lengths to make sure I never got any data. I just don’t want to be responsible for it. Lol
I had to do some extra work to make sure Google Analytics wouldn’t track transaction titles (showing up in page titles).
All that said, I’m really glad that other people can benefit from this! It’s certainly made my life a bit easier. And I look forward to adding more features in near future.
Like I said, the scopes made perfect sense for what you are doing and it takes some discipline to only request what you need.
Everything you’re doing seems above board and well implemented… it’s just that these things can be a bit of a black box. (Your suggestion to monitor web traffic is an interesting one. )
Thanks for the impressive project and thanks for sharing.
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