How to Import Bank Transactions into Google Sheets

Spreadsheets are one of the most common ways that people track their finances. Most banks and other financial institutions provide ways to export your data that you can then import into a spreadsheet. But there are several important steps to follow to get your data imported properly.

With Tiller, you can automatically track your finances in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. Tiller connects your banks to your spreadsheets and automatically tracks your daily spending, income, and balances in easy, customizable templates. Getting your accounts and transactions into your Tiller Foundation Template is the first step to getting your money organized. Tiller offers some automated ways to import your data that make it go much faster than if you manually make all the adjustments. 

This post will also help you if you aren’t using Tiller and are just importing your bank transactions manually into a spreadsheet. 

When you link a bank account to Tiller, it pulls in a few weeks or more of transaction data. In some cases, it will even gather a few months of data, and going forward Tiller will automatically post future transactions into your spreadsheet. Voila! Automated. 

But when you get started with Tiller, you may need to go back even further — for example, to the beginning of the year, or to when you started a business. Manually adding data can also come in handy if certain accounts can’t be added to Tiller or if you were already using a spreadsheet to track your money and want to bring in all your history.

The manual import process is pretty straightforward, but it does require several steps. We’ve outlined them for you here in case you have a similar need or just want to see all your data in one place. Sometimes the more data you have available and categorized, the more intelligence you can build around your spending.

Start with your bank

Log in to your bank or financial institution’s website and download a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file for all the transactions you want to add to your Tiller spreadsheet. You may need to specify the date range before grabbing the data to ensure everything you want is included.

Now that you have the data, the next step is to format it for Tiller. 

If you’re using Tiller for Google Sheets the best practice is to create a new Google Sheet in your Google Drive. You can easily do this by clicking the “New” button from your Google Drive and then select the “File Upload” option. You’ll then navigate to where the downloaded CSV file is stored on your computer, and you can upload it to your Google Drive. From here you can open the CSV file using Google Sheets. 

If you’re using Microsoft Excel for Tiller, you can open the CSV file directly in Microsoft Excel and use the same steps below to prepare your data for pasting into your Tiller-powered Excel workbook.

Formatting the data

When you’re working with the data from the CSV, you’ll need to edit it so that the columns match the column order of your Tiller Transactions sheet (or any other sheet you’re adding the data to). 

The export may have some extra columns and data that are not needed by Tiller. You can delete any columns you don’t need. 

Then, rearrange the columns. In Google Sheets, do this by hovering over the column header until you see a hand icon, which will allow you to drag and drop a column into a new location in the sheet. In Excel, you’ll need to click the column header letter to select the entire column, then hover over the right or left edge of the column (down in the rows area, not the header), then hold the shift key while clicking and dragging to re-arrange the rows.

You’ll at least need Date, Description, and Amount columns if you’re using the Tiller Foundation Template, and make sure to add a “Category” column in the correct position as well to match your Tiller Transactions sheet.

You may also want to add other data for your transactions that the Tiller Transactions sheet includes such as Account, Institution, and Account # if those aren’t included in the export from your bank. If you want the Month and Week details for the data you’re manually adding, you’ll want to check out our help center guides on How to Manually Add Month Data or How to Manually Add Week Data to prepare that in the export file before moving it into your Tiller spreadsheet. These datapoints aren’t necessarily required, but some reports or visualizations may need them in order to display this manually added data. It’s not necessary to fill in data for the Transaction ID or Account ID, which are usually hidden in your Tiller Transactions sheet.

Once you have the columns ordered and filled in to match your Transactions sheet, select all the data, copy it, and then open up the Tiller spreadsheet where you want to add the data.

Adding the new data to your Tiller Transactions sheet

First, be sure to remove any filters you have turned on in the Transactions sheet. Here’s a guide for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel in case you need help with those steps. 

Scroll to the bottom of the transactions sheet where there are empty cells. If you need to add more cells, there is a handy button at the very bottom in Google Sheets that will allow you to add more rows. Click the first empty cell that corresponds to the first column that you’re pasting from the export.

Paste the new transaction data you copied from the other spreadsheet into your Transactions sheet. 

Sorting the new data

To get your newly added Transactions in the correct newest to oldest chronological order you’ll want to sort the Transactions sheet by the Date column. Be sure to turn the filter back on and simply click the filtering and sorting arrow on the Date column and choose the Z to A option.

Automated Community Solutions

The above steps will work for any CSV export format from your bank and are the easiest option to follow if you don’t have more advanced spreadsheet skills. 

There are a few community options that help automate these steps, but not all export formats are supported or they may require more advanced technical skills to set up. 

• The Tiller Community Solutions add-on. This community-supported add-on offers a few community-built tools for importing data from other tools (Mint, Personal Capital, YNAB, and more).

• The Basic Bank CSV. This allows you to build a workflow for your bank’s CSV format. You can also record a macro to easily re-format your bank’s CSV format for use with this basic bank CSV.
• Simple CSV Import. There are more steps to setting this one up, and it will require you to add a custom script to your spreadsheet, but it is by far the most flexible option for more easily creating a re-usable mapping for various bank CSVs.
• CSV Spreadsheet Importer Multi-tool. No scripts required. This in-sheet option transforms your data in the spreadsheet and gives you some options for making sure you don’t import transactions a second time, but is a little more complicated to understand and set up.