How Do I Export My Personal Capital / Empower Data Into a Spreadsheet?
Empower (formally Personal Capital) is a useful service, but perhaps you prefer to analyze and plan your finances with the flexibility and power of a spreadsheet.
Empower holds your transaction and balance history in a closed format requiring a special export process, which we explain for Google Sheets Sheets and Microsoft Excel below.
Unlike Empower, Tiller keeps your finances updated in your own private spreadsheets. And with Tiller, only you own and control your financial data. You can easily export your data anytime with the export tools built into Google Sheets and Excel.
And all your data history, custom categories, templates, budgets, and reports remain untouched in your spreadsheets if you ever cancel your Tiller service.
Tiller is completely free for 30 days. Your card isn’t charged until the end of your trial, and you can easily cancel anytime. Any transactions or templates you import remain in your spreadsheets even if you cancel your free trial.
How do you export your Personal Capital data into a Tiller-powered spreadsheet?
- Log in to Personal Capital and click “Transactions” from the top navigation.
- Select your date range. If you’re updating a spreadsheet that already has Personal Capital data, make sure to select a specific date range that doesn’t overlap to avoid duplicates.
- Click the CSV export button.
Manually add the finance data to the Transactions sheet
Now, you’ve got a CSV and you can use the same steps you’d use to manually import your data. If you haven’t done that before review this help article. It’s just a few more easy steps:
- Upload the CSV file into your Google Drive (instructions)
- Next, open the CSV as a Google Sheet
- Rearrange the columns to match the order of the columns on the Transactions sheet in your Tiller spreadsheet.
- Finally, copy the transactions and paste the Personal Capital data into blank rows on your Transactions sheet using the Edit menu > Paste Special > Paste values only
With all of your data in one place, you can now sort by date or organize your Transactions sheet however you want.
Filtering your financial data is fast and easy in a spreadsheet
A couple things to remember as you go through this process. Make sure you turn the filter off on your Transactions sheet before you paste the Personal Capital transactions into the sheet.
Then turn the filter back on if this feature is useful to you.
Be aware that the filter is not turned on in all Tiller templates. If you don’t see a down arrow next to the column header name then it’s not on. Finally, you can sort the date by Z to A to make sure the latest transactions are at the top.
The whole process takes less than 10 minutes. Using a spreadsheet to visualize your spending is a powerful way to get a handle on your finances.
Use the CSV Importer for Google Sheets
If you routinely import Personal Capital data into a Tiller-powered Google Sheet, it’s worth installing the free Tiller Community Solutions extension for Google Sheets and using its Import CSV Line Items tool.
This is designed to make importing CSV files into Google Sheet easier by:
- Recognizing & validating your import data source
- Remapping fields to match up with your Tiller spreadsheet
- Creating offsets to zero-out credit card charges from your feeds
- Itemizing orders into discrete line-items to facilitate accurate categorization (Amazon imports only)
- Tracking imported data and preventing the import of duplicates (not all data sources)
- Storing searchable metadata in the Transactions sheet
- Providing one-click filtering of uncategorized imported line items
Additionally, the CSV Line Items tool cleanly imports data from multiple sources:
- Amazon purchases (USA only)
- Amazon refunds (USA only)
- Apple Card purchases
- Mint transactions register
- Paypal transactions
- Personal Capital transactions register
- Venmo transactions
- YNAB transactions register
- Basic Bank CSV
Learn more in this thread in the Tiller Community.
Huge tiller fan here.
This looks great. Is there any way for this tool to work with any bank? Isn’t it all about identifying and matching the right column headers?
I had a solid workflow but once Yodlee stopped supporting UK (and many other) financial services it all broke.
For now I’m trying to use formulas in G Sheets to trim and re-format the CSVs to match the tiller layout/format and paste but this solution is rather slow.
I’ve also seen a python script (htt*s://d.pr/X5hjpA) the would format the csv data from Apple Card to work with tiller.
The code probably needs to be adjusted as probably has the potential to work with any bank/financial institution?
Glad to hear you’re enjoying Tiller, @Mariusz.
The tool can work with other banks but currently works with a preset list of remapping rules for known import types. (It is not currently programmed to recognize column names and dynamically remap them.)
I think we’ve got Apple Card working though sometimes the outputs (and thereby unrecognized) are slightly different when using them internationally.
I hope we are able to support you soon in the UK.
Randy
Hi @randy! also a big fan of tiller. I accidentally posted this in the old standalone Amazon addon article earlier today but was pointed here. I actually was using the Tiller Labs Add-on (not the standalone) when I wrote this:
“Hi @randy, I have a personal and business amazon account. Worked great for the personal, but as noted above, didnt work for the business export. I took the from Personal Items Report export that worked and edited the business export to mimic the exact data / template structure / column headers. However on upload it just gets stuck on the processing the data step (with the dots gif).I cant figure out why it wont work. I imagine something simple i’m missing. Any chance you would be willing to peek at my CSV to see what is causing the snag? If you can help figure it out, I can write a quick little script to convert business exports to personal export template for others with the same issue to use until amazon business is supported. Cheers!”
Sounds like I’ve been trying to the same thing as @Mariusz. Would love to get this working as it would save me a ton of time. If you’re willing to take a quick look at the csv file im trying to import to see why its not working I’d truly appreciate it and would write a script to help others in the same predicament. Thanks!
I haven’t built an importer for an Amazon business export yet. It probably isn’t a huge project and I’m willing to take a look at the feasibility in the coming week, @ellisar.
The file you shared looks really similar to the Amazon Personal export. I assume that is the version of the CSV that you massaged to make it look like an Amazon personal file and not the original business export. Can you confirm this?
If you’re willing to share a bit of an Amazon business export, I’ll have a look into working up a dedicated import rule set. Just send me the first few rows (especially the header) via DM in this forum. Feel free to scrub any personal info.
Best,
Randy
P.S. In the interim, if you want to ingest the file you shared, just add a column called
Group Namein AJ1 and try re-importing.P.P.S. I deleted the attachment from your post for your privacy.
@randy That is great to hear. I appreciate your willingness to look into it so soon.
That is correct, the version I sent you was an Amazon Business Order Report Export. Almost all of the data was exactly the same with just slightly different abbreviations for column names (plus the business export had a lot more columns to sift through to find the required ones). Pretty much only had to change column names to Amazon (Personal) Items Report names and concatenate 2 cells into 1 for 1 column.
Will DM the Business export now. And awesome! Will give the Group Name column addition a go in the morning – will report back! Truly appreciate your help with this.
Cheers,
Adam