@hugo, sure no problem. I appreciate the level of engagement with comments. You guys have a product to build and no doubt a million things to prioritise. I guess our estimations of whether what you have with categories is at 80% or 60% just differ. 
I appreciate the fact that you’re trying to find a compromise here so please excuse my persistence, I’m not being deliberately awkward here either but…
Users can already tag transactions via notes, for example -
So while -
I adopt that approach too, the challenge here is that your transactions are often a mix of different categories so in most cases, this will only enable you to count purchases of certain things, rather than aggregate them.
I could be missing something there though…
I often struggle with that too!
Just so that I don’t seem completely belligerent throughout this whole thread, I thought I’d mention that this sounds good to me 
This would obviously add an extra level of complexity to the design but if it can be implemented in a way that is simple to use & understand, great!
@alexs, thanks for your response.
So my interpretation here is that we are talking about a feature request for new functionality in the app, which is why I tentatively used the word “label” above, in an attempt to avoid confusion with current “tagging” in the notes. So yes, currently people can “tag” in the notes section and search for it (or export to a spreadsheet and do whatever magic they want), but the workflow is unwieldy (using emojis to mitigate typos) and these tags aren’t a first class property in the way I envison labels, so I can’t e.g. set spending targets against them (nor will they “just work” with any new functionality Monzo roll out for categories).
Of course, there still is a tradeoff. As you identify, the solution as I present it won’t allow transactions that are a mix of categories, so if you have mixed transactions, you will still need to do something else (no change here). My contention was that allowing users to define their own categories (or… labels) for their own spending will get us closer to the 80% functionality line. Looking at my personal spending over the last couple of months, I think this is borne out for me. I would want to group together far more transactions that would currently be put into different categories than I would want to apportion a fraction of a transaction to a category or assign it to multiple. Of course, n=1 and different people’s spending habits vary wildly!
I think this is also the main argument against custom sub-categories under Monzo’s pre-defined categories, which is also being discussed in the thread. This is fine until you have transactions under different top-level categories that you want to group together. Which happens for me all the time. Again, this may not be the case for everyone. In my opinion, if you are going to provide the ability to do custom groupings, you have to do it at the top-level, or it is only an illusion of freedom. But what do I know? After all:
There is no liberty in this world, just gilded cages.
As a side note, I am intrigued by the idea of sub-transactions that would allow users to split transactions into their constituent portions and categorise accordingly. Sort of like virtually doing multiple card transactions at the checkout to organise your purchases into atomic units by category.
@hugo: one further minor improvement I can think of – given that people are doing things like using emojis in the notes section to avoid typos when they tag things – would be to index the notes field and provide completion suggestions from previous tags when people are entering notes.
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After having had a long morning read through this thread and understanding better what difficulties lies with adding certain elements, I still feel that essential categories have not been added, that to me should apply so generally to people that this comes across as odd. With my very sparse knowledge about app development it seems at least that simply adding a few more categories would make it slightly more narrowed down in terms of expenditure, but doesn’t complicate when it comes to comparing your spending to all monzo users (a function I personally would put very far down on my priority list compared to understanding my own spending better). So my suggestion on categories would be:
Beauty/grooming (haircuts, makeup, toiletries, beauty treatments, fragrance, etc)
Health/wellbeing (gym memberships, activity classes, medicine, supplements, massages, sports equipment, etc)
If need be these two could also be combined into Health & Beauty but I would argue that they are different enough to be kept separate
Pets (self explanatory)
House & Garden (Furniture, cleaning products, light bulbs, gardening equipment, services such as cleaners/gardeners/handymen, kitchen equipment, etc)
The successful management of these categories would also depend on the function of being able to split your costs, say a Tesco shop could include elements from each of these fairly essential categories, but this could be added at a later point.
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Perhaps sub-categories, within larger ones.
Just to throw in my tuppence, promoting tags/labels from notes to be a first class feature (the auto complete suggestion above, indexing namespaces etc) might be a good first step, as you could easily bring to the front the most commonly used “(sub)categories” which may inform your current list of categories in the system, whilst keeping your spending reports feature distinct.
Whilst not a final solution, it would certainly provide better transparency/flexibility for the user without forcing then to use it if it is unnecessary.
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Hi guys, first off I love what you are doing, it’s brilliant, and my experience of the card & app so far has been superb.
I do have one idea - I’d love to see a new Category option for Giving. Doing something as simple as putting it as an option could inspire so many people to think about how much they give. Just a thought.
Keep up the good work
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What an amazing category to add! 
in the future it would also be interesting to see if donations to charities will be available through :mondo: Mondo like with other banks!
This links back to custom categories:
Something that is certainly needed.
Apologies if this has been mentioned before. In fact I’m sure it has!
I think being able to create custom categories will be very helpful and make mondo even more personable to the user. It will help tracking spending habits that much better.
Thanks
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Hi @williamstrang - Custom categories has been mentioned before and it’s something that I believe Mondo are planning to look into further through the use of tags etc. More information is available on the following threads:
Hope that helps.
RossA
I’ve had Mondo for a couple of weeks now and absolutely love the concept. In terms of spending categories it would be great to have the option to add customised categories.
For example, I would like to keep track of how much I spend at the weekend and would like to lump up certain transactions (e.g. Cash withdrawal, eating out, etc.) under that category. I think most people would like to know when they spent money as well as what they spent money on.
Would be great to create a holiday category for example and drop all transactions made on holiday to see how much it’s been spent.
Not sure if this was already suggested but it’s a feature I’d love to see.
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Hi, there is already a category for holiday spends. With regards to further categories there are already a few threads talking about this. This currently seems the most popular one:
https://community.monzo.com/t/custom-categories-multi-category-transactions/649/5
Yeah that’s what I mean. It doesn’t necessarily have to be holidays. It would be great to just add customised categories. Hopefully it will happen soon
Id like the ability to add/edit my own spending categories. At present there is a groceries category, but I would like a ‘work’ category to keep track of how much money I spend in work on lunch/coffee. Also I can’t filter by category at the moment to see a total, only by individual payment locations.
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I agree with you James, it could be helpful!
Hey guys, love the app at the moment.
I think it would be cool to create your own personal categories for certain purchases- for example I want to track how much I’m spending on nights out, which goes under entertainment, but I’d like a separate category just for nights out.
I think that would be cool! (Also I really need to control my spending on a night out haha).
Also if this also exists I’m sorry, could you tell me how to do it? 
Charlie
Thanks. This has been suggested before, there are 3 other postings on here on that theme, so your idea does have some support