Oh my god this, all day long. I want to see a proper consult on categories, surely that’s the best way to reach a happy medium that would suit almost the entire customer base?
I really think it’s arrogant of Monzo to assume that they know what categories I need. Or that that for the sake of some analytics on the aggregate user data which may or may not be useful (it’s not!), they refuse to allow us to add categories. For eg: I want to be able to aggregate all my expenses for kids, but there is no option for that. Or for fitness. Unfortunately this is a deal breaker, and I’ll be putting off using Monzo for now.
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This. It is exactly how I feel and despite Monzo explaining why, I find it wrong that they feel they know what categories every one of their users will need. Not to mention the fact that users will not bother correctly categorising transactions if they do not have the categories they want / need so any analytics they have will be purely based of their auto categorisation.
Also the development aspect of them having to continually update categories, I don’t see why they would want to condemn themselves to that.
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This isn’t half a bad suggestion! I was against continual adding of categories (the time required to scroll them all!), but you’re right, just pop the ones recently used up.
could finally make use of all those emoticons floating around their business haha. You’d actually design the options menu something like the emoticon pad on your keyboard, with quick as-you-type search.
This would make spending very personal which is very much is.
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You can add “
️ Coffee” as a note (no emoji required), categorise it as Eating Out, and search for “️ Coffee“ using Monzo’s great search and filtering. That way you can easily see how much you’re spending on coffee for the week, month, or whatever.
Problem is, I have to manually enter that for every entry. Then search the keyword and manually tot up the amount for the given period of interest.
True, but at least there’s a category for that (Eating Out). There isn’t even a category for things we buy for other people (rounds, meals on dates, gifts in general).
For things like coffee, beer, snacks and other things like that, the Eating Out category might be sufficient, with some kind of hash tagging system, like you suggest. But even with the Notes function, we don’t have a category for gifts and rounds and other things we buy for other people, so I’d suggest that’s more pressing (considering this topic adds new categories but not enough for many of us, but hash tagging would be a brand new feature).
For things like coffee, beer, snacks etc., I just add a text replacement on the iOS keyboard, so I can add those notes much faster.
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Although the manual entry can be a chore, it soon becomes habit.
You don’t have to tot it up, it sums and averages at the bottom of the screen:
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True, although those purchases ar arguably (perhaps not though) less frequent and could be categorised as ‘general’ or ‘shopping’. I also imagine it would be harder for Monzo to automatically categorise, whereas expenditure on coffee is possibly more clear cut (although I grant you, some people might buy their lunch at Costa or coffee at Pret).
Either way, I think custom categories would suit the widest range of people.
Thanks Toby, didn’t realise you could put the ‘this month’ rule in.
Custom categories is a commonly requested feature and we try to channel the replies into a single thread as per below…
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You like pizza then?
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The below posts were moved here from this topic -
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Well said @Rob3 you’re absolutely right IMO.
That was along same lines I was going with this, basic options sit on a main selection menu (as they do now), nice and clean for the user who wants the simple easy experience, then you just begin typing and creating the categories you may want if you want to go further…
Ironically even as I ask for this I think I would personally only have a very few ‘extra’ categories, but I’m sure they’d be pretty unique to me - tracking particular work expense types, or money spent decorating from my decorating pot for example in one month, that sort of thing,
Keeping it nice and clean via an interface that only presents the top 10 you recently use, maintains that nice clean look Monzo do right to try and protect as far as possible, whilst indulging users who love to really begin to manage their spending.
It’s a nice little tension Monzo really have to constantly manage and balance and I think it’s fascinating if they nail it.
Exactly!! And this is what makes me think Monzo’s response isn’t very transparent.
Investment! That’s really important. General or Expenses doesn’t do.
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I’m a firm believer in future proofing where possible and using categories up until relatively recently has been a great way to manage and divide money into groups. What happens when the transaction fits into multiple categories? I think many other tech savvy firms have realised that using tags (with or without#) allows powerful search features to work… and here’s the future bit, by doing this it can simplify the integration of Monzo with other finance apps moving forward. Lots of detail to flesh out, but you get the gist. Use tags with or instead of categories. They must be used consistently, spelled correctly etc (master repository of validated tag words that is checked before you add??). Powerful google like search over years of finances would be awesome imho. Great work Monzo!!
Hey! Custom categories aren’t something we’re planning on introducing any time soon.
Whilst it’s over two years old - Hugo’s explanation of the logic behind this decision still holds true
https://community.monzo.com/t/custom-categories-1/649/2?u=naji
There are plans to add two additional categories in the next month or two though 
Why?
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