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.