Hi there, new to Monzo and a bit confused.
I’ve set up a bills pot and want my direct debit to come from there, however when I select scheduled payments it only allows me to input standing orders. I’m confused how I’d I set up a direct debit how it wouldn’t just come out of my main pot. I’ve looked at the help info but it’s not very clear.
Thanks!
Payments > Scheduled
Tap the payment and then “paid from” and pick your pot.
Hi Andrew,
Welcome to Monzo!! 
A bills pot doesn’t automatically move all direct debits and standing orders to come out of it. You have to manually set each one. If your account isn’t very old, you may not have your direct debit instructions moved over to Monzo fully yet.
In the app, go to the “Payments” tab, then click on “Scheduled”. You will see a “Schedule payments & standing orders” section, and a “Subscriptions and Direct Debits” section.
Under each of these, you will see the standing orders and direct debits set up on your account. Once they are listed, you can tap on them and click “Set Payment from a Pot” and choose the pot you created.
You can also do it from the pots “Scheduled payments” screen, but again, the Standing Orders and Direct Debits need to be already setup on the account.
It can take some companies anywhere from a day to a few weeks to set up a Direct Debit Instruction on their end, but you should get a notification from the Monzo app when one has been set up.
Whether or not you use a designated Bills pot, the payments are always taken from the main account. The difference with a DD/Standing Order/Scheduled payment which is configured to be ‘paid’ from the Bills pot is that just before the bill is paid from the main account, Monzo moves the same value from the Bills pot into the main account.
Please note CPA’s (Continuous Payment Authorities) can’t be assigned to Bills pots. These are where you give a vendor permission to charge your debit card (not your bank account) - such as Netflix, Spotify, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. - Monzo gets no advanced notification of when the payment will be made & so can’t transfer the required amount just prior to it being debited.
Thanks everyone, that’s really helpful. BW.
Is there anyway round this, or is it a case of a bills pot can’t be all the bills as notice a lot now use CPA’s.
You can set up Virtual Cards (Extra, Perks or Max plan required) to do the same thing - payment sourced from the same Bills pot as everything else to pay CPA’s - but it means changing the payment method with the CPA to match the Virtual card info for each CPA
So a bit of effort, but possible.
Ah with you. Thanks, makes sense.
Also, it’s only great if you lump all your “subscriptions” in one pot, if you have 5 or more then you are limited by the amount of virtual cards you can have, so can’t have numerous separate pots etc for budgeting!
I don’t understand why people feel the need to micro-budget to that level as Monzo has good budgeting built in. Seems a little excessive.
I “lump all my subscriptions” into 2 pots (one for personal, one for joint), and just use the “Left to Pay” feature to see what I have left.
Don’t get me wrong, people can budget how they want, but if Monzo won’t increase the number of virtual cards (which I can understand why), then try using the features they provide.
We have “monthly payments” and “periodic payments” pots in personal and joint accounts. Monthly is easy, just fund them with enough each month to cover that. Periodic, add the total per year for each one, and divide by 12.
Joint periodic for example, covers among other things fortnightly house clean and annual library subscription. Gradually ebbs and flows but we never need to worry the money won’t be there, and we just review the monthly amount needed once a year to reflect increasing prices.
I love this. However, there is something I think would improve when having DD’s coming from pots. At the moment it just appears as a transfer to my main current account. Ideally if the description had a reference to the DD that would make everything so much clearer. I have scanned through the forums but cant see anyone else talking about it.
That’s the idea 
I couldn’t micro budget that way, it’s too ridiculous. 1 pot of all subscriptions, one card, one monthly amount in.
You should see that on the actual debit from the main account? The transfer will be right before the bill deducted so it’s rather clear already.
Yeah I can see it on the main account. But I have a pot that is 18 months old and occasional look back through this and its a real pain for older payments having to make notes of dates and jump between pages. If in the notes it just said DD from XYZ I think this would be really useful.
Hi,
Could you please confirm this before I move all my Direct Debits to Monzo? I’ll be doing this manually, and I’d like to clarify the following:
Can Direct Debits be set up from a Joint Account?
Can Direct Debits be set up from a Joint Pot account? If yes, do I need to make sure the money is in the main account, or directly in that Pot?
Some of the Direct Debits are under my name, and some will be under my partner’s name – so ideally, all Direct Debits should come out of the same Joint Pot account.
I’m asking because this is the plan I’d like to follow, and I want to make sure it works with Monzo:
Once my partner and I receive our monthly salaries, part of it will go into our Joint Savings, another part into the Direct Debit Pot, and the rest will stay in the main account for everyday expenses.
So I want to be sure that the Direct Debits will actually come out of the DD Pot, and not from the main account.
Hope that makes sense! Many thanks!
Hi @3mill & welcome 
Yes they can.
Yes, they can. You can set a designated pot to be a ‘Bills pot’ and all assigned D/D’s are (sort of) paid from that. An example of what happens:
You get paid on the last day of the month and the total of the next month’s D/D’s is £1,500.00. As soon as you are paid, you put £1,500.00 into the designated Bills pot. Then throughout the next month, one-by-one, the D/D’s are paid. Just as a D/D payment is about to be made, Monzo moves exactly the same value from the Bills pot to the main account and the D/D is taken from the main account. This is almost instant and never fails.
What it means is that once you have enough in your Bills pot to cover the upcoming month of D/D’s, whatever is left in your main account is your disposable spending/savings, etc.
Please note CPA’s (card subscriptions) can’t be paid from the Bills pot as Monzo gets no notification that a payment will be taken and so can’t ‘move’ the same amount from the Bills pot to the main account.
Thanks for the confirmation! I moved three Direct Debits to Monzo yesterday, and for one of them I already got a notification today in Monzo that it’s been set up. I can even assign it to take money from the Joint Bills Pot, that’s great! I’m looking forward to everything running smoothly for the upcoming payments.
For my subscriptions, I created a virtual card linked to the same Pot and have already moved all my subscriptions to Monzo.
Regarding the Direct Debits pulling from the Bills Pot: if, for some reason, a payment fails because it tries to take money from the Main account instead of the Bills Pot and there aren’t enough funds in the Main account, would that immediately show as a missed payment on my credit report? I’m asking because I noticed on the forum that a few people have mentioned occasional Direct Debit failures.
Many thanks again!
A payment will always be taken from the main account - even with a properly configured Bills pot scenario. If you don’t have enough funds in the main account to cover the payment, you’ll get a ‘declined’ entry in your transaction feed. If you then put money into the main account to cover the failed transaction before about 2pm, then Monzo will automatically re-try - OR - you can manually make the payment before then once you have put funds in the main account to cover the payment.
Your credit report won’t see this immediately and unless you don’t pay full-stop and the vendor sees fit to report you, it won’t show. Best advice: Pay your bills. If you can’t, seek advice: Monzo | Money Worries & Cost of Living Help
I might not have explained it clearly earlier. Let’s say my monthly bills total around £2,000. I always keep at least £2,000 in the Bills Pot, but my Main account often has less than that.
I just want to confirm that Direct Debits will always be taken from the Bills Pot as intended. Also, if there’s ever a system issue (like some users have reported on the forum) and a Direct Debit tries to pull funds from the Main account instead—where I might have less than £2,000—what would happen?