One of the benefits of Tiller is that you can link multiple financial accounts to one or more Tiller Sheets. However, having transactions from multiple accounts funneling into your Transactions sheet can get a little confusing if you use one account to pay off a balance or transfer money to another account, and both are linked to the same Tiller spreadsheet.

So how do we manage this without double counting that money? Usually, these kinds of transactions shouldn't be classified as spending or income. Instead they should use a "Transfer" category type.

Jump to:

A transfer is any movement of money between two accounts you have linked in Tiller. Common examples include:

When a transfer happens, it creates two transactions in your Transactions sheet:

When you categorize both as a Transfer type, they cancel each other out by summing to $0, so your budget and cash flow calculations stay accurate.

The Categories sheet includes a default Transfer category out of the box. Any category assigned the Transfer type will be excluded from budget dashboards and cash flow calculations.

You can create additional Transfer categories to track specific types of transfers more granularly. To add a new Transfer category:

When you pay your credit card balance from a checking account, both transactions appear in your sheet:

Categorize both as a Transfer type category such as Credit Card Payment. This prevents the payment from being counted as spending twice.

Note: If you're actively paying down credit card debt and want to budget for those payments, treat them as an Expense instead. See When to use Expense instead of Transfer below.

Learn more: How to use Tiller to get out of debt →

When you withdraw cash from an ATM:

This way your cash spending shows up in your budget without double-counting the withdrawal itself.

Learn more: How to track cash with Tiller →

Reimbursements: Create a Reimbursement Transfer category. Categorize each reimbursable purchase as Reimbursement, and when the reimbursement deposit arrives, categorize that as Reimbursement too. The two transactions cancel out.

Refunds: If you return an item, categorize both the original payment and the credit as a Refund Transfer category. Again, the two transactions cancel each other out to $0.

There are some cases where you might not want to use the transfer category for transactions where both accounts are linked because you want the outflowing transactions to show up on your budget.

Mortgages and car loans are debts, but once they're paid off they're considered an asset. Even though these are technically transfers (money moving between accounts), we often also want to account for these payments as expenses in our budget.

If you want to budget for how much you're saving or investing each month, treat those contributions as an Expense type category (e.g. IRA Contribution, Emergency Fund). This ensures your savings goals show up on your budget dashboard.

When you want a transfer to appear in your budget as an expense, but both the debit and credit transaction appear in your sheet, use this approach to avoid counting it as income:

Hiding the credit category from reports ensures that it's not being counted as actual income in your budget, and it won't affect your planned or actual cash flow, but allows you to categorize both transactions without having a transfer that doesn't ever sum up to $0.

There really is no "right" way to use transfers and whether or not you need or want to budget for them is up to you and should be based on your financial situation.

If you need more advice about transfers we recommend searching the Tiller Community to review existing discussions and topics on the following commonly related questions: