Allow us to manually change expected direct debit date

Just an idea that I think could be helpful in a reasonable amount of cases!

Currently the expected next date of a DD that’s set to monthly is the same calendar date as it went out last month.

However, this isn’t always accurate as they only go out on non-bank holiday weekdays. So if a DD date changes to be a day or two later because of this, Monzo expects the next one to be later too, even if it’s not.

This behaviour in itself isn’t usually too troublesome, but if the DD falls on or just before payday/the end of your budget period it can cause issues with bill pots/committed spends, as Monzo sometimes expects the payment to go out in the next budget period when it will actually go out in this one.

My proposal is that this default behaviour continues, but in the transaction there’s an option to manually override this and select a date in the same way as you can select a summary start date (this date or the next working day after it). Then only people for whom it’s causing issues have to bother with it, and only for payments that matter. Alternatively maybe the clever folks at Monzo could come up with a smarter more automatic way to do this, like automatically using the earliest historical date that a DD has gone out.

I try to avoid having any DDs near payday because of this, but I have one pesky one that I can’t get rid of. I know some companies seem to have nonsensical systems that charge DDs days later than expected for no apparent reason too, so this would help with that… What’s really important is not the date it actually goes out, but the earliest date it COULD go out, and making sure the money is ready for it then.

All Direct Debits follow the same cycle.

It’s just some businesses work out the payment schedule so that it always falls on the same day (or the Mon after if weekend or Tue on bank hol) like council tax, whilst others set the date chosen as the start of the cycle which plays havoc in when it actually comes out.

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All of mine adhere to the same date or next working day after apart from one which has gone out on the following dates recently:

1 Oct Tues
2 Sep Mon
31 Jul Weds
2 Jul Tues
3 Jun Mon
2 Apr Tues
4 Mar Mon
31 Jan Thurs
3 Jan Thurs

I can’t even figure out the pattern there lol!

But luckily that’s not my one that’s around payday, so I can at least predict that one manually.