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Using AI Suggest to automatically categorize transactions

AI Suggest allows Tiller's AI model automatically categorizes uncategorized transactions in your Google Sheet.

Written by Heather Phillips

Use this article to turn on AI Suggest, an optional AutoCat feature that uses an AI model to categorize transactions in your Tiller spreadsheet automatically. AI Suggest is available only on Tiller for Google Sheets spreadsheets that use Direct Fills.

What is AI Suggest?

AI Suggest is one of three ways AutoCat can categorize transactions, alongside Rules and Description Match. When AI Suggest is turned on, it sends your uncategorized transactions to an AI model, which suggests a category for each one.

AI Suggest is completely opt-in, meaning it's turned off by default, and you can toggle it on or off at any time in your AutoCat Settings.

AI Suggest only processes transactions that are still uncategorized after Rules and Description Match have run. See How to use AutoCat for automatic categorization to learn how AutoCat's three categorization methods work together.

Who can use AI Suggest

AI Suggest is available only on Tiller for Google Sheets spreadsheets that use Direct Fills. If your spreadsheet uses Sidebar Fills, upgrade to Direct Fills to access AI Suggest. AI Suggest is not currently available on Tiller for Microsoft Excel.

Turn on AI Suggest

  1. In your Google Sheet, open the Tiller Money Feeds sidebar.

  2. Click the gear icon next to AutoCat to open AutoCat Settings.
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  3. Turn on the AI Suggest toggle.

Once turned on, AI Suggest applies the next time you run AutoCat, either manually or automatically, if you have Auto Run on Fill turned on.

Review AI Suggest categorizations

Because AI Suggest applies categories using an AI model rather than criteria you defined yourself, we recommend reviewing its suggestions. Add a Review column to your Transactions sheet that highlights any transaction AI Suggest categorized that you haven't reviewed yet:

  1. Add a checkbox to column A, if it's blank and not already used for another purpose. Otherwise, add a new column, title it “Review” (or a name of your choice), and insert a checkbox (from the Insert menu) in every row of that column.

  2. Confirm the column letter of your Categorized By column. The default location is column Q. If you don't have a Categorized By column, insert one and title it “Categorized By” — see How to use AutoCat for automatic categorization for details.

  3. Select the Category column in your Transactions sheet by its header letter (commonly column D).

  4. Open the Format menu and select Conditional formatting.

  5. Change the Range so it starts at row 2 instead of row 1 (for example, D2:D instead of D1:D).

  6. Set the format rule to Custom formula is.

  7. Enter the formula below, adjusting the column letters to match your sheet. This example assumes Categorized By is in column Q and your Review checkbox is in column A: =AND($Q2="AI Suggest", $A2=FALSE)

  8. Choose a highlight color.

Once this is set up, any transaction AI Suggest categorized that you haven't checked off in your Review column will be highlighted. When you've confirmed or corrected the category, check the box to clear the highlight.

Exclude specific merchants from AI Suggest

If you'd rather AI Suggest skip a merchant it's unlikely to categorize correctly (e.g. Amazon purchases) create an AutoCat rule that assigns those transactions to a “Categorize Later” or “Skip” category using Description Contains. Because Rules always run before AI Suggest, the rule prevents AI Suggest from processing those transactions. See How to build AutoCat rules for instructions.

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