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Tips for Using Google Sheets on Mobile

Here are recommendations for making Google Sheets easier to use on mobile devices, ranging from apps to customized sheets to third party services.

In many cases, it’s easier to use Google Sheets on a desktop computer than on a mobile device.

That’s because mobile devices don’t have the screen real estate for spreadsheets with lots of rows and columns.

However, it is possible to make Google Sheets more accessible on mobile. From apps to mobile-friendly custom sheets to third party services, here are our recommendations for using Google Sheets and Tiller Money on-the-go.

Google Sheets mobile apps

Google Sheets on Mobile

You can view, create, edit, and save Google spreadsheets with Google’s free Google Sheets apps for iOS and Android.

These apps are popular and highly rated on both platforms. They’re most useful for quickly reviewing a spreadsheet or updating a line item or two.

However, they’re not ideal for writing formulas or heavy spreadsheet editing.

You can get Google’s Sheets apps here:

Read: Create, find, or download a file for Google Sheets on iOS, Android, or Desktop

How to optimize Google Sheets for mobile with simple formulas

Google Sheets on Mobile
Spreadsheet View

You can easily build a custom Google Sheet that makes your Tiller Money data easier to view on mobile.

First, create a new sheet and name it something like “Mobile” so it’s clear what the sheet is built for.

You might also want to move the sheet to the first page in your spreadsheet so you can open it on mobile with fewer clicks.

Keep the sheet limited to just 2 columns. For each row, the first column contains a description and the second column contains the value.

You can then access this sheet using any mobile browser on your phone or the Google Sheets app.

Using this method, you won’t see everything in your Tiller Money spreadsheet, but you can keep up with key information at a glance.

Suggested formulas for building a mobile-friendly dashboard

If the value you are seeking always stays in the same cell location, you can use a simple formula to get the value. 

For example, in the Foundations template Insights sheet, your total Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth are always displayed in cells H11, J11 and L11.

These values are also listed on the Balances sheet and you could use the same concept to pull the values from that sheet using formulas like

='Balances'!H5

To get the value of your total Assets on the new Mobile sheet, use the formula:

='Insights'!H11

For Liabilities:

='Insights'!J11

For Net Worth:

='Insights'!L11

VLOOKUP Formula

To get the last balance of any Account, you can use the Balances sheet or the Accounts sheet as the source. But the values in these sheets will change locations if you add or remove Accounts. You can’t do a direct cell lookup since the cell location might change.

Instead, you can use the VLOOKUP function to get a value based on the selected text.

For example, let’s say you want the latest balance of your Visa Card. On the Balances sheet, credit card names are listed in Column F and their balances are listed in Column H.

This formula would fetch the latest balance of your Visa Card:

=VLOOKUP("Visa Card (xxxx1111)",'Balances'!F7:H,3,FALSE)

Breaking this formula down into the 4 parts within the VLOOKUP function:

  • “Visa Card (xxxx1111)” is the exact text found in the credit card name cell in Column F. You can’t use just Visa Card, because it won’t be an exact match. Substitute this name with the exact name in the Balances sheet for any account you want to match.
  • Balances!F7:H is the range of cells that will include the matching column and the result. Since Liability account names start in the Balances sheet cell F7, that’s the first part of the range. Since the latest balances are in Column H, that’s the last part of the range.
  • 3 is the number of columns in the range where to look for the result. F is the 1st column, G is the 2nd column and H is the 3rd column. Since we want the result from the 3rd column, Column H, use 3.
  • FALSE is used to indicate the Column to be searched (the first column, F) is not sorted. In most cases, use FALSE to get the correct result.

Using this same technique, you can get Budget, Actual and Available values for any Category from the Monthly Budget sheet. 

For example, this formula would get the Available budget for your Groceries category, based on the currently selected month of the Monthly Budget sheet:

=VLOOKUP("Groceries",'Monthly Budget'!B17:H,7,FALSE)

If the Monthly Budget sheet is set to a different month than the current month, the above formula won’t get the current month value. As an alternative, you could do the lookups from the Yearly Budget sheet with a formula like this:

=iferror(offset('Yearly Budget'!E7,match("Groceries",'Yearly Budget'!A7:A,0)-1,iferror(match(date(year(today()),month(today()),1),'Yearly Budget'!E3:3),0)+1)

Explaining that formula is worth an entire post by itself, but basically it calculates the first day of the current month, then uses the offset function to find the row matching “Groceries” and the column matching this month’s remaining budget value.

Once you get your new sheet designed, add the sheet to your mobile device’s home page.

Create Your Own Mobile App with Glide or AppSheet

Tiller Money and Glide

There are several third-party solutions that take Google Sheets data and let you publish them in a mobile-friendly app.

Two examples are Glide and AppSheet. Both solutions require configuring the apps to work with your individual data to show exactly what you want.

Glide offers both free and paid solutions and claims “you can create an app from a Google Sheet in five minutes, for free.”

While it might take a little more time to integrate with Tiller Money, you don’t need to be an app developer to get started.

Some basic information about using Tiller Money with Glide can be found here. There’s also a detailed post on how to set-up Glide for Tiller Money here.

Here is a helpful Tiller Community post about using Tiller Money with AppSheet.

Share your mobile solution

If you have another solution for using Tiller Money on mobile, share it as a Winning Workflow with the Tiller Money Community.

Mobile is the focus of the Winning Workflow challenge for the month of March 2020. The winning workflow will claim a $200 Amazon gift card plus a free year of Tiller Money.

Learn more here.

Jon O.

Jon O.

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