Hi @juliemgold, thank you for the positive encouragement! At nearly 50 I feel a little silly making videos in my car 
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Let me give you some steps to get started and let me know where I can make a more helpful tutorial. Please keep in mind to never screenshot or share anything with personal information, your security is our top priority!!
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Go to tiller.com
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Click on “Create a Spreadsheet.”
I believe you can have up to 5 linked spreadsheets.
This is cool because I have my own business, my personal accounts, and I help manage my sisters accounts. This allows me to have a different Tiller Foundations Sheet for each account.
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Take a minute to look over the “Install Help” sheet in the spreadsheet. It has lots of useful tips. It links to this guide for additional help.
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Launch Tiller!
In the sidebar, the USE button gives the option to “Launch.”
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Click “Link Sheet.” Assuming you set up your bank accounts in the console after logging into Tiller: https://my.tiller.com/
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Once you select your accounts you want to sync, that help page is deleted. One way to get it back is to simply link to a new spreadsheet from the console.
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NOTICE THE TABS AT THE BOTTOM.
The most important thing you can do is take a few minutes to set up your budget categories.
It’s “easy peasy” in the sense that you can simply edit. For example, where it says “Charity” maybe I instead want this to say “Tithe.” I just click on the “Charity” cell and type a different value.
You can add more categories to column A simply by typing in the next blank cell in column A.
Column B is how you group your categories. If you do a 50/30/20 budgeting style you might have your groups simply be “Wants” “Needs” “Savings.” You’ll notice the default is “Discretionary”, “Financial” , “Income”, “Living”, “Other”, and “Transfer.”
PAY ATTENTION TO THE TRANSFER! This is what you use for credit card payments. Since I already accounted for the credit card bill and credit card payment in the transactions, I don’t want to include that number in my charts.
PERSONALLY, I find the word “Transfer” to be confusing. So I switched it to “Transfer Between Accounts” with a group of “Linked Accounts.” … isn’t it great that Tiller let’s me use what makes sense to me? You may want to use “Credit Card Transfers” to help you remember that this is an expense that was already accounted for.
Don’t forget to set a budget in Column E.
If you added additional budget categories, copy the formula in column E to the blank cells in E.
- Drag your tabs around!!
I want my TRANSACTIONS to be my first tab. When I open Tiller every day I personally want to make sure that what I charged is accurate.
I like the “Balances” tab to be the 2nd sheet in my spreadsheet.
Please move these around in the order that makes the most sense to you.
- Take some time to set up AutoCat. This means Auto Categorization. You can set up basic rules such as “contains Costco” assign the category “Groceries.” You can also set up advanced rules that, for example, if the charge is less than $200 mark it as the category “Groceries.” Otherwise mark it as “Furniture”
Running AutoCat helps you get your budget categories set up fast.
Confession, I rarely use AutoCat (
) … for my business. I don’t have that many transactions and I feel like I really want to think about each line item and how it impacts my business. I enjoy using the drop down to select the category. For my PERSONAL finances spreadsheet, I totally use AutoCat. Car payment is easily identified by a pattern and can be automatically assigned.
Okay, that is a quick tutorial in a nutshell. You can also add custom templates and do so much more. Can I direct you to some more specific resources?
-Alice
Tiller Evangelist
Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn
