Hello,
My wife and I have been using for several years now (love it!), but we would now like to add a way to track who made the transaction as well as the standard category. For example, in addition to a transaction being categorized as clothing, we would like to know if I made the transaction or if she did.
We would also like to report off of this additional sub-grouping.
I am assuming this is a frequent enough ask that someone has already developed a solution, but I didn’t see anything. Could someone point me to the right place?
Thanks,
Heath
Hi @heathlovell Heath,
I went through this last year. There of course are Tags and Notes that can be used. Technically, there isn’t a subcategory available. However, you can use the following concept of
Group / Subcategory (Category) / Type
instead of the normal
Group / Category / Type.
Here is an example that I transitioned from in 2024 to 2025:
Or, with your example:
Keep in mind that budget targets get set at the category level. So, you want to make sure you will have a budget target for Category.
The reports work out fine for me.
Also, you don’t physically rearrange the Category table (tab). You populate it the same way. Only the values are reversed.
So, in my situation the Category table (tab) looks like this:
I hope my explanation and examples are helpful.
Clint
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My idea here would be pretty simple to just add an additional column to your transactions sheet and name it “purchased by" or something that would fit and then have data validation be set to you or your wife and then choose each accordingly when categorizing. This in my mind would keep your categories simpler and then you’d be able to report on this with pivot tables. The downside to this simplicity is that no current templates would use this column natively but if that’s what you’re looking for you could possibly modify if you wish. Check out this help article if you’re unfamiliar with pivot tables.
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Thanks @bentyre1, that was also my suggestion.
You can add columns to your transactions sheet.
Caution: do not duplicate column header names.
Tiller looks for the column headers for a few key columns For example: Description, Category Do not rename those.
Since Tiller is looking on the transactions sheet for the column headers you can insert additional columns and even reorder the columns.
-Alice
Tiller Evangelist
Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn
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Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I plan on adding a column to the transaction sheet and using a pivot table, although I have not ruled out creating duplicate categories for each of us. Thanks for the great responses!
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I added a column for “spent by” and another for “for whom” and I use Autocat to fill those based on credit card account numbers. That’s worked pretty well for us so far.
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How do you get Autocat to work on other columns?
Super easy. Just look for the “column contains” columns in your Autocat sheet and in the column next to it that says what the column is, just type what you want Autocat to change it to.
So, I have it look for Account # Contains and the last 4 digits of my wife’s credit card number (which is what comes through).
Then I added a column for Who Spent to my Autocat sheet, and it matches the column title in my Transactions sheet. When Autocat runs, it looks for that and updates that automatically.
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Thank you! I never knew the Autocat sheet would do that.
Where did you place the Who Spent column? Should it be to the left of Category (col. A) or to the right or does it matter?
My confusion is just around how does autocat know you want to fill in the Who Spent value rather than the default Category value.
Thank you.
It doesn’t matter where you place the column as it will look for the column name so you have to make sure if you use autocat that the column in that sheet matches exactly what you name it in your transactions sheet. Here’s a guide with additional instructions about how auto cat can work with additional columns. How to use AutoCat for automatic categorization | Tiller Help Center
Check out the part about creating advanced rules for the step by step guide
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The article and video were fantastic and exactly what I needed to see. Thank you!
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