Good morning @Citationx, so glad you came over to the community to seek some guidance from others who have switched over from Monarch.
A side note: you can have up to 5 connected spreadsheets. You can choose to use one to specifically track your work expenses if you want. You can also keep it all in the same spreadsheet.
A colleague here at Tiller and I have a disagreement about business expenses. I’m a never mixer. They enjoy the flexibility of Tiller to manage their side hustle and personal expenses in the same spreadsheet. How you choose to do it is entirely up to you, we can help you with whatever method yu choose.
We have a new feature in Tiller to allow you to manage a manual account from the Tiller Console. Check it out.
Here is the help documentation on managing manual accounts.
We have the best customer support team, if you’re having any challenges please use that chat option in the bottom right of the Tiller Console.
For the account I manually manage, if I checkbox “Update balance in Balance History” when adding a transaction it will update. However, for this particular manual account that I am doing it also requires I make a separate entry to balance that amount in another account.
For your example, if you have an expense on the credit card, you would mark that as transfer and categorize it as business reimbursement. However, to have it increase the balance on a manual account of “business expenses”, I would have to add the same amount as a manual transaction and check the checkbox to update the balance. When I’m actually reimbursed, I would then need to put a positive amount into that manual account “business expenses” AND CHECK THE CHECKBOX to update the balance to hopefully zero out what still needs to be reimbursed.
How I personally manage this is I filter the expenses for the month using the “business expenses” category on my credit card account. I sum up those amounts and manually enter one time as a negative into the manual account. I use this to submit my reimbursement amounts. Once the company reimburses me that amount, I add the manual transaction as a positive. Then I’m at least only doing it once a month as one transaction (actually 2) on the manual account.
Below is an AI response
Of course. For a direct way to have a transaction update your manual loan’s balance, use the “Add Transaction” tool in the Tiller Money Feeds sidebar and check the box to automatically update the balance.
Here is a complete guide to managing your manual accounts and work expenses.
Managing Manual Loan Accounts
While there are a couple of ways to manage manual accounts, using the “Add Transaction” tool is a straightforward method to ensure your balance updates after you record a payment.
Direct Method: Use the “Add Transaction” Tool
When you add a loan payment using the “Add Transaction” tool found in the Tiller Money Feeds sidebar, you can check a box to automatically update the balance for that manual account. This links the transaction entry and the balance update into a single step.
Alternative Method: Update Balance Separately
You can also manage your manual accounts from the Tiller Console, which is helpful for seeing them in your “Hello, Money” daily email summary. With this method, you update the balance in a separate step after recording the transaction.
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Add the Manual Account:
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Log in to the Tiller Console at https://my.tiller.com.
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Scroll to the Manual Accounts section and click “Add Account.”
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Enter your loan details and click “Add Manual Account.”
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Link the account to your spreadsheet and “Fill your sheet” to import it.
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Update the Balance After a Payment:
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On the Tiller Console, click “Edit” next to your loan account.
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Choose “Update Balance,” enter the new balance and date, and click the “Update Balance” button.
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Fill your sheet again to see the change.
Tracking Work-Related Expenses
To accurately track your reimbursable work expenses, you can customize your Tiller spreadsheet with these features:
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“Tags” Column: Add a “Tags” column to your Transactions sheet to label expenses with keywords like “reimbursable” or “work-travel” for easy filtering.
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“Note” Column: Add a “Note” column to include specific details, such as a project name or trip purpose.
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Transaction Splitter: If a charge is mixed between personal and work, use the Transaction Splitter tool in the Tiller Money Feeds add-on to divide it into multiple categories.
Categorizing Loan Payments
For accurate budgeting, it’s best to treat loan payments as expenses.
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Create an “Expense” Category: Make a category for your loan payment (e.g., “Car Loan Payment”) on your Categories sheet and set its type to “Expense.”
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Create a Hidden “Income” Category: Create a second category (e.g., “Loan Principal”), set its type to “Income,” and choose to “Hide from Reports.” This setup correctly reflects the payment as an outflow in your budget without incorrectly counting it as new income.
