Hello, long time Quicken user here trying to get up-to-speed with Tiller and so far I really like it. Based on my limited knowledge of Tiller it seems to be more a current snapshot of your accounts. In Quicken there was a function to create bill and income reminders and those items could automatically be entered into the transactions so I not only see the current state, but what is upcoming, and eventually these would be reconciled with the transactions when they occurred.
Is the a similar workflow/functionality available in Tiller?
Please try this - https://help.tillerhq.com/en/articles/1876993-can-tiller-send-me-bill-due-date-reminders
and let me know if it works for you as I never had much luck with it even after consulting with the help desk but I have not revisited it in awhile and not since recently migrating to the Foundations sheet. I recall it being only a pure reminder tool.
Hi @wmedernach and @Blake,
The solution that Blake refers to would send an email reminder to you for upcoming recurring bills. But it would not add those bills to the Transactions sheet.
At the moment, Tiller doesn’t have that functionality. [ UPDATE: Tiller’s Business add-on has this feature. See Heather’s comment below. ]
The transaction sheet only contains automatic actual transactions, plus user, manually entered transactions.
You could manually add future transactions. When the actual transactions were recorded in Tiller, you would need to delete the manually added transactions so it wasn’t counted twice.
I think it would be possible to build such a feature if many customers want it.
We actually do have this functionality in the “Business” features of the Tiller add-on (cc @jono). If you run “Start” from the Tiller add-on’s Business menu it will install a few sheets (a dashboard, and a statements sheet) and will make the manually add transaction menu option available via add-ons > Tiller > Business. From here you can manually add future transactions and flag them for reconciliation (similar to your Quicken workflow).
No extra cost to use these features, and definitely great for non-business workflows.
I’m also transitioning from Quicken and decided to try out Tiller. The scheduled/recurring transaction feature was something I used heavily in Quicken. I scheduled all my income and bills to automatically be entered 45 days in advance which would give me a great idea of my cash flow for that period. The feature mentioned above only works for manually adding one transaction at a time with no way to make it recurring. It would be too time consuming to manually add all my data that way. I did find an add-on named Projected Balances that fit my needs. It requires a bit of hacking to get it to show the same information as Quicken. Here’s what I did once I added the sheet:
Changed the start date to the today() formula
Period Interval set to Days, Future periods to 45
Starting Balance cell I linked to the Balances sheet, in my case I linked my Primary Checking balance
The monthly recurring transactions are straightforward but you can’t use that section for anything that is not monthly, like my biweekly paycheck. For that I used the yearly section and entered in my next 4 paychecks (and various scheduled transfers) so that I’m covered for a little over the 45 days. I set it up using formulas so that going forward all I have to do is change the date in the first entry and the next 4 dates will fill in automatically. If I have any one-off scheduled transactions I can enter it into this section as well but I will need to clear it out once it gets downloaded to the Transactions sheet.
I’m OK with it working like this but I’m hoping Tiller implements a much better solution.
I really like the way you structured that so much so that I’ve done basically the same thing. But you’re right. It would be nice if there was a way to factor in other transactions that occur at regular intervals but not necessarily monthly. @heather, maybe this is something the team could work on for a future release? In my head I envision another section with 4 columns instead of 3. The first and last columns would be “Description” and “Amount,” respectively while column 2 would be “Every” (i.e., some integer) and 3 would be the “Interval” (i.e., days, weeks, months).
One concern I have with the starting balance being linked to the current balance is that once the transaction hits, wouldn’t the balance drop by that amount and thus the projection would factor in 2 instances of the same transaction, at least temporarily? Maybe I’m not thinking it through all the way but that seems like what would happen.
Yes, that’s exactly what happens. Not much you can do since there’s no single transaction entry to match and clear like in Quicken. You’ll have to manually move around dates as transactions come in depending on the timing. It shouldn’t be too bad if you keep your dates accurate. My car payment comes out on the 18th, the transaction shows up in Tiller on the 19th so by then the start date in the sheet is the 19th as well so the duplication doesn’t happen. But when the 18th falls on a weekend the transaction will be early and there will be duplication.
I might tinker around with the formulas and see if I can get it to ignore the amount entered if there is a matching amount within 3 days or so of the specified date. No promises though.
@randy@jono, feel free to weigh in if you have a solution that might work. Your excel formula knowledge far exceeds my own.
Hi @mgodwin,
That’s an interesting idea you bring up. I think it might be a little risky as it could react to false matches and you might not know it.
You don’t want to overwrite the Projected Amounts. So i think you would need to add an Adjusted Projected Amounts column. You could add some logic where if there was an amount in the Transactions sheet in a range of 3 days before to 3 days after the expected date, then make the Adjustd Projected Amount zero. Otherwise, use the original date. Likely an IF() statement and maybe a VLOOKUP with a date range. Does that make sense?
Sounds like you’re talking about using an array formula. I’ve used them before in Excel, not sure if Sheets is capable of the same but worth checking out.
I created Manual Transactions and then copied them to another Google sheet I titled Recurring Transactions. I change the transaction date to the following month and use the Migration tool to upload them as Manual Transactions. So far, the tricky part has been updating the “Month” & “Week” dates, working on a formula in Recurring file. I haven’t tried with split transactions yet, but is my next project.
We have a couple resources on month/week on our help center:
I have heard other customers doing it like this too @wadivergal but just a manual copy/paste. I like that you’re using the migration tool to help with this
Regarding Bill Reminders/Due Dates, and maybe security would be an issue here, but is it possible to link a Google Sheet called “Bills” that lists Bills, Amounts and Due Dates to Google Calendar so the info shows up as Payee and even amount on the calendar? I am a long time Quicken (and also MS Excel) user and also appreciate the ability to track current/future bills due. I use my Bank’s Bill Pay feature to send money and write e-checks. Still learning Google Sheets…
Long, long time Quicken user and they finally pushed me over the edge. The one feature that I use extensively in Quicken is the one Betty described in this post.
I’m giving Tiller a try and this “Projected Balances” feature is key.
Last post here is a year ago.
Just wanted to see if there were any tips and tricks since this last post as I start to test.
