✅ Custom Category Creation

Yup

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Glad to see some movement on categories, however small.

Finances seems like a really weird name though - that means accounting, managing money, managing resources. Certainly doesn’t imply cash withdrawals. Not sure why this was renamed, what is it supposed to cover now? Anyone else find the new name really confusing?

Still hoping for saving and gifts, and maybe some income categories too. Incoming transactions should really have a completely separate set of categories.

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I like finances as it can now encompass internal transfers between accounts, or investments, which until have always ended up as part of my spending. It could also be used for saving, particularly if you exclude it from your summary.

I agree that gifts is an essential category.

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The new categories have not landed on Android yet, but in principle I’m okay with having a few extra top level categories, but finances is a broad term and would benefit greatly from the introduction of sub-categories (not #tags) to isolate and report savings, investments, cash withdrawals etc separately.

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None of that really comes under finances for me. :man_shrugging:

Saving I think definitely needs its own category.

I voted for a Gifts category, but I’d probably prefer the ability to rename the new Family category to People so it covers all people (family, friends, colleagues, lovers etc.). Some of us plan on never having kids or a “partner” (a “family”), so that category as currently named is almost useless to us; however, I do buy things for friends, colleagues, and lovers, and there are no categories to put those things under. Likewise there’s nothing for charity.

The new hashtagging feature helps, but I’d really like the ability to split a single transaction into multiple categories and hashtags (or at the very least multiple categories if Monzo provide a People or Gifts category). This would be especially useful for those times we’re forced to get cash out because a place doesn’t accept card payments for less than £5 or at all. Sometimes I just fancy one pint for £3.50, but I have to put the whole £10 ATM transaction under my Eating Out or Entertainment category and #beer tag. That just does not make sense at all and it means I can’t actually easily see how much I’m spending on beer or other people.

Likewise I currently have to split my shopping into multiple different transactions at the self-service till in the supermarket if I’d like to be accurate (some of it will be under the Groceries category, some under the Personal Care category, some under the #beer hashtag, some under the #treats hashtag). It’d be great if I could put it all through as one transaction in the supermarket and later split that transaction out into different categories and hashtags in the app.

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I would like to see

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner

In eating out category. Then I can see when/if I need to change my habits!

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You forgot…
Brunch
Elevenses
Tea
Supper

Why don’t you just use #tags ?

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And second breakfast for the hobbits

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Yes; splitting would be nice.

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I use Family for my cats :speak_no_evil:

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I’d like Pets as well to help me track how much I spend for Nutella.
I’d also like a category for transfers to myself from another bank account or savings.
And possibly a tag or category to quickly allow me to check if a transaction has been refunded, by either a shop or family and friends

Pets is a must for me. I spend money on my cats pet insurance and other things and currently have no way of categorising them. I could feasible put it under “family” but its not really the right category for it. Also, don’t get me started on those ridiculous #tags

And yet I have no need for a pets category, it would just clutter my screen.

I wonder what might make us all happy…

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CUSTOM CATEGORIEs! :wink:

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If they don’t show the ones which have no spending in them, they can have lots of categories, and the only time you’d see them is when you choose to reassign categories manually (which monzo doesn’t really want you to have to do).

So there would be no harm in Pets if you never spend in it, as you’d never see it.

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I’d still see it when I come to reassign spending

Sure. I don’t use pets either, but I’d be quite happy to see it in the list very rarely when I have to go in and reclassify something, for the tradeoff of getting some categories I want. The idea (which I think Monzo are working towards), is that you very rarely have to set a category as they classify them correctly for you. To get there they’d need a radical rethink of the categories they offer though, as the tiny selection at present means many things are misclassified and there’s no way for customers to fix it, and if they are using their data for anything, it’s heavily polluted by misclassification.

The more important point for me is whether you see it in your spending list. Not sure why they show the empty categories there and make you expand to see everything, but I don’t think they should, and then you’d never see it except when classifying (hopefully rare).

I’d like custom categories ideally too, but expanding the categories we do have would be a huge help and would fit with what Monzo seemingly want to do without much disruption.

Do you go in and classify transactions every month? Which ones do you change?

I don’t get what is so wrong with the tags though! Since Emma implemented them I’ve found it really useful to add more than one to one transaction. Anything for my cat, food or insurance or vet or whatever, goes in an appropriate category and tagged with “cat” and its name… so I can search cat costs really quickly.

That makes sense but then what if you have a dog as well, you would then need to search for both and total them up. Whereas if you had a Pet category it would be easier and quicker.

I’m not anti tags by any mean and it’s good other people find them useful but I don’t personally have any use for them as I like to work based on the category approach which Monzo first started.