Categories are the backbone to a strong financial foundation. They help you make sense of your money. But they have to make sense to you and fit where you are in your financial journey. Tiller gives you ultimate control over your category list.
If your data is not pre-categorized
Our default flow up until recently is not to pre-categorize transaction data. If your data is not already categorized when it's filled into the sheet you have a few options.
Write to beta@tillerhq.com to ask for the pre-categorize workflow (Google Sheets Only)
Use AutoCat & AI Suggest (Google Sheets only)
Click on your sheet's name on the Tiller Console at https://my.tiller.com
Turn on AI Suggest
Use the menu next to the open button to Run AutoCat - note this can take several minutes if you have a large data set. Go grab a cup of coffee and contemplate the universe. ☕️
Use AutoCat rules only
If you prefer not to use AI to help categorize your data you can create rules for AutoCat.
Manually categorize your transactions
If you're using Microsoft Excel you can create AutoCat rules and run them against your transactions using the Tiller Money Feeds sidebar.
Before you do any of those, be sure you've got a good set of categories that make sense for you. Read on below about how to customize your categories.
If your data is pre-categorized
For randomly selected Google Sheets customers we’re experimenting with filling data pre-categorized into spreadsheets. You can read more about this feature here.
Since data has been pre-categorized, making edits to existing categories in the Categories sheet will cause data validation errors on your Transactions sheet (red triangle in the upper right of the category cell). That’s okay! The steps below guide you on what to do about it and we intend to offer a more seamless workflow that automates these steps in the future.
If your data has been pre-categorized and you want to customize your categories here are the steps:
Make edits on the Categories sheet (tab along the bottom). You can overwrite existing categories or add new ones to the bottom of the list in the provided rows. Don’t insert rows in the Categories sheet.
After editing existing categories, head over to the Transactions sheet and sort by the Category column so your transactions are grouped by category.
Update the “invalid” categories and use the fill handle to drag down the updated category to all other cells or re-categorize as needed if the transaction should be categorized differently.
Another option is to clear the existing categories, categorize a few examples, then run AutoCat with AI Suggest (Beta) enabled.
AI Suggest (Beta) is turned on by default for you so it should still be on unless you opted out right after your sheet finished building. You can run AutoCat from the Tiller Console at https://my.tiller.com by using the menu next to the open button after you click on the sheet's name.
Default Categories
The Foundation Template starts you out with a set of simple default categories and groups. You can use these categories out of the box if you don't want to spend time thinking about a more complex structure when you're getting started.
No matter your money situation, these default categories can be used as you're starting out with Tiller to help you quickly get a valuable breakdown of where your money is going. Feel free to use these as is, modify them slightly, completely overwrite them or clear out this sheet and start from scratch. The default categories are intended to be inspiration for you!
Custom categories
If you prefer to create a custom list of Categories you're totally free to modify the existing categories to support that. If you want some inspiration for how to structure and think about categories, you can check out this lively community topic.
The Foundation Template can support up to 200 unique categories within 20 unique groups.
We recommend that you customize your categories by typing over the default categories. If something doesn't resonate with you, just overwrite it and set the group and type accordingly.
If you've modified all the existing categories, we recommend adding new categories to the bottom of the list rather than inserting rows.
Once you've got a complete list you can sort the Categories sheet by the Group or Category column to see your categories organized more neatly.
All categories should have a Group and a Type assigned.
Hide a category from other reports by marking it as “Hide” in the “Hide from Reports” column on the Categories sheet.