Power Up Your Money Management Worksheet With Additional Transaction Details
The great thing about your Tiller sheet is that, well, it’s a spreadsheet! Just like any other spreadsheet, you can customize it in a way that makes sense for your goals or the analysis you’d like to perform. We’re excited to share a few additional columns you can add to your Transactions tab and encourage you to mash it up any way you like.
The Transactions tab is at the heart of every Tiller Sheet. Every day the Tiller Feedbot updates your Transactions tab with your transaction details. We start you out with a set of basic columns that make sense for the Tiller template you’re using, but Tiller’s power doesn’t stop there.
It’s your finance spreadsheet so you can do what you want
You can add in your own columns and move columns around. Want to flag work expenses? Great. Just create a new column called “Work Expenses” and add your own comments or flags. Want to put the Amount column on the far left and the Date column on the far right? No problem. Simply select the column at the very top (where it says A, B, C, etc) and your cursor turns into a “hand” allowing you to drag and drop that column to your desired spot.
You can update existing column names or delete columns. Want to delete the Account # column? Go for it, but be aware that Tiller will not see that column and will no longer populate Account # data in this sheet. The same is true if you rename a column that Tiller automatically fills. Once renamed, Tiller will stop filling in the data. For example, renaming the “Amount” column to “Transaction Amount” will cause Tiller to skip your “Transaction Amount” column because it doesn’t recognize that header name.
Don’t worry, we’ve got your back(up)
Tiller’s servers always have your original transaction data, regardless of what you do with a specific Tiller sheet. You can rebuild your sheet, and Tiller will re-populate all of your original transaction data from the bank even if you deleted some columns or rows in your last sheet. However, Tiller does not save and repopulate your notes or categories for transactions when you create a new one.
Dig into the details
Now that you know you can mash up your finance worksheet anyway you like, we’re excited to share some new columns you can add into your Transactions tab. We also wanted to provide a description for the familiar columns you’ve already seen.
Full Description (new)
This includes the description or merchant details we collect from your bank, however messy it may be. For example, a recent gas purchase might look like this: “UNION xx xxxx3152 ORONDO xxxxxx8620 UNION 76”
Merchant Name (new)
This is available only for some transactions, and it’s a clean, concise merchant name. The same transaction above would simply be “UNION 76”. For other transactions where a cleaned up merchant name isn’t available, this column will be blank.
Short Description (new)
This column gives you the best of the prior to columns described above. When the clean merchant name is available, Tiller will display this data in the short description column. When it’s not available, Tiller will display the full description in this column. In this example, it would read “UNION 76” because the merchant name is available. If it hadn’t been available, it would have defaulted back to “UNION xx xxxx3152 ORONDO xxxxxx8620 UNION 76”.
Description
This is the standard Tiller description that we use in our templates. It’s slightly cleaned up from the full description we receive from your bank, but still has plenty of detail. This gas purchase will read as follows: “Union xx x3152, Orondo x8620, Union 76”
Category
The Tiller Feedbot doesn’t fill in this column because we think there’s value in having you assign each transaction to a category that makes sense to you and the way you think about money. It’s quick, easy and it helps you build awareness around your spending. Also, there’s no way Tiller can understand that a trip to Starbucks today should be categorized as a work expense, and a trip to the same Starbucks tomorrow may be categorized as a discretionary leisure expense.
Category Hint (new)
Tiller will make a guess at the category for a transaction based on what we know about the merchant. This isn’t always accurate, and it doesn’t reflect the way you might think about categories, so we don’t include it in our standard template.
Date
This is the original date the transaction took place. If you buy a latte on February 17th, this column will display 2/17/16.
Month (new)
It’s sometimes helpful to have a month rather than a specific date when creating pivot tables and other reports as you manage your money. Every transaction is assigned a date for the first day of that month. For example, for a transaction on February 17, 2016, Tiller will simply fill in February 1, 2016 in the month column. For more ideas on using the month column with pivot tables, see our recent blog post, Monthly Spending Pivot Tables in Your Financial Spreadsheet.
Week (new)
Similar to the month column, sometimes it’s helpful to break out transaction details by week. Tiller will enter the date for the Monday of the week the transaction was made. As an example, for that same transaction on Wednesday, February 17, Tiller will fill in the date for Monday, February 15 in the week column.
Date Added (new)
If you need to know the date Tiller added a transaction to your sheet rather than the date the transaction took place, use the Date Added column. For example, the latte I purchased on 2/17 has a date added value of 2/19 because two days passed before the transaction settled at the bank and was added to this sheet.
Check
Sometimes Tiller can discern the check number for checks you write. When this is possible, Tiller will fill in the check number details into your column titled Check.
Account Name
This is the name of the account at the bank. For example, “Alaska Airlines Signature Visa” is the account name for my Alaska Airlines Visa credit card, or “Family Checking” for our checking account with USAA
Account #
This is the last four digits of the bank account number. For example, “xxxx1102”.
Institution
This is the name of the financial institution. For example, “Bank of America” or “USAA”.
Amount
This shows the amount of the transaction. Income, refunds, and credits are positive. Expenses and debits are negative.
Note
This is a column for you to make notes. The Tiller Feedbot ignores this column.
Transaction ID
This is the unique identifier for the transaction and is helpful to our team when troubleshooting.
Do you want to see a new column added to the Transactions tab or want more in depth information about any of these columns? Let us know using the form below.
