Bug: Credits show as cleared transactions on app leading to big issues in calculating balance
When a payment is made using Monzo, it will immediately show as a pending transaction. Once cleared, it posts to one’s Monzo account as a cleared transaction. However, if that transaction is immediately cancelled before it clears (and thus refunded), the credit for that transaction shows up as a cleared transaction immediately. This means that debits are pending but credits are always cleared. The two should remain in pending state and just net off once they clear - like all other banks do. The current method makes it extremely difficult to tell what is going on in your account and produces a lot unnecessary transactions. When exporting to other software it is almost impossible to work out what is going on and discourages users from using Monzo
So monzo shows all their own transactions the same (only changing pending at the bottom of a transaction screen) everything else remains clear as day.
If you’re referring to pending transactions with external linked accounts, the data provided by the other bank is that the payment is still pending, even though another has been received.
There’s nowhere in the monzo app that’ll segregate monzo spending into pending and refunded, but external third party applications may show the view as above akin to linked account payments.
But if I was to buy with my monzo card, it’ll go straight into the appropriate spending category, as if it was never pending within the monzo app. You’d only know it was pending by tapping the transaction in the Monzo app and looking at the bottom at the footer to show PENDING in the transaction name.
Any transaction on Monzo is pending until it clears. At which point it no longer shows in grey and becomes a cleared transaction. I.e it posts to your account.
Sometimes merchants (like Uber) take the money from your account as a pre check. Then if you cancel your Uber, it refunds that amount to your account.
Ever other bank would net off the pending charge with the credit (the latter also being pending)
Monzo for some reason maintains the pending transaction (for a month) and shows the credit (which is actually also pending) as having cleared.
It makes understanding what’s going on in your account very difficult
Monzo handles that correctly (for their own transactions) for debits, but for some reason credits immediately show as cleared and don’t change from that
Secondly, your email is showing in your profile, you might want to change that. @AlanDoe is there not a default setting that can be changed to prevent that on Discourse?
Thirdly - if you are talking about external connected accounts and pending transactions, then it’s not something Monzo have much control over. A lot of banks delete and then re-add the transaction, so if Monzo were to treat it as not pending and then it suddenly re-appeared you might be in a worse place financially.
I mention connected accounts, because I can’t see where else this is an issue. For payments made by Monzo using Monzo, it normally sorts itself straight away?
This is for payments made using the Monzo card. It means that the only state for a credited transaction is “cleared” and means (when exporting to .OFX or other open banking apps) that your account always looks like you have more in it than you actually do.
Perhaps American Express and Barclaycard work around this by checking if there is a pending debit transaction in your account from the same retailer for the same amount on the same date and net them off against each other?
I’m still confused. When you export to for example Emma, it’ll show you the available balance, which takes accounts pending and cleared transactions, no? And when you export it via google sheets the same?
Sorry, but this experience doesn’t tally with mine.
I think some examples might help here, because I can’t see what you mean - that’s not the experience I’ve ever had with Monzo.
“pending debits” - purchases will show as taken and your available balance will update. I believe that’s the same in Emma too but can’t check.
Pending credits will show as grey until they clear and then show as solid green, no?
What I still don’t get is where is this a problem? The Monzo app only ever shows you the available balance, so it’ll always be right. As I understand does Emma etc?
The £10.72 debit rightly shows as pending, the subsequent £10.72 credit immediately came up as cleared - not as you say (and one would expect) as a pending credit. Yes, the balance on Monzo shows correctly, but TrueLayer (and apps like YNAB, Emma etc that use that API) import a pending debit and a cleared credit transaction of £10.72, showing a net gain of £10.72, rather than net net £0 as one would expect.
This also works differently to other banks/credit cards like Amex that would handle the above by showing a pending £10.72 that eventually disappears (reducing overall lines of transactions, which gets very messy after a while)
Other banks seem to process this much better even if that is the case. It just becomes very difficult to monitor what exactly is going on in ones account…Yes the overall balance shows correctly, but a lot of pending debits and credits unnecessarily show which means it’s impossible to understand transactions
