✅ Custom Category Creation

I would love to see a fuel/petrol category and a hair & beauty category which could be used for any kind of salon appointment/visit - nails/wax/tint etc :slight_smile:

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Good idea, I think this probably worthy of a top-level category for those who would use it.

If monzo adopted the idea of not showing categories if a user doesn’t use them, it’d be fine to have some top level ones like this which only certain people used (but those people would use them a lot).

Hoping we see some movement on this from Monzo this year, as their current set of categories and treatment of savings and income is pretty limited.

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Definitely looking forward to seeing a “Savings” category. Targets are currently useless until I can properly categorise internal transfers.

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Yes please add customisation options.
You can’t possibly fit the entire humanity spectrum of needs in 10 boxes.
For example I feel pretty disgusted that for all my music and creative spending I have only the choice of ‘Entertainment’ and ‘General’…Duuh

Hopefully subcategories will surface at some point. I could probably work with that instead, especially if they were customizable.

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Apparently a couple of new categories are coming soon, but no custom categories :man_shrugging:

https://community.monzo.com/t/custom-categories-15-new-category-requests/7018/41

Given the number of users posting about this over a lot of different threads, I think Monzo should reassess their position from a few years ago in light of how people are using their app, and the competitive landscape (most competitors have custom categories, most accounting software allows custom categories) and consider both adding to the current categories and whether it would really be so hard to add custom categories to their UI while keeping it simple for those who have no need for them.

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Was about to say exactly the same!

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Subcategories makes the most sense to me - e.g. rename “eating out” to “food and drink” then have “lunch” “beers” etc. Splitwise does this really well.

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This. Maybe it is, but it’s too early to share?

I’d vote for custom sub-categories, or a revamp of Notes, maybe using hashtags

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Please add the option to add custom categories guys, this seems like the perfect opportunity as you are redesigning anyway :smiley:

If you are trying to implement a good approach to budgeting within the app, which it seems you are, you cannot do that without allowing people to create their own categories. Everybody has different requirements on the categories they use, surely it is more productive for the Monzo team to provide people the flexibility to create their own, whilst you maintain a core set that various spending will fall into (unless they are previously tagged with a custom category). This just seems like an absolute no brainer to me?

Also one for the suggestion box, envelope budgeting would be nice to add whilst doing this as well, just food for thought?.. :smile:

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From what I understand the main reason why they’re not giving us custom categories is that they want all users to use the same ones. Up to a point this makes sense. If they can understand and analyse data, they’ll be better equipped to develop a better bank. We’re more likely to see subcategories and/or tags at some point.

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This new spending design looks much more sophisticated, I can’t wait for it to land.

I must add though, I want a category for ‘Coffee’!!! :coffee:️ It’s one of the main things I wonder about in terms of spend. Either that, or perhaps some way of automatically hashtagging such spend, so that they can be searched for and a automated cost breakdown (for the week or month for example) be provided.

I don’t feel that the Monzo team managing a set of categories is a viable solution long term and for a large scale of users. Sure, it covers general people who use it sporadically but it will not be sufficient for anyone who budgets properly and they will always look elsewhere, thus making the work they are doing on budgeting / spending redundant.

Do you have a reference to the comment on using spending data to help develop the platform? I struggle to see how analysing where people spend their money helps to further development?

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A good set that can be centrally added to I think does make sense. But generic enough that custom sub categories beneath can give the real context.

Personal care and gifts for me all would come under shopping.

Groceries, fuel would be under bills.

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Found it:

https://community.monzo.com/t/custom-categories-1/649/14?u=mrarkadin

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Excellent, thanks for that @MrArkadin. That gives a good insight into the way they see things going. Seems they are going for simplicity and hoping a third party will come out with good a budgeting app to complement. Cant say it is what I was hoping for as I thought Monzo would allow me to ditch the need for duplicating data entry, but its nice to understand the logic behind why this is lacking at least :slight_smile:

I have mixed feeling about the whole amount of categories that there are, or will be when this gets released. I mean, I’m all for having as many categories as possible, but only if they are of use to the user. What I mean by that is, have thousands of categories, but only show the ones I use. If there is a coffee category, only show it if I have tagged a payment as coffee, and only on a month by month basis, so if I spend money on coffee in January, but not February, only show it in January.

Coffee would be a no-go for me, I don’t frequent coffee shops ever. There are other categories that many will use that I don’t, and I don’t want them clogging up my app. But I also think custom categories would be messy. It’s a tricky one.

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I can see how a Family category could be useful for people with … families.

I have a family, it won’t be useful for the reasons stated - like many families my joint family spending is mostly on a joint account.

Personal care - my spending would be approaching zero but that’d be fine if you can hide categories with no spending.

Gifts would be great, perhaps including charity donations

Taxes is another one which everyone self employed might appreciate

Lots of ideas for these from community members, I hope monzo runs a consultation of some kind on categories.

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I still think sub categories would be best. I would put a coffee, beer, and deliveroo categories under eating out for example

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I want a lunch category coz eating out could mean anytime.

I also want to be able to multi tag i.e. I take an Uber and class it as expenses, next Uber is then set as expenses but it’s not. It should be both transport AND expenses or I go to the pub for lunch, this would be lunch but then in the evening this would be entertainment and if i am with clients it would also be expenses.

I also want to name my own categories

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