Ability to catogorise pot withdrawal transactions

As a public Monzo user
I would like to catogorise a withdrawal transactions
So that I can balance my monthly budgets accordingly


Background

I’d like the ability to apply a catagory to a green (credit +), transaction, such as a pot withdrawal. This seems to be a feature for refunds at the moment, but not for pots. For examples, I spend £20 at amazon - my shopping budget goes down - I return the item because I didn’t want it - my shopping budget goes back up. Perfect at the moment.


As-Is Scenario

However, let’s say I have a pot for a really fancy DMC watch I’m saving up for, completely separate to my budgets. I save up £200 over 6 months and finally I’m ready to crack open that pot.

Let’s say my shopping budget is £100. I withdraw the £200 from the pot moments before I go marching into the shop. I buy the watch for £200. Then I look at my budgets - and here is the problem - my shopping budget of £100 is now completely blow up - having taken the transaction for £200, it has counts the purchase as “shopping” and makes me look like I’ve way over spent.

This has always been a problem for me - put money aside ready for something, then when I’m ready I withdraw, and my budgets just go way off, making them useless. I’m suggesting that the pot withdrawal has the option to adjust budgets accordingly.


Ideal Scenario

I save up £200 for my watch, and my monthly shopping budget is £100. I crack open the pot, and I take 200 - catagorising my withdrawal as shopping - then my shopping budget goes up to £300. I walk into the store, buy the watch for £200, and I have £100 left in my hopping budget for the money.


So there are workarounds, I sometimes have to go into my budgets and manually adjust them upwards to accommodate - but then I have to mentally add up all the budgets and change the number at the top. I’m open to seeing how other people deal with this.

I have about 12 pots set up for different occasions, and I mirosave to them all year round, ready for those events. It is just withdrawing is such an disruption to the overall budget and balance, it is such a pain!

When I noticed my uber transaction returning to my account under the ‘transport’ budget, I thought - man I wish pots did this.

Thoughts?

Have you tried exclude from spending summary on the transaction?

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That’s a good suggestion, I think sometimes it is an okay workaround and sometimes not. If it a one off payment like the watch example I used, it can be manageable depending on the scenario.

Another example - let’s say I have a pot for ‘Festival 2020’. I might save £1000 for 2 years, and then on the weekend of the event I might start spending bits of the money in that pot. Some might be taxis, food, accommodation, merchandise, medicine etc. At this point I would have to go line by line and withdraw equal amounts from the pot, then go back into each transaction and exclude them

I just feel like there must be a better way. Maybe I’m just using pots wrong? :sweat_smile:

Without digging too deep into your usage, it feels you’re maybe complicating matters a tad.

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Probably yeah :sob:

There’s lots of talk in the community about what types of pots everyone is creating and saving, but no one ever seems to talk about how they actually withdraw from them.

Would love to know how yourself and others actually use pots when it comes to redeeming money from them?

I’ve kept it fairly simple. A couple of pots for ring-fencing funds and, most recently, a pot from which to directly fund a monthly direct debit.

Sorry, I mean specifically your withdrawal process from the pots :sweat_smile:

If I get your meaning, withdrawing funds from a regular pot is by selecting the “withdraw” or “-“ button. The funds are withdrawn to the main account.

The DD or regular payment pot facility is relatively new. In essence, once you’ve set up such a payee, you can choose to pay from a specific pot. That becomes an automatic function.

(I’ve set one up but it has yet to activate - it’s due at the end of the month).

That make sense, @denby182?

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That interesting, I’ve never thought if pots being used as a way to pay individuals.

My questions was more to do with how that withdrawal effects your budgets:

Do you withdraw the whole pot when it is complete?
Do you exclude from your summary so that it doesn’t max out your budget?
Do you have to manually adjust your budgets to accommodate for this?
Once money is withdrawn to your main account how soon do you spend the money?
Or in reverse - do you only withdraw to recover after you’ve made the transaction first?

Sorry for all the questions - but these are some of the challenges I have around pots. I’m

I’m afraid I can’t give any insight into the impact pots have on my budgeting, as I don’t actively utilise the budget features in the app.

I do the festival thing each year… I either exclude it all from summary or categorise everything as “Holiday” or “Expenses” to see what I spent at the festival.

I also delete the pot as I enter the festival and then just go and enjoy myself. I let my numerical obsession take over once I’m home haha

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Thanks for your insight so far :grin:

I depend on my budgets strickly, tells me exactly how much money I can spend each month - this the problem when pots effect them inaccurately. Functionality for refunds is there, just need to add it for pot withdrawals :thinking:

Very nice :slight_smile: Move the whole pot into your account and then spend freely?

I suppose I would want to then see how much I actually spent out of that lump sum and then move it back for next year - or somewhere else.

And again, that would all work perfectly if pot withdrawals adjusted budgets in the same way refunds do :pensive: