A New Way With Spreadsheets For Greater Control of Your Money

Tiller Money was born from our early team’s frustration with the apps we were wrestling with to manage our financial lives.

All suffered from similar annoying limitations:

• Why did transactions keep ending up in the wrong categories?
• Why was it so hard to track family finances with our spouses?
• Why couldn’t we track cash flow AND build a financial forecast with one tool?
• Why was it so hard to reliably track recent spending?
• Why was it so hard to track net worth with precision?
• Why couldn’t we run custom reports as easily as with spreadsheets?
• Actually, why did we always return to simple spreadsheets to understand our money?

As we swapped notes about these frustrations, we began to realize that as a group of engineers and entrepreneurs, we could build a better money management tool.

It would be flexible and easy to customize, yet powerful enough for real financial analysis.

Next steps: asking lots of questions

We knew we were going to build a better personal finance tool. But we also knew we had much more to learn.

So we asked our most financially adept friends, family, and advisors what they used to manage their money. 

Most shared the same answer: spreadsheets. No other tool was as simple, customizable, and powerful. 

Or, put another way, no other tool provided as much control as spreadsheets.

That’s why, even today, spreadsheets are used by nearly every company of every size to track and forecast their financials. 

And that’s why spreadsheets are still the tool of choice for financial advisors, investors, and money managers.

So, in a way, duh. The most flexible, powerful tool for managing money already existed. 

But again, we didn’t stop there. 

Next question: how to make spreadsheets more like apps

We had confidence in spreadsheets for managing money. But spreadsheets still had a problem that apps like Mint, despite their inflexibility, actually solved somewhat well. 

That problem was data entry. 

Before Tiller Money, spreadsheets required manual data entry. That’s not bad for simple tracking with a couple of accounts. But most people have several accounts. Each has its own login. Each has a different CSV export procedure. And each CSV file has to be imported into your spreadsheet, formatted, and cleaned up before you can do anything with it. 

For most people – even spreadsheet nerds –  that’s too many steps to bother with for an everyday money tool.

What if you could always see your latest daily balances, spending, and net worth updated in your spreadsheets with just a few clicks? 

So we thought, what if we could connect your bank accounts directly to your spreadsheets, and automate bank statement imports?

Even better, what if we could automatically run the import every 24 hours, so you could always see your latest daily balances, spending, and net worth updated in your spreadsheets with just a few clicks? 

Soon we had a working automated prototype built on Google Sheets. We used it for our own finances, and recruited friends, family, and personal finance influencers to use it in their daily tracking. 

It was exactly the tool we were looking for, combining the control of spreadsheets with the ease of automation.

Turns out, lots of other people also wanted a tool like this

We added new features over the years as more and more people switched to Tiller Money. Today it’s a complete personal finance platform, featuring: 

• Direct control and portability of bank connections with Tiller Money Feeds for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel
• An easy way to get started with the flexible Foundation Template
• Workflows for common personal finance tasks with community-supported Tiller Money Labs templates
• A place to share ideas and find answers about personal finances and spreadsheets with  the Tiller Money Community
• An amazing and amazingly powerful tool for auto-categorizing transactions in Google Sheets with AutoCat
• A simple way to stay up to date with your latest account activity and balances with the Tiller Money Daily Email Update 

And there’s so much more ahead

We continue to advance Tiller Money with new features and capabilities.

For example, Tiller Money is leading the personal finance industry with support for open banking. 

Everything we do – and will always do – is guided by simple principles:

• People should have access to tools that let them manage their money their way, not according to rules set by a software company
• Personal finance tools should be private and secure, with no ads
• People should own their financial data, and should be able to take and do with it as they please
• And most importantly, money matters because life matters more

Are spreadsheets right for you?

Clearly we believe in spreadsheets for organizing, optimizing, and planning your financial life. 

But of course, personal finance is personal. We sincerely want you to use whatever tool best keeps you engaged with your financial situation. That’s what’s most important!

If you think spreadsheets might work best for you, give Tiller Money a try:

• It’s completely free for 30 days
• You get all features, customer support, and access to the Tiller Money Community
• After 30 days, Tiller Money is $79/year (just $6.58/month)
• Even if you cancel, all the data you’ve imported will remain in your spreadsheets 
• And you keep your Foundation Template and Tiller Money Labs templates!