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Transitioning from Money in Excel to Tiller

Transitioning from Money in Excel to Tiller

Learn how to migrate your Money in Excel data to the Tiller Foundation Template for Microsoft Excel
Heather Phillips avatar
Written by Heather Phillips. Updated over a week ago

Start fresh with Tiller

The easiest way to get started with Tiller is to start fresh in a new workbook. Follow the steps below to get started with our Foundation Template for Microsoft Excel which offers Monthly and Yearly budget sheets plus a Balances sheet where you organize your account balances and see a quick tally of your net worth.

📺 You can also watch our on-demand recorded Excel Foundations webinar that demonstrates these steps and walks you through how to set up and use the Foundation Template.

If you want to migrate your Money in Excel template data follow the steps below and then move on to the next section for migrating your data.

  1. If you haven't already, use this link to sign up for Tiller and start a free 60-day trial with Tiller

    1. This link prompts you to choose an account to authenticate into the Tiller service, creates an account, and signs you in to the Tiller Console. If you have already started a trial with Tiller use the login provider (Microsoft or Google) and the login identity (email address) you used to start your trial.

  2. Add accounts on the Tiller Console

    1. You must connect at least one financial institution to get started with an Excel spreadsheet powered by Tiller.

    2. For the best experience, be sure to connect the same accounts that you were tracking with Money in Excel.

    3. If you have issues adding an account, try a different institution, and then come back to that one after reviewing our troubleshooting guide.

  3. Click “Create a spreadsheet” then “Start with Microsoft Excel”

    1. This will download the Tiller Foundation Template to the folder where your downloads are saved.

  4. Open this file and rename it with a unique name and save it to a location where you will remember.

    1. If you opt to store your file on OneDrive, make note of the OneDrive account that is signed in to Microsoft Excel when you save it.

  5. Install the Tiller Money Feeds Excel add-in

    1. Open the Insert ribbon at the top of your Excel workbook

    2. Click “My Add-ins”

    3. Choose “Store”

    4. Search for Tiller Money Feeds

    5. Follow the prompts to install the add-in

    6. ⚠️ Please note, the add-in only works in versions of Excel installed via a Microsoft 365 subscription.

  6. Setup Tiller Money Feeds in your new workbook

    1. Open the Data ribbon

    2. Click the “Tiller Money Feeds” icon

    3. Click “Sign in to Tiller” and sign in to the account you used to subscribe to Tiller

    4. Link the workbook

    5. Click “Link Accounts” to select accounts you would like to link to this sheet, preferably the same ones you tracked with Money in Excel

    6. Click “Confirm”

    7. Click the “Fill” button to fill the latest transaction and balance data for those accounts.

If you want to start fresh with Tiller, you’re all set and can follow along the guide to using the Tiller Foundation Template here or watch the video below to learn more about how to set it up for budgeting and cash flow tracking.

Otherwise, continue on below to migrate your data.

Optional: Migrating your Money in Excel data to your Tiller workbook

If you’d like to migrate your data from your Money in Excel workbook to your new Tiller workbook, continue with the steps below. These steps assume that your columns in the Money in Excel workbook are still set to the default order.

⚠️ If you customized your column order, deleted, or inserted columns, please carefully copy and paste the data to match Tiller's columns where Merchant in Money in Excel = Description in Tiller.

  1. Open the Money in Excel workbook that has the data you’d like to migrate.

  2. Migrate your categories

    1. Navigate to the Categories sheet (tab along the bottom).

      1. Select the first category in the list (but not the header row keyword “Category”) then hold shift and click the last category to select the rest of the categories in the list.

      2. Right click and choose Copy or use CMD/CTRL + C.

      3. Back in your Tiller workbook navigate to the Categories sheet.

      4. Clear the default categories, groups, and types from the sheet leaving the headers in row 1.

      5. Right click the first category cell and choose “Paste Special > Values”

        1. Note: Using “Paste Special > Values” makes sure the formatting is consistent with the rest of the Tiller workbook’s formatting rather than pulling the formatting from the Money in Excel workbook.

    2. Migrate category type

      1. Repeat the steps (a.i - a.v) above for the Type data to move it from your Money in Excel workbook to the Tiller workbook Categories sheet.

    3. Assign groups to your categories

      1. The group is the larger classification that your categories fall into. Read more on how we think about this structure and how it’s a little different than Money in Excel’s subcategories here. You can also do this step later.

    4. Decide if subcategories are important to you.

      1. If you have not assigned subcategories to any transactions in your Money in Excel workbook, delete this column in the Transactions sheet of your Money in Excel workbook then move on to step 3 below.

      2. If you were using subcategories in Money in Excel, insert a column to the left of the Amount column (click the Amount column and choose “Insert” from the Home menu) in the Tiller workbook’s Transactions sheet and title it Subcategory.

        1. The column will adopt the data validation from the Category column. To remove it,

          1. Open the Data ribbon.

          2. Click the Data Validation icon.

          3. Check the “Apply these changes to all other cells…” option

          4. Click “Clear”

          5. Click “Ok”

        2. Note: the Tiller template does not use subcategories or have a place to define subcategories so if you choose to move this data over it will be for historical purposes.

        3. The Group > Category structure in Tiller is very similar and supports a category/subcategory mindset. Read more about that here.

  3. Migrate your transactions

    1. Compare the transactions in both workbooks to identify where the overlap of duplicates starts in your Tiller workbook’s Transactions sheet and clear these from the Transactions sheet in your Tiller workbook.

      1. Tiller can fill 30 - 90 days' worth of historical transaction data so you may need to look back that far to identify the first transaction that only exists in the Money in Excel workbook.

      2. Tip: If you have many accounts, use a filter to help you review one account at a time.

    2. In your Money in Excel Transactions sheet,

      1. Select all the data in the sheet starting with the first transaction’s date (but not the header keyword “Date”)

      2. Hold the shift key

      3. Scroll and select (while still holding shift) the last transaction’s institution cell to select all the transactions you want to migrate.

      4. Right click and choose “Copy”

    3. In your Tiller workbook’s Transactions sheet, right click the first empty cell in column A (the Date column) and choose “Paste Special > Values & Number Formatting” to paste your transactions into the workbook.

    4. Finally, sort the transactions sheet by the Date column from Z>A if your transactions are not in newest to oldest order.

The Tiller Foundation Template has some additional columns that will be blank for the migrated transactions. It’s okay to leave those columns blank for migrated data.

Now you’re all set and can follow along the guide to using the Tiller Foundation Template here or watch the video below to learn more about how to set it up for budgeting and cash flow tracking.

Learn more about using Tiller with Microsoft Excel on our Help Center here.

Video demo of getting started with the Tiller Foundation Template

Additional Resources

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