“Left to pay” is the figure shown inside the Manage tab of the Pot with allocated Direct Debits, where it calculates how many Direct Debits are left to pay until the end of the month.
I think the “Left to pay” pot feature is extremely useful for my monthly budgeting and the predicted amounts for Direct Debits generally work well when they’re fixed amounts every month.
However, with Credit Card bills and utility bills, they can be different each month and so the “Left to pay” is off, sometimes by a large amount, and therefore cannot be relied upon. I’m maintaining a separate budget elsewhere, which goes against the intended purpose of the Monzo app.
There are many ideas in the forum for big changes to improve the functionality but I would just like to see one small thing:
The ability to manually edit the predicted amount for a Direct Debit.
When I’ve already received the bill, I know how much I have to set aside in the pot, so just editing the amount with the bill total would put the “Left to pay” figure straight.
Update: Added explanation of the “Left to pay” feature.
Similar to this someone wanted to amend the £1 pre-auth for pay at the pump and the likes to put in the actual amount in until the full amount was taken.
If I remember correctly it was said that it couldn’t / shouldn’t be done.
If this is coming from a pot, can’t you just send the predicted extra to said pot and tag it appropriately so it comes off your left to spend once?
It possibly wouldn’t be practical to put in place, the only other solution is if you paid said bills by standing order instead and then you could amend to suit the amounts you’ve predicated.
Currently, I calculate what I actually have to pay in a month outside the Monzo app, put the correct amount into my Direct Debits Pot and everything is fine, the bills are paid.
But the “left to pay” in the pot is showing the wrong amount because of the incorrect predicted amount. If the “left to pay” was correct, I could rely on it and use the Monzo app for all budgeting throughout every month.
Because I like the “Left to pay” feature so much, I separate Fixed Direct Debits and Variable Direct Debits into separate pots, so the “Left to pay” for the Fixed Direct Debits Pot is always reliable.
I just changed my credit card monthly payment from minimum to a fixed amount. It would be nice if I could manually override the predicted amount for this direct debit.
It’ll amend once your credit card provider requests the next payment, of the new fixed amount you are paying, and you’ll see a new predicted payment notification within the app.
I’d also love to be able to edit upcoming DD amounts.
I pay off my credit cards in full every month, so the day the statement comes out, I know how much the next bill we be, several weeks later, but I still have to manually add up the cards, and put that much aside in the pot they come from, and ignore it telling me that there’s insufficient funds if this month is lower than last month, etc. etc. It would be great if I could put the DD amounts into the predicted amounts for the upcoming payments, and then the app would tell me how much is needed, accurately warn me if it isn’t there.
Just bumping this topic, I’ve got slightly addicted to the Monzo trends / targeting section of the app and find it really useful. Except things like energy bills make a bit of a mess of it.
A one-off change from Octopus Energy to catch up or refund an account can affect the balance the next month… This month it’s over-estimating the bill by 3x which is great as it’ll free up a chunk of money in my target next week - but it’s not ideal for planning either.
- but it’s not ideal for planning either.