Tracking Venmo with Tiller

Discussion
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I love my Venmo account for paying for local services and splitting bills with friends and luckily I have also found that it integrates really well with my Tiller tracking.

I added my Venmo account just like any other bank account, though I have found that it does require me to occasionally re-auth my credentials in my Tiller Console to update my sheet. I like to use the “Balances” tab in my Tiller Sheet to see when my accounts were last updated, then visit my Tiller Console to refresh the account when needed.

I simply categorize my Venmo transactions based on the spending category they relate to, whether they are payments made or received.

For example if my friend Venmos (that’s a word now, right?) me $20 to cover her share of the babysitter we split I categorize the transactions as “childcare” and it reduces my overall childcare expenses for that period, in a sense reducing the $60 cash I took out of my checking account and also categorized as “childcare”.

A payment made to a friend for my new bike would be categorized as “Gear”, similar to any other purchase.

If someone pays you for a service you perform as a job, you can categorize the credit as “income”.

Any debits or credits that hit your other bank accounts (checking or credit card) from Venmo are then categorized as “Transfers” much as you would a payment to your credit card.

The only place where I have gotten a little stuck is when someone pays me for somethings that isn’t a reimbursement, for example if I were to sell a pair of old skis. I didn’t just buy the skis so they aren’t a current “Gear” expense, and it’s also not income because I didn’t really earn the money and I don’t want it to effect my budget … any suggestions here?

I did explore the CSV export options from Venmo, but the data is fairly limited in comparison with what you can get from Paypal, so it didn’t help enough in my tracking to make the effort worthwhile. It could be useful however if you used Venmo for business and wanted to track the fees separately.

I would love to hear how others track their Venmo spending and deal with receiving payment for used goods as well!

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Hi @Janelle,
Your workflow with Venmo makes a lot of sense.

Regarding the sale of old skis, I would probably put it into a “Sold Items” (or something like that) Income Category.

You really did make money selling the skis. The balance in your checking account went up, just as it would for other income.

I can see why you don’t want to include it in budgets though. If you set the “Sold Items” income category set to Hide from Reports, that might be one solution. Or you could just not set any budget amount for this category.

One other thought. If you have a lot of transactions where you are getting reimbursed or need to reimburse someone else, you can create a Reimbursements Account and a Reimbursements Due (transfer category.)

When you paid the babysitter $40 and that transactions was categorized as Childcare, you could also add a manual transaction adding $20 to your Reimbursements Due category in the Reimbursements Account.

This would let you know you are owed $20. When the Venmo reimbursement came in, you would add another manual transaction reducing your Reimbursements Due category by $20.

If you only have a few reimbursements, it’s probably not worth the effort. But if you have lots of them, it can help you stay organized.

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Simple and common sense. Love the way you’re mixing spreadsheets with an app-driven platform like Venmo. Do you ever use Tiller to help split bills or manage other shared expenses?

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@jono has an very excellent idea regarding a reimbursement account. It is really like a Due To/ Due From account. Some call it an Intercompany account when you are dealing with parent and subsidiary companies.

I call them transfer accounts (categories) and I have about 20 of them to track different kinds of transfers that I might want to track.

My most used one is called Transfer Zero Out. For example, I buy a $10 lunch for my friend and they pay me back cash the next day. Lets say I deposit the $10 of cash into my checking account. What is the entry?

The $10 lunch on my credit card (outgoing cash) is a debit to the Transfer Zero Out account while the cash going into my checking account (incoming cash) is a credit to the Transfer Zero Out account. These two offset to zero. You could treat the $10 lunch as meal expense and the $10 repayment as reimbursement/other income but that would probably be weird as most people would not want to see these two $10 items on two different rows on their your P&L report.

Another use of these transfer accounts is when you are moving money back and forth between accounts. For example, lets say you move $100 from your savings account to your checking account. Use the transfer account and the two $100 entries net to zero.

I use these transfer categories to track transactions inside my retirement accounts, all of which I have linked up to Tiller. Lets say my mutual fund investment pays a dividend. Code this to a transfer account. It will not zero out but it is not really income (at least not taxable income) because it is inside of a retirement account.

Basically I am using these accounts to track inflows and outflows that I do not want included in my P&L.

Thanks,

Blake

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Great post @Janelle!

I agree with @jono, your skis sale is a side hustle :wink: count that as an income category, and why not let it increase your monthly spending budget a little or just show it as savings?

I also recently connected my Venmo account to my Tiller spreadsheet. My roommates and I use it to split utility costs, and I use a similar method of just categorizing the inflow from them as “utilities” to net out what was actually my share of utilities. When I pay them for water or Internet it’s usually via Venmo balance so the transaction trail is pretty clean and easy to understand.

One slightly cumbersome area, that’s less clean, is on payments from my bank account passing through Venmo.

Let’s say I pay someone -$100 to help clean my house once a month. I see two outflow transactions. One associated with the Venmo account, and another with my checking account. In reality it’s just leaving my checking account and passing through Venmo. I wish there was an automated way to enter the transfer (+$100 come from checking to Venmo) to balance the transfer. I realize I can manually add it, but sort of a pain.

Anyway, great resource thread for helping folks manage Venmo transactions :slight_smile:

Heather

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Curious, do you always enter a second “transfer” transaction for both accounts, if so what are the details? I just tag the -$100 leaving my bank as transfer and basically ignore it, but maybe there are consequences to that?

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Janelle and Heather, I just noticed the same thing. When I pay someone on venmo, when I don’t have enough funds in my venmo account, my checking account is charged, but I still see an outflow transaction from venmo. For these checking transactions, the description is always “Electronic Transaction Venmo *30 Nyus x0006.” I search for this string in Excel, and then identify the associated venmo outflow payment and just delete it. Kind of tedious, but it keeps things clean. It will probably incentive me to keep some money in Venmo, so I can avoid having to delete the duplicate outflow transaction.

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why not let it increase your monthly spending budget a little or just show it as savings?

@heather I like how you put it above regarding the skis sale.

I’m a little unclear about the payments from your bank account passing thru Venmo.
I believe you could Categorize both transactions using a Venmo Transfers. It would be a Transfer type category. The -100 to your bank account transaction would balance out the +100 in your Venmo account. After the transfer, Venmo Transfers category would be zero. Is that not how it is working? Maybe the +100 to the Venmo account doesn’t show up automatically, but i would think it should.

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I noticed this same issue for my venmo @heather.

Scenario:
I have 100 dollar balance in Venmo.
I pay someone 500 dollars for a service using Venmo.
I see a -500 dollar transaction from my Venmo account
The next day I see a -500 dollar transaction from my main banking account.

How would you handle that? I am not clear on how I should deal with two -500 transactions.

Thanks.

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@dudeguyman In this scenario… In the past, I would categorize the -$500 from my checking account to my Venmo account as a transfer, and the -$500 from Venmo to the vendor as an expense…and ignoring the transfer. Nowadays, I still do the same, but I also manually add a transaction that shows the +$500 to my Venmo account to balance the transfer so it nets to $0. It’s easy and quick enough for me to do as I’m updating my budget.

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Say you have a $0 balance in Venmo.

If you were to Venmo a friend $20, will you see the following in Tiller?

  • Bank account debit - $ (20)
  • Venmo account credit - $20
  • Venmo account debit - $ (20)

I just connected Venmo to my Tiller and I’m just trying to make sure that I don’t track things twice.

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I handle this the same way as with credit card payments. The important part is to only track the expense once, and categorize the other transactions as transfers so they don’t double up on your reports and budget. As I rule I categorize the expense as it hits the primary payment method, in this case Venmo.

So from your example:

  • Bank account debit - $ (20) - Transfer
  • Venmo account credit - $20 - Transfer
  • Venmo account debit - $ (20) - Eating out (or whatever you paid your friend for)

To help me stick with this system I set up an AutoCat rule that categorizes all transactions with “Venmo, PAYMENT” from my checking account as “Transfer” so I don’t mistakenly itemize them as well.

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Folks, I only rarely reimburse or get reimbursements from friends using Venmo linked to my checking account.

Is there a stupid simple way to manage to categorize the expense or reimbursement – WITHOUT setting up a separate Account in Tiller?

The last 2 posts in this topic get close I think, but seem to require I set up a VENMO account in Tiller (not the world’s biggest deal, but I’d like to avoid).

Thanks! think I am being a bit lazy to ask rather than analyze the earlier great responses.

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So you’re saying that you don’t want to add your Venmo account to Tiller for automating the actual venmo transactions? The tricky thing about this is that you can have a Venmo balance (if people pay you back via Venmo and you don’t always transfer it to checking).

I mean you could just manually input the other transactions, but that seems like more work…

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My Venmo link has been down for a weeks now. is it really necessary to have Venmo imported? I used to like doing it because of the comments on the transaction which would help me identify it, but do I really need Venmo to be imported when it is really just a holding pen between a purchase or sale and my bank?

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@joek, I think the only time you’d really want to see Venmo transactions is if you were spending money from your Venmo balance E.g. someone paid you back for something and you didn’t transfer the money to your checking account it just accumulated in Venmo and you then paid someone from that balance. You wouldn’t see that transaction in your checking account. Otherwise, if most of your Venmo transactions are just “pass through” then, no, you don’t really need it.

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Hello, to all my fellow pals who have a partner/friends who constantly pay each other back for things on Venmo. I’m brand new to Tiller and currently get the most out of it by keeping things STUPID SIMPLE, so I hope my solution is useful to other people in the same position.

-My partner and I don’t have any shared accounts, so we frequently Venmo each other back and forth.

-I want to make sure I’m categorizing expenses correctly that we split which I pay in full on my credit card and my partner will pay me his portion back via venmo me (and vice versa…he pays on his credit card and then I Venmo him)

This is the system I use (let’s use a dinner out as an example):

-I categorize the restaurant transaction on my card as an EXPENSE (“restaurant” is the category)
-I categorize any venmoed transactions where my partner is “paying me back” for something as INCOME (btw, I name this category, “Income: Venmos from people”).

Lastly, I DO NOT link my Venmo account to Tiller. For me, it’s easier not to (plus, I’ve read in the community that the integration goes in and out), and I just instead categorize the Venmo transfers to/from my checking acct in Tiller accordingly.

Hope this helps. (Also, I’m always open to other ideas :grinning:)

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I have been trying to get Venmo set up with Tiller and one problem is the incoming data seems to only show the memo field of a transaction. So I might get a transaction described as “Saturday”, but no data anywhere showing who it came from, whereas what I really want is something like “Miracle Maid Service” with “Saturday” in the Note column.

I’ve been evaluating a competitor to Tiller simultaneously and they get the name of the other party in the feed. Is there anything I can do on my end to get this on my Tiller sheet?

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I agree. It would be great to get other data pulled

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Try making the payment with your debit card instead of the ACH option. I haven’t tested this fully across many banks yet, but in my small sample size so far it works to bring in the name of the person you paid, though not the description.