Does anyone use an account aggregator alongside Monzo?

Hi, was just wondering does anyone use an account aggregator alongside Monzo?

I tried Emma and Yolt, but for various reasons, decided to fall back on my spreadsheet. The information is presented exactly the way I want it to be, and itā€™s something Iā€™m used to.

Automation is fine for those aspects of life which are more incidental, but sometimes I find that doing it myself offers more insight.

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Seconded. Spreadsheets FTW

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What you mind sharing your spreadsheet so I can use it ahaha

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Used a sopreadsheet and it took about an hour to update versus about a minute with Yolt. Would never ever ever go back!

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Would be nice if they gave a csv download though then you could have the best of both worlds.

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Hi Tom. I use a spreadsheet too - but for day-to-day use, I use Emma. Iā€™ve tried Yolt but havenā€™t really got on with it. I find Emma easy to use and practically helpful - eg i find it much easier to work out I am going to go overdrawn. Iā€™ve also signed up for a new one which is pre-launch at present. That oneā€™s called Snoop, and it looks interesting. But for now - Iā€™d definitely recommend Emma. In my view, itā€™s worth a go.

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Whatā€™s better about Emma versus Yolt?

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My experience is Emma just works better. So with Yolt I was forever getting disconnected from my main current account - that didnt happen with Emma. Emma has some useful intelligence to tell me I am going to go overdrawn - thatā€™s saved me several times, but Yolt never seems to do that. And while if I am honest, I donā€™t love the Emma UI and experience it does a good job. Given Yolt are backed by ING, I would really have expected them to do better. My view is that Emma is a long way from perfect, but itā€™s getting better all the time. I expect weā€™ll see others enter this space too.

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All I need is just inter-account transactions identified and a single long list of transactions rather than 25. Can Emma do this well?

Christ, just installed Emma. Apart from the fact it took over an hour to add my Santander account and Iā€™ve still got over a dozen more to trawl through what strikes me most is that the childish and cartoony interface is anything but functional.

Who actually uses all theses useless ā€œsmartā€ features? All I want is all my accounts in one place, not idiotic ā€œmoney savingā€ up sells or hopelessly wrong ā€œinsightsā€.

So far it seems like a piggy bank for a toddler. One good thing is having paypal. But the number of missing companies means I suspect it will be useless. And both yolt and Emma are having troubles with many high street banks at the moment too which is troubling as well as annoying.

Iā€™ve used a bunch of aggregators over the last few years and thing Moneyhub has the cleanest interface and supports more banks than any other service, including pension and investment institutions.

My ideal solution would be Moneyhub + Curve as a single service :crossed_fingers:

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I know what you mean about the cartoonish interface but I came to like it after a while. I think this is because I generally prefer software with bright bold colours over monochrome interfaces. I like that things stand out more.

In terms of features - what I think Emma is better at compared to other aggregators is individual transaction info which is similar to Monzo (meaningful transaction names, merchant logos, notes field, merchant history). The subscription tracking, budgeting, and analytics features also feel quite similar to Monzoā€™s version of these features.

But I ignore quite a bit of the insights stuff in the feed tab.

In terms of connections - it does have the fewest connections to traditional institutions among the main aggregators but I use 4 traditional banks and they all connect without issue. A couple of my connections donā€™t include connections to savings accounts but thatā€™s because those banks have not implemented savings accounts into their open banking APIs yet.

Well they are both being useless for me now. Yolt hasnā€™t been able to sync Halifax, M&S and Santander for a week now and Emma can only seem to fit five lines on the screen at once so youā€™re forever scrolling, doesnā€™t do pending transactions and still missing some big players.

Off the back of this topic I had another look at Money Dashboard which seems to do everything I need, but Iā€™m not that much of an advanced user.

I see about 6-7 transactions on a single screen in Emma (similar to Monzo) and thatā€™s on a 4.7" phone.

I donā€™t have issues with pending transactions but I only use regularly make payments with Monzo & Amex and pending transactions from both show up in Emma.

Out of curiosity what do you consider the main big players missing from Emma? I know there are a number of financial institutions not available in Emma that are available in other aggregators but I would describe them as smaller banks (e.g. Sainsburyā€™s) and regional building societies (basically every building society other than Nationwide).

5 was a wee bit of an exaggeration. I get 7 on a 1080p phone. But given in normal life I have a text density giving me 20+ lines per thatā€™s a whole lot of unnecessary scrolling.

Missing accounts are NS&I, N26, all my p2p.

Of those, I would only class NS&I as a significant omission. Iā€™ve been suggesting Emma add NS&I for months even though I donā€™t use NS&I myself. But I donā€™t think NS&I support open banking yet and I suspect Emma have stopped adding new connections that donā€™t use open banking.

I donā€™t think any account aggregator has wide coverage of P2P platforms?
Do any account aggregators support N26?

It certainly seems odd to various crypto exchanges, pensions and robo-advisors but no Zopa and Ratesetter. No idea about N26.

Santander doesnā€™t work with Emma either.

I think it depends on who has provided a way for third parties (such as Emma) to access accounts via API. For example Wealthsimple (one of the roboadvisers that can be accessed through Emma) provide API-based access. My guess is Zopa and Ratesetter do not.

Santander is working fine for me with Emma.

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