Tiller Money Review: Making Spreadsheets Cool Again

What Is Tiller Money? 

Tiller Money is a financial app that syncs your financial accounts to Google Sheets or Microsoft excel. It uses a third-party service to sync accounts directly into a template–organizing your entire financial life into a spreadsheet. 

Tiller Money was founded in 2015–and has grown to offer a wide range of templates for tracking through both Google and Microsoft spreadsheets. It also has a thriving community of spreadsheet-lovers that help each other create effective financial templates–and share them at no additional charge.

Tiller Money doesn’t have a mobile app–though users can access their template through the Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets mobile app. And while Tiller tries to make the budgeting and financial planning process simple–you do need an elementary understanding of how spreadsheets works to truly thrive using the app.

Pricing Breakdown

Tiller comes with a free 30 day trial. After that, it’s $79 a year.

Key Features

Tiller is a spreadsheet app with magical powers–you can import every financial transaction automatically and customize to your heart’s content. 

Money Feeds

Tiller connects with over 21,000 financial institutions to automatically track any transactions and account balances. These money feeds connect to banks, credit card accounts, and brokerages to help you track all of your money movements.

Money Feeds connect to a Tiller spreadsheet template that keeps your budget balances, spending categories, and investment balances up-to-date. Data through Money Feeds is updated once per day–but you can manually force a transaction download at any time.

Spreadsheet Templates

Tiller offers a comprehensive budgeting template called the “Foundation Template”–which includes a net worth tracker, monthly and yearly budgets, transaction tracking, debt payoff planner, and spending insights. But there are also other templates you can use Tiller with–many which are created by the Tiller community.

These templates include:

• Budgeting 
• Expense 
• Debt Payoff 
• Planning 
• Category Analysis 
• Reporting 
• And more!

Once you have signed up for tiller, you can download any template you wish to try for free from the Tiller Community Templates page.

AutoCat

While most budgeting apps categorize your transactions automatically, Tiller doesn’t immediately do this. Instead users can set up the “AutoCat” feature–allowing you to choose which transactions belong to which category. Once you select these, Tiller will automatically categorize those transactions in the future.

For example; If you spend money at Target but usually just buy groceries there–you can use AutoCat to make sure all Target transactions are under the Groceries category.

Daily Financial Updates

Tiller sends out daily emails to give you a snapshot of your finances. These ‘at-a-glance’ emails give you current account balance information, net worth updates, and recent transactions to keep you informed of all daily financial moves across all of your connected accounts.

This feature is organized in a clean format–making it easy to see your financial position within seconds. Plus it helps you stay up-to-date on spending to help you make better money decisions.

How Tiller Money Stands Out 

Tiller Money is truly built for those that love spreadsheets–but don’t want to manually track everything in their financial lives. It’s common to have dozens of financial accounts spread across various financial institutions–and Tiller can help connect them all into a single spreadsheet to help give users insights into their financial lives.

Tiller also has a supportive community that has helped create unique Tiller-Compatible spreadsheet templates–available for free to users. Plus the online help forum is filled with community members willing to help each other out. 

Comparable Budgeting App Options 

While Tiller Money is focused on spreadsheets, there are several other budgeting apps that may be a better fit for those that don’t like the look-and-feel of Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Here are a few budgeting apps to consider:

Empower Personal Dashboard

Empower Personal Dashboard (formerly Personal Capital) is a free money-tracking and investment planning app that lets you connect all of your financial accounts for automatic tracking. While it is primarily designed to offer financial planning advice and insights on your investments–you can also create a basic budget within the app. 

Empower Personal Dashboard shines by showing you how much you’re paying in investment fees, analyzing your retirement plan–and even offers financial planning services for certain clients (for a fee). The budget isn’t as customizable as Tiller–but the app is free to use.

Monarch Money

Monarch Money is a powerful budgeting app that offers a huge range of budgeting and financial planning features–including goal-setting, debt payoff, and investment tracking. Monarch has a clean user interface and well-designed mobile app–making it easy to manage your money and track your spending on-the-go.

Monarch is slightly more expensive than Tiller at $99 per year–but it offers more user-friendly features for those that don’t prefer spreadsheets. Plus it has a mobile app available for both Android and iOS users.

How To Apply 

You can sign up for Tiller Money and get a 30-day free trial of the app. You just need to login with your Microsoft or Google account (because you must use Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel). Once logged in, to start your trial, you’ll need to provide a credit or debit card which will be charged after the 30-day trial has ended. You can cancel at any time before the 30 days is up to avoid a charge.

Once signed up, you will connect to the Tiller Foundation Template (or any other template from the Tiller community) and add the Money Feeds add-on to your spreadsheets. You will then use Money Feeds to securely sign into each financial account to start tracking your transactions and balances.

Who Tiller Money Is Best For 

Tiller Money is honestly best suited for those that know their way around a spreadsheet and want to see all financial happenings in a single spreadsheet. If you find yourself using Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel on the daily–this app will feel right at home. If you prefer a mobile app or simple user interface–Tiller might not be the best choice for you.

Final Take 

Tiller Money fills a specific need in the financial world–allowing spreadsheet fans to automatically sync their financial accounts–while still being able to customize it to their liking. Tiller does the job well–as no other budgeting app offers this type of integration. Tiller Money does have a steep learning curve if you aren’t used to using spreadsheets–and the lack of a monthly payment plan makes it slightly less appealing than its competitors. But the Tiller community is amazingly supportive–and if you like spreadsheets–you’ll feel welcome with Tiller Money.

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