I had a support case open with Monzo this morning as I was due to go Full Monzo today and expected it to be done by the time I woke up and it wasn’t, anyway its done now.
Whilst on Live Chat I was discussing with the Agent (Stuart) about Direct Debits. We were discussing how it would be good if there was an “exclude from summary” (indefinitely) button/setting from within the Scheduled Payments section of the Payments Tab - that way you do not have to wait for the DD to come out for the first time before you can exclude it from the summary.
Why does this matter?
As a Monzo User I used to use Legacy for DDs/SOs etc. and Monzo for Spends. Now I am Full Monzo the 2 are not split, and I had intended to use Summary to tell me what I had left once Direct Debits are accounted for - so I don’t want them to eat into my summary.
This all got me thinking, we have locked pots… but what if we had Locked Budgets?!? You have X amount a month and you’re not allowed to exceed it, edit it etc until the start of the next cycle - basically on pay day you set the budget for the month and thats it. This paired with not allowing you to spend beyond your budget could prevent returned direct debits etc…
I don’t think this would work in practice - How would Locked Budgets be enforced? If the idea is to decline any payments which would take you over your budget in a particular category, what about incorrectly categorised merchants?
Also, the current inability to categorise parts of a single transaction could be an issue too.
Summary will count your Direct Debits as committed spend automagically, so you really don’t want to exclude them from Summary. It’s how it works. It does mean that the first run through you have to pay more attention, but after that it’s great, as soon as you get paid Summary is already telling you what you have to spend after all your regular bills and payments have been accounted for…
So not as strict as declining payments - I was thinking more along the lines of not allowing you to edit the budget limits once locked until the lock date.
@Mrberry I only went full Monzo yesterday and so I am still to experience this, if committed spending is automatically excluded from your budgets then I already have what I want
Like I say, Summary has to see all your Direct Debits/recurring payments first, but once it has seen them once you’ll find your committed spend numbers fill themselves. It’s what I love about Summary.
