✅ Custom Category Creation

I tend to put going out for drinks in the eating out category Maybe they should be renamed going out or something

I’d like an alcohol/‘going out’ category too but I do agree with this to a certain extent. This is where the notes and tag features really come into their own in terms of the versatility they offer.

Maybe. Still there are general things that people on the whole do that if they knew how much specifically might be useful for budgeting. Usually that’s something like alcohol or cigarettes or coffee. Not everyone but most people I know would probably say “God I spend way too much on insert one of those”.

I know there will be other things liked but we could at least start with the ones most likely to be used. I think alcohol is one. It might be useful for budgets and actually for health too, once you see how much you spend on it. And how often.

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I’ve seen quite a few people asking for a ‘Coffee’ category, so if the category was called ‘Drinks’ they could use that for coffee instead

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For someone with an alcohol addiction it may be useful to help monitor, manage and control their consumption?

Hi, please add education as a category! It’s such an important part of life nowadays!

Hi @Coyoteblue I’ve moved your request here to keep it together with other category requests.

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Could Family be used for this?

You could then put #Education within each transaction for even more detailed results.

Good idea!

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Monzo -

This app could be amazing. But honestly I need custom categories 1000% more than I need data visualisation and feedback about how much other people spend. I understand the challenge that custom categories pose for the features you want to develop, but I think your insistence on denying users this feature is going to be your downfall. Why not allow both options so that users can choose the functionality that makes sense for how they personally manage their money? I can think of a few ways this could be accomplished off the top of my head, and I’m sure you could to!

I want Monzo to succeed and I want to stay with y’all, but I the second someone else enters the market with an app that allows custom budgets Im out. Please don’t make me do that. It’s a common sense use case, listen to your users!

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I appreciate monzos view on custom categories but surely subcategories would be a compromise that works for both sides we can customise our own sub spending targets but keep the overall main categories for monzos use…
Entertainment… drinks, dates etc
Personal care… dental, haircuts

That way monzo could still work there overall algos and he users would have a more personalised experience.

I know i know this is what tags are meant to do but lets face it tags are useless in terms of planning only for totalling up past spend

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I also would like to see a clear cut way of monitoring my booze spending. Right now I use ‘entertainment’ with an addition of a tag #booze.

Issue is that there has to be a limited amount of categories for Monzo algorithm to categorise spendings accurately and automatically.

For that reason I wouldn’t propose adding more categories.

Instead flesh out the #TAGS functionality properly.

They’re great exactly because they can be manually tailored to each persons heart content without necessity for AI prediction.

Problem is that I have to type the tag manually every time without a clear repository tags I have already created to simply tap on.

Another problem is that tags and notes are the same thing, I.e. ‘#booze’ yields the same result as ‘booze’.

I hope Monzo is developing this into a coherent system where tags have their rightful and fully fleshed existence cut out for them.

Right now it’s not there but it seems to be going in the right direction.

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Hi all :wave:
I agree about customizing the categories.

In particular, I was looking for a category where I can assign all the work related expenses.
For example, the food I buy for work, travels, etc…

So that I can figure out how much I am spending for work :briefcase: and divide the bill from my private shopping :video_game:.

Thank you in advance :slight_smile:

there is an “expenses” category which could be used - you would have to shop separately - work / home - for groceries to allocate to expenses , but you could then search category and find out how much you are spending exactly ?

Hi,
I was using “expenses” to divide my personal shopping from the "shared-house shopping”.
I will give it a try and I will use “expenses” for the work shopping.
Thanks :wave:

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Absolutely think custom categories are needed. Without it the budgeting isn’t as useful (and sometimes just completely inaccurate).

We’ll end up with loads in “general” because it doesn’t quite fit anywhere else. Things such as charity, gifts etc.

I actually think “general” should be removed because it doesn’t say anything. Everything should be able to get categorised, and if it can’t be, should end up in an uncategorised state rather than general.

Is there a reason why Monzo don’t have a charity category?

I suspect it is because the current categories fit in to a neat 4 x 4 grid!

I’d very much like custom categories, or at least much more fine grained categories than the current ones. I still use You Need a Budget heavily and would like to reflect the spending categories in Monzo that I have in YNAB. Maybe you could do some sort of survey for the most desired new categories and then add these?

Categories in my opinion are extremely limiting when organising threads on forums and as a result should be kept to an absolute minimum. Categories act more to restrict the reach of the conversation rather than to expand it.

What monzo should do is enable tagging within their discourse community instead. Tagging is a much more dynamic and natural way for organising data and will allow for a natural evolution of the organisation over time as interests change.

Also by tracking the popularity of tags gives monzo an insight to the few essential categories they should create since it’s based directly off user demand.

Check out this article on tagging within discourse communities. https://blog.discourse.org/2017/10/its-time-we-talked-about-tags/

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Good Morning!

Just a couple of suggestions from me - would be really good to select the names and icons of my own spending categories such as Credit Card Payments or Loan Repayments etc. Also, separating our House Expenses from Bill’s would be great.

A purely cosmetic one here - but it would be great to be able to add a picture to the standing orders like the Direct Debits.

Thank guys - great Bank! For the first time I am excited to get my salary paid into my bank and leave there instead of spending it all!