How Your Data Enters Your Tiller Sheet

Your new Tiller-powered spreadsheet is a dynamic financial tool, designed to be continuously updated with your latest transactions and balances. To get the most out of it and ensure your financial data is always current, it’s essential to understand the two-step process that brings information into your sheet:

refreshing and filling.

Step 1: The “Refresh” – Pulling Data from Your Bank

The first step in getting your financial data into your sheet is the refresh. This is when Tiller’s system checks your financial institutions for new data and, if available, pulls that information into Tiller’s secure database.

There are two main types of refreshes:

  • Automatic Refreshes For many institutions, Tiller can automatically refresh your bank, card, and investment account data about once a day without you needing to do anything. You can check the last refresh time for your accounts on the Tiller Console (https://my.tiller.com) in the Account Summary. A white refresh button generally indicates an automatic refresh has happened recently.

  • Manual Refreshes Some accounts, especially those with extra security (like Multi-Factor Authentication), may need a quick click from you on the Tiller Console to refresh their data. If you see a blue refresh button on the Console, it usually means your manual intervention is needed.

    To start a manual refresh, just log in to the Tiller Console, scroll to the Connected Account Summary, and click “Refresh” next to the institution.

    Quick Tip: It’s important to manually refresh accounts at least once every 90 days. This keeps the connection active with our data provider and ensures that any automatic refreshes continue without interruption.

Step 2: The “Fill” – Adding Data to Your Spreadsheet

The second step, filling, is when the refreshed data from Tiller’s database is added to your specific spreadsheet. This is done by clicking the “Fill Available Updates” button.

  • For Google Sheets: By default, Auto Fill is enabled for new Google Sheets users. This feature automatically adds new transactions and balances to your sheet. If you want updates immediately, you can launch the Tiller Money Feeds Add-on from the Extensions menu and click the “Fill Available Updates” button yourself.

  • For Microsoft Excel: :star: Auto Fill is not available for Excel. You must manually start the fill process by launching the Tiller Money Feeds Add-in from the Data ribbon and clicking the “Fill Available Updates” button. A blue “Fill” button means new data is ready for you. Always remember to save your workbook after filling.

Consistently Perform Refresh and Fill

Consistently performing the refresh and fill steps is the key to building financial confidence. It ensures your spreadsheet has the most reliable and up-to-date data, allowing for accurate budgeting and spending insights. This is the foundation for gaining the financial clarity you’re here to achieve. You can also opt-in to Hello, Money, our daily email summary that shows you recent balances and new transactions.

If Your Data Seems Stuck, Start Here

If you run into any issues, here are a few common things to check:

  • Check the Tiller Console (https://my.tiller.com) for the refresh status and any error messages.

  • Make sure you don’t have filters enabled on your Transactions sheet that might be hiding new rows.

  • Confirm your sheet is named “Transactions” and hasn’t had any critical headers like “Date” deleted or renamed.

For more specific issues, the Tiller Help Center has excellent troubleshooting guides. You can always reach out to our top-rated support team via the chat tool on the Tiller Console.

-Alice
Tiller Evangelist

Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn

2 Likes

Great stuff, thanks! Question: what are AutoFill’s times of day? I’d like to schedule an AutoKitten shortly after that.

Hi @andrei Auto Fill gets new/available transaction and balance data into your spreadsheet every 6 hours, 4 times a day. I think you would have to monitor for cadence as it may vary by account and institution.

Please note that the availability of data depends on the security settings that you have turned on at the bank. Accounts that require two factor authentication cannot refresh automatically so you will need to then click “Fill Available Updates” in the main sidebar to pull these transactions in right after the refresh.

Hope that helps.

3 Likes

I have 2FA for my bank account but when I refresh it I’m not asked for second factor. Why not?

That’s a great bit of info. Thank you.

1 Like

Good question @gwb720 , unfortunately I don’t know the answer to that.

I’d recommend reaching out to our support team via the chat window in the lower right corner of the Console at https://my.tiller.com/

-Alice
Tiller Evangelist

Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn