I’m at the end of my trial, and I plan to continue this Tiller journey! I’ve learned that the spreadsheet paradigm is much more useful and relevant than the tired old checkbook simulation that has bogged me down for years.
The Autocat logic features are excellent. I will clearly be saving hours of time preparing my 2025 tax and accounting reports. Also the unattended spreadsheet refresh has worked flawlessly so far. And it’s tasked with something like a dozen different accounts across 3 separate financial institutions. Clearly this software was developed just for me!
There are only two annoyances. Occasionally logging in with my Google token can prove to a bit of. a stumbling process. I eventually get there, but wasting time is why I’m moving from other software in the first place.
The second annoyance: Once in a while the Autocat feature seems to get stuck and returns a “busy please come back later” message. I don’t believe there are any problems in the Autocat sheet itself, as the process runs quite quickly most of the time. So when I get the busy message; it’s my cue to leave the computer and do something else for a change.
Beyond that, I’m quite thrilled to have found this package and I’m also impressed with its community of support. A number of people have been helpful in getting me up and running. The online help is quite comprehensive as well.
Kudos and thanks to all; I look forward to seeing you here in 2025!
Welcome to Tiller, Bill.
I’m glad you had a positive trial run and have decided to continue the journey! It sounds like you have hit the ground running and are getting off to a great start for 2025.
On the same subject, I will not be using this service at this time.
For me it fails at it’s only unique value add of effortlessly importing data. I need to log in every day (2FA). Plus I get a random call AND text message with the 2FA pin from my bank at random hours usually while sleeping. Presumably that’s Yodlee trying to fetch data but it makes using Tiller unsafe as I get notices I did not trigger and therefore should be treated as a hacking attempt.
In evaluating Tiller I backfilled data by importing CSV transactions from all my institutions. I feel it’s less trouble to import manually once a month than spend 10 min a day going through 2FA for most of my accounts. It appears this is because Tiller is for the moment stuck on Yodlee. Maybe I’ll be back when they add other aggregators which they say they are in the beta stage on.
This was my second time evaluating Tiller. Hopefully the third time will be the charm. Assuming AutoCat will keep working I may continue to use the sheet which would ease trying again when Tiller’s grown up a little more.
That’s all fair enough, and your choice is obviously your choice. The one note I would make is that it’s not Tiller that needs to grow up as much as it is the banks you’re using. Any bank that is still requiring 2FA on every connection (and I still have a few) hasn’t yet adopted Open Banking standards. Who knows if the relatively new CFPB rules requiring the adoption of Open Banking standards over the next few years will survive the new administration, but if they do, then that’s the most promising development on the horizon for all of us when it comes to smooth and stable connections with our financial institutions that don’t require regular user intervention.
It’s interesting that I have not had this issue come up at all even though I’ve linked accounts at three separate institutions. One of them is Chase, that does indeed require 2FA for me to log in to their website. But since the initial setup, I’ve not had to enter any credentials or info.
That’s because Chase has adopted Open Banking standards. Just allows for a much smoother handoff of data from your bank to Yodlee to Tiller.
Fair enough. Didn’t know about CFPB/Open Banking. Sounds good.
I do a lot with my 150 year old local bank. They use Fiserv for the back end, so whenever they come around I guess…