I’ve had a bit of a think, and here are what (I think) are the bits causing a bit of friction for me at the moment:
Budgeting
I think the biggest problem for me here is that Summary just tries to do too much so it becomes a bit unknowable but also scruffy around the edges because it doesn’t cover all use cases. A few examples:
- there seems to be some logic that tries to predict daily spend, which is great, but never seems accurate.
- the left to spend / dial never shows me the “you’re out by X amount” if I’m at the beginning of the month. That might be marginal as you’re expected to be in credit at that time, but why have that limitation?
- Making transactions recurring is a great idea, and works reasonably well, but it means that they get spread across the Payments tab and Summary. If I want to stop one recurring, I can’t tap into a forthcoming payment in Summary and frequently get confused about how to do it.
- But making transactions recurring has a draw back - I know that I’ll be spending X on Y date. I sometimes just want to be able to plan for that in the app without having a transaction. For example, I know that my credit card bill will be extra next month, but there’s nowhere that either allows me to specify the amount of the next transaction, or to add a completely new budget line.
- As others have said, Summary isn’t particularly elegant with money coming in. I’d like to be able to predict both money in and money out.
Payments
My thoughts here are more or less covered in my first post, namely:
So, putting this all together, I think the following would be game-changers:
- Summary disappears and becomes Budgeting.
- Some form of analytics comes into the app to show where your spending goes up/down (my previous take is here, but would need updating given the navigation changes to the app)
- Tidying Budgeting and Payments up - so recurring transactions and things that feed the budget aren’t necessarily shown on the Payments tab - but there should be a home there for things like direct debits and continuous payment authority that you should be able to cancel in app, but may or may not feed a budget.
- Budgeting lets you plan for incoming payments as well outgoing ones - with more sophisticated timings (people get paid in odd ways!). It’d be super cool to be able to use those timings to drive payments, too.
- Allow money in / salary to drive actions in the app. Like moving money to pots, or money moved to external accounts. This would be a massive win!
- The Left to Spend figure becoming less ‘clever’ - just money in minus money out for that payment period. (Or, of course, a headline budget amount instead of money in for folk that budget like that).
- Either no separation between spending and committed spend - or a much better approach to it. I keep coming back to this post, which I think really nails the problem. I have no solution, but definitely something to think about.
- Whatever budgeting solution Monzo comes up with is extensible - i.e. that it can work on the basis of one current account, but could form the basis for multiple account budgeting - or even budgeting on another account that’s hooked into Monzo via open banking. (I’m primarily thinking about a Monzo Credit Card, though)
- Lots of focus on a smooth, efficient payments tab. Focus on payments of contacts, getting the basics right in a way that’s clear, crisp and elegant.
- Also on the payments tab, maybe using the carousel on the new home page to allow for transfers between Pots and between accounts. If the open banking payments thing (PISP) that lets an app initiate a payment from your account ever gets off the ground, you could even imagine using Monzo as the only app for your connected accounts
- I’d also be in favour of having a calendar in the app that shows upcoming payments. And options like you get in your favourite calendaring software to manage recurring appointments/payments (letting you change the value of one recurrence in a set of payments three months hence down the line, or taking out one payment, or changing every payment from December this year…)
Also, and this is extreme wish-list territory now, I’d like to see integration between Monzo and my phone’s calendar to show me upcoming payments, with a link that’d open the app to view/amend. And also for payments contacts to be stored in some form of open standard, which means I could sync them with my phone/cloud provider/other banks…