✅ Custom Category Creation

Monzo will be adding more categories, once the current accounts have launched -

https://community.monzo.com/t/custom-categories-15-new-category-requests/7018/7?u=alexs

But it looks like they won’t be giving users the option to add their own categories in the foreseeable future & here’s why -

https://community.monzo.com/t/custom-categories-multi-category-transactions/649/14?u=alexs

Subcategories seem like a more likely solution but apparently, the Monzo team haven’t come up with a final solution yet. In the meantime, you can add emoji to your transaction’s notes to track some types of spending…

In the meantime, please do share the categories that you particularly need so that they can be considered when the new categories (I expect new ones will be added) are set up.

1 Like

hashtags may become too messy, agree
However, when I am trying to check how much I am spending on takeways during my office hours, I am a bit annoyed about Eating Out and Groceries classification-> Pret is classified as Eating out, Starbucks and ITSU as well, and my average bill there is 5 pounds. I naturally just want to put it together as “food on the go” or “lunch at work” category.
Then a proper restaurant can be classified as Eating out, where the bill exceeds 18 pounds, for example.

1 Like

I see where you’re coming from :thinking:

Perhaps you could change the category for those merchants to Groceries (which is where I put all of my minor, everyday spending) so that you can see the total you’re spending on the more expensive Eating Out purchases?

Once you’ve set the category for a merchant once, Monzo remembers it so you won’t have to keep changing it every time.

This would be a cool way to not only keep track of what you give to charity if you’re a regular donator, but also to encourage people to give more to charitable causes.

It would allow people to budget for charitable donations and see what they can afford to spend on it.

It would be great if you could add this, and I think it could make a real difference!

1 Like

+1 for charity category. Would be really helpful for tax!

Hi, I can share my most needed categories if necessary, but when I used to use Expense IQ, which was the best app available for the job, it allowed me custom categories. This is essential to track my very individual budgets, and I had it spread over 20 categories, a few of which I don’t expect you to add to your list, like money I spend on rock climbing or my fish tank!
I understand you want to aggregate your data but is this more important than giving your customers the choices they need??

To add to this, putting those under sport and fitness and /or hobbies doesn’t cut it as I need to know what I’m spending on individual pastimes. For example, I spend money on different forms of sport and fitness, but if I end up spending over 60 a month on using the climbing gym, then I know I’m better off joining that gym and being a member for extra benefits. I can’t work that out if it’s lumped into sport and fitness…etc etc

I suppose an alternative way of looking at this is Monzo are choosing a constraint which will ultimately save you money, over saving you from having to apply a workaround, in order to carry on budgeting using the approach that you want to.

Between adding emoji to notes as tags, the additional categories that I expect will be added, the ability to export data (iOS only, for now) & the functionality that 3rd party developers will be able to build, once the API is ready, I think we’re in a fairly good position to get to the analysis that we want.

I’d hope that Monzo will provide a more flexible solution themselves though & I know it’s something they’re trying to figure out. I’m sure my approach to budgeting is more simple than others too.

Hugo has been pretty clear, in the post that I provided the link to above, that custom categories won’t be added in the foreseeable future though so it’s definitely worth sharing your ideas for additional categories :slight_smile:

In case it helps - you might be able to worth this out by checking your transactions based on the merchant, rather than the category there?


Posts can be edited here btw :raised_hands:

1 Like

The ease of adding custom categories in Tide is something that would be great in Monzo, to provide what customers want rather than tell us what we want :slight_smile:

If you’re going to insist on going there :wink:

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse”

Henry Ford possibly.

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

Steve Jobs

Which is not to say that Monzo shouldn’t listen to customer feedback - as we’ve seen in this community, they do - but I think we should reserve judgement on which is the more beneficial feature until we’ve seen what Monzo are able to do, when they start offering these insights based on the standard categories & then if it sucks, say so :slight_smile:

Choosing an approach that the designers think will benefit the majority of users does not mean that Monzo’s “telling [the remaining] users what they want” either - it’s a compromise.

It’s been a bit of a pain in Tide for us tbh. We now have approx 30 categories as one of our team members is quite category-happy!

1 Like

If you do decide to add such a category, it would be a good opportunity to measure how that impacts behavior. You could also publish the total monthly donations of all Monzo users.

On a practical note, being able to find all donations can be useful when filling out tax returns.

1 Like

@sjors there have also been some really cool ideas around some way to automatically donate small change rounded up from your transactions. A few community members were working on a feature like this last year at one of our hackathons last year, worth taking a look! Small change charity donations

1 Like

I completely agree that this category should be there for all the reasons above but also it’d be really useful to be able to isolate all charitable donations for the purposes of tax deductions on self assessment.

What does it take to get an idea like this past the finish line?

3 Likes

To state the obvious, it takes Monzo agreeing with us and doing it. We can do no more than ‘suggest’ (which is the way I think it should be).

1 Like

Now that I’m on the current account I’ll be switching my Direct Debits - some of which are to charities, so a mighty plus one on a Charity category from me.

I’m all for getting this Category in the Monzo app. I’ve just donated via bank to BBC CIN and I know people that donate regularly via Just Giving and monthly to other charities.

Come on Monzo team add this one into categories. It really is a no brainier.

3 Likes

+1 from me to a “Charity” or “Giving” category. Would really like to see that included especially now we can transfer our direct debits to Monzo

Thanks

Tom

3 Likes

+1 on charity category — now that the current account is no longer beta, it feels more pressing. Just moved my direct debits over, would love to have a clear view of how charity fits into overall spending. Also great for tax returns.

I’m not fussed about the rounding up to the nearest pound thing personally, I prefer a fixed amount I can budget for.

Definitely, would love to have Charity as a category, and like OP mentioned; it might get more people doing it through awareness.