Multiple sheets is better than having everything in one

Google Sheets Show & Tell
1

I’m a new Tiller user (started in Nov 2023). Originally, I added a bunch of tabs to the Foundational template using all the incredible community Templates. Unfortunately, after copying over 20,000+ transactions, my spreadsheet got slooow. It wasn’t even usable on my mobile app.

I realized this weekend, that the solution is to have multiple sheets for different use cases. I then use the IMPORTRANGE function to keep the sheets in sync, so I don’t need to update Transactions and Categories across multiple sheets.

Here are the sheets I’ve created so far:

  • Foundational template : Is the “primary” and has all my accounts linked, as well as the main sheet for categories and transactions.
  • Mobile : Just has net worth, balances, and transactions. Even those sheets have been pared down with hidden columns and smaller font. Now I can at a glance see my latest transactions as well as my account balances in a mobile formatted screen. Before creating this version, my mobile app couldn’t even load the foundational template
  • Analysis : I’ve moved most of the Community templates to a new Analysis sheet. This sheet is typically slow to load, doesn’t work on mobile, and has a LOT of tabs. I visit it once a month when I want to dig into a specific question.

Hope this was helpful!

2

I hadn’t considered creating a dedicated sheet for mobile. This allows you to have completely different formatting that better lends itself to the mobile experience. You can’t make changes that will affect the ‘master’ sheet, but for read-only needs, that could work quite well. Clever!

3 Likes
3

good idea!

I created a tab with a small amount of data I view on my phone and as of now it opens fine as the first tab but I have 250k transactions and some operations are slow possibly due to the analysis tabs.

2 Likes
4

I had done this to link my pre-Tiller budgeting Google sheet, but you gave me the idea/motivation to really use the IMPORTRANGE. I am organizing my chaos that is spread across two separate workbooks into individual workbooks based on their purpose (payroll, debt/asset schedules, analysis, etc), and combining them with IMPORTRANGE into a unified workbook with less “noise” in the sheet bar.

1 Like
5

Please share how it goes!

6

I think the mobile tab is so smart.

1 Like
7

It’s been working great so far! I created a Google Drive folder that houses all of my spreadsheets. In there I have:

  • Schedules (debt schedules, payroll schedules, mortgage, PTO, and savings)
  • Foundation (original Tiller foundation spreadsheet that houses anything I pull from Tiller Community).
  • Cashflow (pulls 2024 payroll schedule from schedule, transactions/balances from Foundation, subscriptions, and bills)
  • Core (glossary with hyperlinks to all the spreadsheets and descriptions of what is in each, IMPORTRANGE of the summary tabs for each spreadsheet, and house/personal projects).
1 Like