@tristan, When you release multi-category transactions, I think it might be good to have a ‘non’ category, so that if I’m buying something for me and a friend, and they give me cash for their part, than I can split their part of the transaction off to a ‘non’ category so that it doesn’t contribute to my spend. I guess then though, you would have to have the option of manually having an ‘add cash’ button so that when I use that cash that they gave me, then I could assign it to the appropriate category.
Is there a simpler way of doing this?
Card arrived today, already love the functionality in the app and the immediate reporting of transactions.
Also completely agree that customisable categories and the ability to split transactions will make a huge difference.
Automation and simplicity wherever possible is what makes this app so good already, but with something like budgeting and reporting it is surely too personalised to be able to create a ‘fits all’ fully-intuitive system. You’d hope that once you set up your categories and sub-categories that the app would be able to quickly learn where various types of spend go, but - for example - a large shop at a supermarket will always have variable levels to split across multiple categories that will be impossible to predict.
I might spend £75, with £25 on alcohol, £35 on food and £10 on pet food and £5 on household items. The next week I might need to spend £15 on household items and only £5 on alcohol. A UI that can predict that sounds unlikely, but one that makes these splits simple to allocate would really improve the functionality of the app. I was hoping it would replace MoneyWiz, but for now it looks as if it will have to run alongside it.
Also, I know join accounts are on the roadmap, but would it be possible to simply have two cards associated to the same account and the same app?
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As a fresh user, I’d like to reiterate that the ability to Split transactions and allocate portions to different categories would be very welcome…
Transaction A - £50 @ Supermarket = Groceries.
But it would be nice that inside that transaction you could split the single record to become two data points…
Transaction A - £30 @ Supermarket = Groceries.
Transaction B - £20 @ Supermarket = Entertainment.
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or in my case part petrol and part take away or groceries from the petrol station
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A shop in Costco could easily result in personal and business expenses that should be separate. Could we have OCR on the receipt, so that it’s easier to divide the categories?
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There is always the option of splitting your items up into categories, and then paying for each category with a separate transaction.
This way, they will appear as separate transactions on the Monzo list, and you can categorise/label them on an individual basis.
Custom categories please!!
I too agree with this.
I understand that Monzo wants to keep the app clear, simple, and useful, for all level of users but I don’t understand why that precludes “advanced” options that allows users to manipulate their own data how they want.
Surely it doesn’t have to be one or the other?
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Essentially what Hugo’s saying here is that Monzo’s building (or wants to leave the option open to build) features that rely on standard categories.
To give one example, something that’s been mentioned in the past, is alerts for users who’re paying more for their energy bills than other Monzo users. If you’ve created a custom category for water, electricity etc. Monzo wouldn’t be able to provide that feature to you.
But a review of the categories is coming in a few months.
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Would love to see Custom Categories.
Or at least one that let’s me put expenses under Pet supplies 
Only just got my card and started using today, love what the future holds for this business. Mad that I’m excited to use a banking app!
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If you’re buying your pet food from a pet store then you’re in luck, you can just add a 
/ 
/
emoji to your transactions, in the notes & then search for that tag to see the total number / value of transactions in a given time period.
If not, the tags will give you the number of transactions but not the total value.
Maybe this category will be added when they’re reviewed in a few months though.
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or 
for doggie bags 
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Apologies for reawakening the thread. New user here determined to chip in with his tuppenceworth.
@hugo, I think you have underestimated the importance of custom categories here, however good your auto-segmentation gets in the future. I would favour custom tags/labels, as this allows the solution to be orthogonal to any reporting you choose to build out on top of your categories. IMHO, you can get 90% of the way there by enforcing that a user can only add a single label to a transaction (bypassing your objections around double-counting in point 1 and no problems with the UX here), and possibly implementing subtransactions.
You’re right that this is something someone will build out using the API if you don’t add it in, but that will always suffer from being less tightly-integrated into the platform. Providing single custom labels per tx out of the box will tip the scales from a serious omission in the functionality of the platform to merely missing a nice-to-have. I don’t think implementing this would impact on the UX at all if done well. Regardless, however big you plan to be in the future (very, I hope), you will remain a bank for early adopters for the foreseeable, so dismissing stuff you can’t quite see how to do right away as “something the community will build” is a potentially dangerous mindset to slip into.
Just my thoughts, anyway!
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The only point you haven’t addressed is this one -
Did you have any thoughts on how this could be managed?
Aggregation is the main reason why I’m happy not to have custom categories because I think these insights have the potential to be much more valuable than this feature, once they’re developed.
Essentially it looks like Hugo’s choosing to build one product vs another here, rather than just dismissing a feature because it’s too difficult / time consuming to build. See Hugo’s comments below.
Edits in bold
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While I expect that Monzo will be adding more categories in the future, I must admit that I don’t find having a list of categories defined by someone else that useful. As it is the vast majority of my transactions are under general and I’m adding notes to denote the individual things I’ve bought.
With regard to information like “other users spend 5% less than you on this category” I’m going to have things shoehorned into categories where they don’t really belong so again, it’s not that helpful.
My personal opinion is that it’s far better to have customisable categories with spending breakdowns based on those. Perhaps pre defined categories with customisable sub categories would be the best of both worlds? That way Monzo could still provide information on your spending vs other people while allowing for a breakdown of spending in a way which is most useful to each individual.
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Personally I don’t give a damn what others spend their money on so don’t want any reports comparing me with Jane and John Doe. I would only want reports based on my useage data.
Thanks a lot for this feedback. It really helps 
I think this is one of those cases where we know we have just an 80% solution but we can’t right now address the other 20%. We’ll do it at some point but not that 
Think about it like spinning plates in the circus, we pay attention to the plates that are about to fall and we give them a good spin so we can focus on the next. Right now, even though our system have some flaws and limitations we think there’s so much other stuff we want to build that our categories are probably “good enough” for the time being. Not worry though, we’ll revisit them at some point
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@hugo I think most of us can probably appreciate that categories isn’t a huge priority right now.
Once there are actual current accounts and I can do my main spending through Monzo I’ll probably start using the API to add custom tags to stuff, then I can use a simple spreadsheet to generate exactly the spending data I want.
Or I could type _&&category&& in the notes section and have a script scrape that and generate a categorised CSV file automatically.
Anyone else is free to steal those ideas.
Hey @alexs,
Sure, yeah, I attempted to address that point but maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I felt that points 1) and 2) presented a false dichotomy between 1) multiple tags on a transaction and 2) custom multi-tags.
I wanted to present a third way: if you keep the Monzo-generated segregations as they are and allow users to tag transactions once only as a separate attribute on the data, then these custom categories are effectively distinct from Monzo’s, so they can still generate insights based on their categories while allowing the user to track their spend on whatever different metric they see fit in a first order way. Not allowing multiple tags on a transaction nullifies the concerns about double-counting. My instinct is that this functionality would still be enough for the majority of users, would neuter an recurring complaint and would add a large amount of value, without overcomplicating things.
Make sense? I agree with you that aggregations are potentially incredibly valuable, so I wouldn’t want to lose them either.
On your second point, re-reading what I put it does come across a little harshly. I simply meant to add a note of caution that closing the book on something (in my view prematurely) would be a mistake given that I don’t fee the solution space has been fully explored.
Not at all. That’s precisely what the forum is for, so we don’t forget about the important stuff 