Hi All
It’s been a few month setting up over the winter. I’ve signed up to Monzo and switched my expenses account at work to my Monzo account.
I had intended to use Monzo as an expenses card only.
I do 20-30 business expenses trips a year. Almost all of them overseas but some training courses in the UK.
I’m just about to do my first overseas trip. Let’s see how it works, I’ll keep you updated.
Cheers
Are you able to make a comparison with Revolut whilst on your travels
Just it would make sense to have something to reference against
I’ve landed. I was expecting a ‘trip’ to auto-start but it hasn’t. I possibly had the wrong expectation.
I’ve got an exchange rate and confirmation of payment.
I’ve never heard of Revoult. How can I compare them? I would need to make 2 sets of payments.
If you tap on the feed item that’s linked to those notifications, you should see the option to set all of your transactions to Expenses while you’re away.
You can also see from the options why the trip doesn’t start automatically 
Image from this blog post.
It doesn’t. It does auto end, though. On the day you come back. Enjoy Spain!
And be careful of ATM charges. Not from Monzo, but from the ATM network. Cajamar machines are free.
I should also clarify a few constraints
I need to enter all my expenses into my works software system.
I need to keep/attach scanned copies of all itemised receipts
I’m UK based so I need to submit evidence of the for-ex rate for each transaction.
In that case, be aware that the transaction notification is not the final amount. You won’t know the exact Sterling equivalent until the transaction is finalised in a few days.
Yes, understood.
I expect to see the transaction rate when I export my statement.
To be honest, the exchange rate alert is no use to me.
That sounds really useful
How do I tap on a feed item?
Found it. That is so going to be so useful. In fact, that is exactly the reason I switched all my expenses to Monzo
Having said that: I’ve already noticed the coffee I bought at the airport (considered as expenses) will not fall into the trip.
Ideally I’d like a ‘start/stop business trip’ button.
Me too, it’s being / been considered -
& developing the feature to give it more scope has been touched on by this card -
I’ve just realised I can manually change the category of my purchase at the airport to expenses. All my spending on this trip is now in expenses. It’s nice to be able to view at a glance what my spending is for the trip.
I’ve also just realised I can take a photo of my receipts and attach them to each purchase. I’ll be interested to see if the receipts can be exported with my statement.
I switched on airplane mode and I was able to add photos of my receipts, that means I’ll be able to do something productive instead of sat reading the news
Annoyingly my taxi driver would only accept cash.
I now only order a taxi that accepts card payments and check before I get in the taxi.
I’ve just transferred that amount (in sterling) to my main bank account and tagged it as expenses so I can track my total expenditure.
I’m on the way home now. So far it’s been painless, a couple of lessons have been learnt.
The next step is the expenses claim.
I haven’t received any spending report.
I have been able to export my expenses into a spreadsheet which should make completing the expense for quicker
I’m not able to export the expenses as a pdf. I’m not able to export my statement within a time window for the app. I’ve spoke to Monzo about this and they’re looking into it
Expenses in and approved. Exporting the ‘Expenses’ as a CCV file was useful.
I had to submit my March Statement as a pdf. It would be much neater if I could export my expenses trip as a pdf.
In Summary: Monzo hasn’t taken away the pain of expenses. I’ve made some marginal gains in efficiency. However; I still love the app and I believe the team will make changes that will improve the process 
I got my expenses report this morning. I bought a coffee in the UK (start of another business trip) so I guess that triggered the end of the trip
I got a welcome message on my recent trip.
I didn’t open the feed item until later that day after making some transactions. After selecting “Holiday” as how I would like the trip classed, it then retroactively changed all of the transactions made abroad until that point. Nice touch.
Unfortunately I forgot to screengrab.