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 itās something Iām 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.
Seconded. Spreadsheets FTW
What you mind sharing your spreadsheet so I can use it ahaha
Used a sopreadsheet and it took about an hour to update versus about a minute with Yolt. Would never ever ever go back!
Would be nice if they gave a csv download though then you could have the best of both worlds.
Hi Tom. I use a spreadsheet too - but for day-to-day use, I use Emma. Iāve tried Yolt but havenāt 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. Iāve also signed up for a new one which is pre-launch at present. That oneās called Snoop, and it looks interesting. But for now - Iād definitely recommend Emma. In my view, itās worth a go.
Whatās better about Emma versus Yolt?
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 - thatās saved me several times, but Yolt never seems to do that. And while if I am honest, I donāt 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 itās getting better all the time. I expect weāll see others enter this space too.
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 Iāve 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 āsmartā features? All I want is all my accounts in one place, not idiotic āmoney savingā up sells or hopelessly wrong āinsightsā.
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.
Iāve 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
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 Monzoās 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 donāt include connections to savings accounts but thatās because those banks have not implemented savings accounts into their open banking APIs yet.
Well they are both being useless for me now. Yolt hasnāt 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 youāre forever scrolling, doesnāt 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 Iām not that much of an advanced user.
I see about 6-7 transactions on a single screen in Emma (similar to Monzo) and thatās on a 4.7" phone.
I donāt 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. Sainsburyās) 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 thatās 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. Iāve been suggesting Emma add NS&I for months even though I donāt use NS&I myself. But I donāt think NS&I support open banking yet and I suspect Emma have stopped adding new connections that donāt use open banking.
I donāt 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 doesnāt 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.