tiller member here for about 1.5 years and i’m growing increasingly frustrated with tiller.
a few high level problems:
-click launch, see x number of accounts need refreshing, go to console to refresh, refresh, come back to sheets, click fill updates, wait, nothing changes. this happens almost every day.
-balances tab will not show previously linked accounts. i have tried everything, ive removed all accounts and tried starting over. nothing.
-however, accounts do show on net worth tab, making for an inconsistent experience.
-get help button in the launch menu does nothing. closed sheet, reopened, log out/log in. same behavior.
None of my banks will sync at all. Yodlee’s support of Canadian Banks (I live in Canada) is non-existent. I’ve pretty much given up on Tiller since I can only use awkward manual imports. Their addition of more aggregators doesn’t seem to be happening. I have started using Quicken Simplifi. Their bank syncing is flawless and superb, and they download pending transactions as well. I’m sorry to lose Tiller, but nothing seems to be happening here. So I won’t be renewing my subscription. Why would I when I no longer get any value from Tiller?
I’m in the same boat (canoe ) I use Wealthsimple and EQ Bank and lament the slow progress towards open banking/consumer data rights in Canada so I burnt some cycles lubricating my awkward manual imports in the meantime:
I’m intrigued that Quicken Simplifi has succeeded in syncing Canadian banks — if you feel like sharing which banks are working I’m interested!
I’d assumed the Canadian issue was personal finance ecosystem-wide. Googling “open banking” and “consumer data rights” turns up so many hits I haven’t evaluated which are most informative/up to date.
I’ve thought about how best to advocate for better syncing but don’t know what’s the rate-limiting step … whether to nag my bank, the aggregators or my elected official … or if it doesn’t matter because it’s structurally a tar pit and I’m impotent in the process?
If anyone here is up to date on Canadian open banking/consumer data rights or knows better where to look, I’m interested in that too!
Hi,
The Canadian banks that I use that work VERY WELL with Simplifi are, Vancity (Personal) CIBC MasterCard, HomeTrust Visa, MBNA MasterCard (Amazon)
I am continually amazed how reliable the syncing is. I have done a lot of work with various apps that support bank syncing and have found the best aggregators for me are Quicken Simplifi, and MX. Utterly abysmal in syncing reliability and support is Plaid! I was so sorry to hear that Tiller is thinking seriously about using Plaid. It may work for US banks, but is absolutely is horrible at Canadian Banks!
I am loving Simplifi because it is so reliable and ALL of my credit cards (except MBNA) support Pending Transactions. I almost have real time access to my daily charges.
Simplifi is pretty straight forward with their budgeting methods. You can do all types, zero balance, Envelope, and “Mint-like” budgeting. I guess I shouldn’t be creating a promo for Simplifi. Check it out yourself and you can judge it.
As for the open banking situation in Canada, it is moving glacially slow. It was put into the 2024 Federal budget, but never made it to being passed. LOTS of research has been done on it’s implementation. Unfortunately, I think the political situation between the USA and Canada has changed all priorities, and I think Open banking in Canada has taken the back seat. I think it will happen, but probably not in my lifetime!
Not to leave Tiller out, I have created an export method to Google Sheets for Simplifi that is compatible with the Tiller Foundation Sheet. I can install most Tiller sheets to my Tiller Sheets.
So I get the great reporting capabiliy of Tiller. But for me secure, reliable syncing is the most important.
I’m confused about this statement @jemmoa7. I thought you were in our beta program and had been given access to Plaid, but maybe I’m thinking of someone else.
The part we haven’t shared is broad access to Plaid because we are currently not handling any deduplication if you connect the same institutions that you previously had connected and there are some pricing considerations to figure out.
It’s definitely not 100% with Plaid either, and we also aren’t filing tickets with them as they told us the reliability just isn’t there for Canadian banks. From the folks who have tested out Plaid with their Canadian institutions it’s mixed reviews where some work the same as Yodlee and some work better and others don’t work at all.
It’s unclear whether Simplifi is using the Intuit based aggregation (since Quicken used to be owned by Intuit and was grandfathered into access to their aggregation services) or whether they’ve been able to build out better connections to these institutions directly or if they use an entirely different aggregator.
We understand this is frustrating and painful and definitely agree that it doesn’t make sense to pay for a service that doesn’t provide value. @jemmoa7 if the manual import workflow as less awkward and more streamlined/treated as a first class feature, would that inspire you to stay?
Welcome @rhbaskin I wanted to address your post directly/separately.
This is unexpected and we’d love to to better understand what’s happening there in more detail. It sounds like it appears to successfully refresh, but no data is being pulled. You didn’t specifically state these were Canadian institutions so not sure if @jemmoa7 's post is the true solve here so just wanted to double check.
I’d love to better understand this one as well. What are you expecting to see vs what are you seeing when you say “does not show previously linked accounts” ?
Get Help from the Extensions menu (launch menu) in the Google Sheet is a required menu option from Google but doesn’t actually connect you with our team most directly. The best way to reach out to our team and get help is via the chat tool in the lower right corner of the Tiller Console at https://my.tiller.com
Let us know if you want to share more detail about your experience so we can understand and make future changes if possible.
Hi Heather,
Yes, I was given access to Plaid, but it never could connect with my banks so I gave up, especially since nobody will provide support for problems.. I do know that Canadian syncing will not get better until an open banking standard comes to light. But I also know, that MX is fairly reliable right now with Canadian banks and Simplifi is simply amazing with Canadian connections. They are almost always up and running - and they handle pending transactions, which gives me almost real time access to my data. Unfortunately, Plaid has never worked well for me. I think Plaid just doesn’t want to make the effort of fixing Canadian connections when they break. MX and Simplifi apparently are more willing and it shows with pretty good connections. Quicken Simplifi is so well done, that I don’t have to do MFA for 3 of my banks every single time they connect. The way YNAB does it is they have both Plaid and MX, and they will choose the one with the best connection for your bank. Again, they are willing to take the time to trouble shoot Canadian connections.
I certainly would be more inclined to stay with Tiller if manual imports were easier to do. I’d like to not have to be so precise with the transaction date ranges, and if there were duplicates and they were found 99% of the time I could be reasonably sure of accurate data. Also, being able to on-the-fly match the columns in the import with the transaction sheet columns would be wonderful. If you have a need for beta testers for this, I would be happy to try it out.
This insight on the status is helpful thanks @heather! From your perspective what’s the best thing Tiller fans in Canada can do to push for more reliable connections, if anything?
@jemmoa7 Is this script of any use to you? I wrote it so I could have confidence in manual imports (duplicate detection vs. date ranges) and extended it to support remapping columns to the transactions sheet.
I would say pushing on your local representatives/government to push ahead the open banking regulations. There may not be much more to push on, government is just slow.
) I use Wealthsimple and EQ Bank and lament the slow progress towards open banking/consumer data rights in Canada so I burnt some cycles lubricating my awkward manual imports in the meantime:
and I’m impotent in the process?