I know how you feel - I’m IT too and felt like I would be up and running in minutes, but that wasn’t the case.
Half of the challenge is decided what you want to get from the analysis. For me, I wanted to see that I had categories that would accrue dollars for interval bills like car insurance or Christmas fund. I was able to get that by adding the Savings budget sheet. Although it still took me a while to get it going.
Watching YouTube video’s helped but still have to look past older version things.
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I experienced a lot of the same frustration when I made the move from Mvelopes to Tiller. Like those that recently joined from Mint, Mvelopes folded up their tent and I was not able to find anything close to their app-based functionality. I had used a self-created spreadsheet for years, but really didn’t want to go back to that. Then I found Tiller. The community is great, and yes there are a lot of smart folks on here. But as you see because it is community driven there is a lot of different perspectives on pretty much any question you ask.
I will say I struggled with some of the concepts of how Tiller connects it’s components together, and that is coming from a 35 year IT professional with significant experience in spreadsheet and spreadsheet automation. At first I just wanted a budget, money in and money out. Which this tool does very well. But long-term budget management and spending planning using the Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar philosophy was what I was doing and this took more time to get to in Tiller, but I have gotten it there.
It is very easy to get lost down the rabbit hole of all the “components” the Tiller community has created over the years. Some new and useful, some as you have discovered old and out of date or designed for a single person’s use case. To be honest my Tiller spreadsheet has over a dozen tabs of components I have downloaded and played with, but I really only use four of them with great frequency. I use the Savings Budget add-on that @Rebecca.S mentioned, the Transaction tab where all of your automated transactions come into, the Categories tab which is how you classify transactions and define budgeted spending, and the Autocat feature which is an excellent feature.
The hard part with this tool is it can be as simplistic as you need or so complex that it loses you. My biggest suggestion from my experience is start simple. Set up the accounts and use the tool to bring in the financial information from your institutions. This will take some time and a little bit (or a lot depending on your bank) of futzing with. I use USBank and there was several months where the bank, not Tiller, broke the connection. It took the bank several months to fix it and in the mean time all transactions had to be manually imported. So as with any community based platform sometimes you have to have patience.
Once you have the account import working then start working on categories and how you want to manage the cash in and cash out. Again there are as many ways to do this as there are people in this community. You just have to play with different ways until you find the one that works for you. The Savings Budget allows for month-to-month roll over and for you to manage budget items that might be once a year that you want to put aside money for each month. It is a very powerful budgeting tool, but it might not be the right answer for you. Be thoughtful about how you setup categories and groups. These become the foundation of how you manage money. While it is easy to add more or change them, you will find doing so has historical impact on your money reporting so try to start with what you want, map it out.
There are a ton of moving parts to this tool. It is incredibly powerful and flexible. It can be a complex or simplistic as you need. But unlike a predefined app or webtool this has no set way of doing things, and because of that it can be a little daunting at times.
Best of luck!
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Asa long time Tiller user I completely concur with @andy . Keep it simple. Tiller is trying to meet the needs of so many folks so looking at all the capabilities is a bit overwhelming but is so worth the confusion once it is up and running.
I would also say this community is a big reason why Tiller is successful. Let’s try to keep this community positive, helpful, and constructive.
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Blockquote I would also say this community is a big reason why Tiller is successful. Let’s try to keep this community positive, helpful, and constructive.
100% agree, a great community.
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Thanks for the helpful insights @andy. I’ve gotten a couple of replies from users that had similar struggles getting started at different periods of the lifecycle, whether it was Google or Excel. After reading these stories and the various approaches to dealing with a shortfall of Tiller, a lack of understanding of spreadsheets (Google or Excel), the various user’s experiences ranging from IT professionals, bookkeeping pros, power users, and novices. It seems most have found a way to deal with whatever obstacle was unique to them.
Granted, some had to get help with workarounds or seek out ways to modify something to get it to come close to what they wanted. It sounds like the flaws, bugs, limitations, or shortcomings of Tiller have been accepted and either found a fix, or alternative workflow or just waited until Tiller or the community developed what they were looking for.
I’m glad (not glad as in happy) that so many others have gone through similar issues and frustration but eventually found a solution or at least a workaround.
Because I thought I was crazy or just overlooking something simple that everyone else just understood. I thought I was alone seeing this confusing path to getting up and running with Tiller. But, a lot of you have been there and I appreciate you sharing your stories. It helps with the frustration of what I expected before joining. As I’ve said, I did my research and thought I was being thorough, just not enough. I heard about how it would do all these things and I just assumed it worked (functionally) as any app. Yes, they all experience errors and such, but not to this degree. I didn’t think Tiller depended so much on its users to fill the voids. I didn’t expect getting help from Tiller support to be so limited in hours and only through a long slow back-and-forth of emails that take hours to days.
But I am hopeful to hear so many did find a way or solution, even if it took a while or a workaround.
I’ll keep reading, and hopefully learn new things about spreadsheets and also different ways people improve their financial health or get better insight into their financial picture.
Again, thanks for sharing. I look forward to hearing more from others.
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I totally hear you on this. It’s something we’re constantly striving to improve and make easier for folks.
We do try to put this guide front in center for people every step of the way when they’re getting started, but I think it’s mostly shared via email. This is the best path for getting started with Tiller and keeping it simple and using what’s supported out of the box.
We recommend that folks use this guide to get their foundation set up, THEN start exploring the community.
We also recommend you reach out to us via email or chat if you need help getting set up, but I’m glad the community here has been insightful on their journey. There are some great perspectives here and they’ll help us continue improving.
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The best way to attack this is to ask individual questions about specific issues you are running into. Once you start to find solutions that work for you you will be able to apply them to other issues.
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@dminches a good idea. Thanks.
I completely agree. Lots of folks have figured out lots of solutions. This is the why this community is so great. We just need to know a specific issue to try to solve.
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I guess I need to figure out what I’m trying to achieve, see if there’s a solution. Then hope I’m able to articulate that effectively.
Thanks @richl
You bet @markv68. There is a lot of tribal knowledge out here but so many people want to help. So please ask away.
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