Hi folks, I’m curious about the frequency at which you all reconcile your transactions and the method you take. To start I do the following:
Every Monday/Wednesday/Friday I will open the sheets.tillerhq.com site and manually refresh all my accounts. I do this because one or two accounts frequently hasn’t been updated in 4+ days, and when I refresh through the Tiller worksheets themselves I do not trust that I’m getting all the most recent details.
I then go through and do the transaction categorization.
I don’t do this daily because of the time investment and the knowledge that Tiller - as has been recently discussed in other threads - doesn’t truly ingest daily.
I’m just curious if I’m making more work for myself by fist going into the sheets interface and updating one by one. I wish I didn’t have to do it, but as I mentioned I feel like the update process via tiller worksheets itself is not comprehensive enough.
I also go to the console every time before I update the sheet, and force-refresh the accounts that need it. I do not force refresh accounts that show recent-enough data pull, but I at least look to check before filling the sheet. I had previously experienced too many times unexpectedly missing transactions. Using this process I never experience that any more.
I actually start at the console and refresh all my accounts every morning Mon-Sat then go to the Sheet and fill. I categorize all transactions that need it. And generally just overview stuff.
On Saturday, I go to Amazon Order history and download CSV’s of purchases and returns and reconcile all of that.
BUT, I am a very cliche of your retired person who has plenty of time and is hyperfocused on finances
I don’t go to the console very often, but if I’m not seeing a transaction that I’m expecting, I’ll go there and manually sync. I do pay attention to the warnings in the Fillter Money Feeds about connected accounts that need attention. I wonder if @randy or @heather can comment on the difference between refreshing from the console vs refreshing from the ‘Connected Accounts’ tab of the Tiller Money Feeds extension? I sense that they are the same, except that the console allows you to refresh any time you want, where the extension only allows a refresh if it thinks the account needs ‘attention’. If that’s the case, could the extension gain the ability to have a forced update, so frequent visits to the console (which it appears a number of people are making) are not necessary?
This is a great topic and love that folks are sharing their routines here!
As @jpfieber mentioned, the Connected Accounts section in the Tiller Money Feeds add-on sidebar for Google Sheets will allow you to refresh institutions that haven’t refreshed in the last 36 hours or are in an error state.
You can visit the Tiller Console (https://sheets.tillerhq.com/auth/login) at any point to force an account to refresh using the refresh button or the Connection > Edit credentials flow.
We recommend letting accounts that can automatically refresh on their own do so rather than forcing a refresh. However, because it’s an “about-once-every-36-hours” schedule, there is the chance that when you open your spreadsheet and “fill” the data a transaction that occurred after the last refresh won’t appear until your next fill if you don’t go manually refresh it.
I think @jpfieber’s approach makes sense. If you launch the add-on and the “Connected Accounts” area let’s you know there are institutions that need your attention, go and refresh them before you click “Fill”
The “Fill” is just filling in new data that we have in our database. If the account didn’t successfully or recently refresh, there may be nothing to fill or you only get some of the newer data you expect.
@jpfieber as for your question about Connected Accounts and not limiting it to the 36 hour timeline, we’re unlikely to do that because we’re hoping that folks will just let the automated accounts do their thing. Including the refresh button in the add-on will just enable the “forced refresh whenever I want” behavior.
Currently the Connected Accounts refreshing feature is not available for Microsoft Excel so you must visit the Tiller Console to refresh accounts that need attention if you’re using Excel.
You can quickly spot which haven’t refreshed in the last 36 hours on the Console because the refresh buttons will be blue.
With Tiller, I’ve trained myself to check the daily email as my first step of the day. If there are no new transactions, then I simply don’t get into Tiller that day unless I have some other task I need to do beyond Filling and Categorizing the latest transactions (most common examples: update Category budgets or update the Bill Tracker if our bills have changed).
Realizing there is a lag in transactions showing up to be Filled, that really only matters to me at EOM when I go to reconcile Statements and to reconcile our Savings Budget. I handle that by setting myself a task in Todoist on the 3rd of every month to handle those two tasks. Doing it on third day of month factors the lag and allows all previous month transactions to hit.
My Tiller process is significantly less time consuming than when I used Quicken…and that’s a good thing. I owe that to the daily email Tiller sends. I frankly kind of scoffed at that in the beginning because I thought it was unnecessary and then I quickly realized it was my trigger point for needing to even access Tiller that day. Thus, it saves me time because I immediately know I have no reason to get into it.
(Actually forgot about the console until this thread. I’ve only gone into that once when there was a glitch in mid May and I didn’t have some transactions show up.)
I also find the daily tiller email to be a great trigger (to open the spreadsheet, update I dont see new data there, then review n classify).
I’m generally ok to wait for accts to “fix themselves” for a couple days before I try to fix it in the console, I used to spend time doing that but often I just had to wait for yodlee, etc to fix in the backend anyway.
With the daily email as a trigger I now actually review things n classify promtly, which is something I never managed in years of using quicken n personal capital.
Very happy about that.
I actually also use personal capital, because it’s free and is another double-check for reconciliation. So every day or two, I open both PC and my tiller sheet and “check off” any transactions that are in both and haven’t already been “checked off” (I use a tag in PC and the category in my tiller sheet to show that that transaction is reconciled, and I have my google sheet set to highlight blank cells in the category column, so they jump out at me, rather than just being blank). If there’s a transaction in one that isn’t in the other and it’s from more than a couple days back, or if PC is showing an account connection error, I dig in and force refreshes or look for “known issues” (my Dovenmuhle mortgage is currently not updating in either place, but it’s on the list of known issues in tiller, so I assume it’ll work itself out at some point). I have noticed recently that my USAA accounts will sometimes SAY they were updated just a few hours ago in tiller, but when I force a refresh at sheets.tillerhq, and then fill transactions on the sheet, transactions from several days ago in those accounts will suddenly show up. Not sure what’s up with that, but since those transactions show up in PC, at least I know there’s something missing and know to go in and do the refresh even though it says it’s been done recently.
I update my transactions at night when watching TV, only takes a few minutes, My bank uses 2FA, therefore I need to force refreshing as transactions do not flow forward. I have also simplified how I handle my purchasing; I pay most of my expenses by two cash back credit cards instead of writing checks or using a debit card. I pay off the balance twice a month to maintain a low credit balance and help credit score. This allows for easy reconciliation of transactions when pulled into Tiller Excel. I used to use Quicken and enter every check, then Mint, then MS Money for Excel. The best thing I ever did was reduce use of manual checks and only when there is a service charge for using a credit card.
If I may suggest an option reconciling/categorizing Amazon by downloading a CSV? I used to do the same and then noticed I can quickly identify each transaction thru my Chase Amazon card history by pulling up the transaction history, locate same date/spend amount, drill into the transaction detail, click on it and you will be taken into your Amazon Order history. This enables me to accurately categorize my purchases in a very fast fashion.
Well, I’ll be damned! I never saw that before, never drilled down far enough to get to the actual link. That’s pretty darned slick. Often the Amazon history thing is broken anyway so your way is way more solid.
Most days I manually import transactions. In the morning I go to the console and Refresh my accounts. My primary credit card rarely automatically refreshes. I then read my email while this process happens. Once the accounts have Refreshed, I then import. I am fine tuning my AutoCat, so very little work is require on categorization. I reconcile the accounts when I get my monthly statements I get them in two batches a group around the 14th and another at the end of the month.
Just to clarify, you are asking about reconciling transactions? If so, I reconcile monthly when a statement arrives on that day. The new sheet made by one of our fellow users does a bang-up job of matching transactions and making certain that beginning and ending balances match what Tiller has accounted for. As for categorizing transactions, I do that daily. It is important to know my cash flow and if there are any discrepancies that may show up from either me or my spouse. Many times we have been hit with a monthly recurring charge that was not authorized. Catching those early is a priority. And yes, I also go into the Tiller module and refresh each account manually, it ensures accuracy. Good post.
