The Tool to Split a Transaction Across Multiple Categories in Your Finance Spreadsheet

When you visit Target, Costco or even shop online with Amazon your money is likely going in a few different directions.

A single purchase may include items you want to categorize in different ways.

Take a recent trip to Costco. Maybe most of the shopping was for $300 of groceries, but you also purchased a $200 safe, which was on sale recently at a Costco outside Seattle.

Thanks to Tiller, the $500 Costco transaction will soon automatically appear on the Transactions sheet in your money management Google Sheet.

You want to categorize this transaction, but first, you’d really love to split that transaction into two parts. One category wouldn’t do it justice.

Split Transactions in Google Sheets with the Tiller Splitter Add-on

You’re in luck! We have just the solution for splitting transactions across multiple categories in your Google Sheet. Tiller created a Google Sheets Add-on that allows you to split a single transaction into two or more components. It does the math for you, and it lets you categorize right then and there before the new rows are inserted.

Let’s dive into how this super tool works!

First, you’ll want to install the Tiller Splitter Add-on from the Google Sheets Add-on store. You’ll need to give some permission to the add-on in order for it to be able to run in your Google Sheet. You’ll see a series of three screens to set up and install the add-on.

Google Sheets Add-on permissions

These are standard permissions for a Google Add-on that allow it access to your sheet so it can do its work. The add-on runs in your sheet, but it does not share your sheet data with Tiller nor anyone else.

Once it’s installed you’re ready to go. Select any transaction row by the row number in your finance sheet and then open the Tiller Splitter Add-on menu, choose “Split transaction…” and then you’ll be able to split the transaction however makes sense for your purchases.

It’s best practice to enter your split amounts first so that the Add-on can help you calculate the remaining amount. For example our trip to Costco where we spent $500, we’d change the first transaction row to account for the groceries of $300, and the add-on tells us we have $200 remaining. We add the second row for the safe for $200 and the add-on tells us we have $0 remaining, which is exactly what we want. The add-on will add one new row for the $200 safe with a note about the split and update the existing row (now for $300) with a note about the split details.

You’ll probably still need the receipt to know how to break up the purchase, but this add-on makes it super quick to get all the rows, details and categories organized in your expense tracking spreadsheet.