The moral of this story is never put any effort into anything, ever.
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Basically entirely agree with @Peter_G and @Revels above.
And this sentence in particular… as politely as possible, I moved to Trends last January(?) and lost all budgeting on the promise of further updates, and only just today have got even a portion of what I used to have back, so I really don’t have a lot of love for this approach!
And on the general point… am I understanding correctly that now a £30 Flex purchase on day 1 will show in Trends as £30 that day, and no other outgoing from then on, just transfers back and forth between Trends and current account?
Because if so… that seems odd to me and is not how I would want it to work. I can see the other side of course, but Flex isn’t a credit card with one later repayment date (when I lose the money), it is a payment over multiple months, and so I would much rather see myself losing £10 per month as that is how I have budgeted. If I wanted to spend (and therefore track in my budget) the full £30 on day 1, I wouldn’t use Flex.
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Totally agree. I don’t use Flex personally, but I feel like when anything like this happens there should at least be a heads-up in app, if not a way to opt-out for the time being. To hear about it in a post on a forum that most Monzo customers aren’t a part of seems a bit off.
I have the same question. I’ve just used one of the six month flex offers for a purchase of £600. For me, this spending should be accounted for at £100 a month in the category of the original purchase, and this is how I’ve used Flex since last October. But now the intended behaviour seems to be recognising the entire purchase in one month. I’m not sure how that improves Trends or targets for me? (Though appreciate this method works for others).
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Am I right in thinking that transactions made using the virtual Flex card used to appear in Trends, but now they don’t?
Just playing around trying to get my data back to where it was and anything paid using the virtual card doesn’t seem to appear anywhere now 
Unless I’m misunderstanding the issue, I think you’re not seeing them because they have been recategorised as ‘Transfers’ as per post#3080 above 
:
Yes I’m possibly confusing myself.
But I made a purchase in November on the Flex virtual card categorised as entertainment. That doesn’t appear in Trends under entertainment or transfers. I’ve made the first Flex payment today and it’s now categorised as a transfer. Just trying to figure out how and where the entertainment spending is recognised.
I’ve made a custom category now called Flex and I’ll do it myself.
I can’t remember/not going back to fix them all, so now Monzo has made it worse, I’ll fix it the best I can.
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I’ve had a little time to think this over. This is where I am:
- Having a feed for Flex has to be the right thing to do. I’ve been lobbying for a feed for the credit card and a separate one for the buy-now-pay-later product. So this is a step in the right direction.
- But this has to be a cock up. It makes zero sense to reset categories before you release the separate feed. You want to do them together, or as close as possible, surely.
- In fact it opens up a later bag of pain. It’s right that we don’t double count these, but where are they going to get the categories from when the new feed appears? Brand new categorisation like they’re new transactions? A copy of the categories that things were set as before the great reset? What about if we go back in and change things now?
- Confessing is good for the soul. I feel a bit sorry for @TomMills. I’m sure he didn’t cause the problem, and he jumped in and did well in a bad situation. But I remember back to @simonb 's days of brutal honesty: he was excellent at fessing up when there had been cock ups - and somehow that would actually increase engagement. It feels like this can’t be easily rolled back, so stand up, say sorry, say it wasn’t meant to happen like this, say that they’ve learnt for next time, and then tell us when to expect the other half of the equation.
- The worst thing is that it’s sand in the suntan lotion: this has been The Best week on the community for quite some time. It’s such a shame that the timing of this has slightly taken the sheen off all of the good stuff. Not all of it, but some of it. But there we go.
That all said, I’m excited for the Flex changes. And I hope that Monzo has learnt from this.
(I shall not be recategorising until they’ve done what they need to do. But this side of Xmas, please. End of year review and budgeting requires it).
That is all. Onwards and upwards.
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I’m sorry but this is a very very bad move.
Before I had all my flex payments in different/correct categories and now is all lumped in just one? And I don’t think I even can fix this without spending a considerable amount time.
I’ve loved everything about flex so far, but this is very annoying as made all my categories wrong since I started using flex.
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Appreciate the shoutout, Peter.
Let me take the opportunity to be candid. The culture of brutal honesty and radical transparency was the norm, and the expectation at Monzo, until it wasn’t.
One of the reasons I left was because of being effectively thrown under the bus and accused of undermining colleagues simply for relaying what was said on this very forum, when you all were unhappy with a product and didn’t feel your voices were being heard. It felt like an about-turn from the values we built the company on, and I wasn’t the only one that felt that way.
Now, granted, the company was in rough waters at the time. COVID hadn’t quite hit yet but the atmosphere was already tense and I had great empathy for everyone. But in my opinion, it’s in times of crisis when your values matter most and if anything, you should double down on them. It’s easy to maintain values when seas are calm, but crises show what you’re made of.
Almost 3 years later (where does the time go?) it seems that TS and others have done a fantastic job at course correcting and it seems that Monzo is in a much more stable place. I’d hope that means the psychological safety to speak candidly has returned, but I don’t know, and we won’t know until the next crisis, which hopefully is a long way away.
All in all, I have extremely fond memories of this company, particularly 2016-2018 when there was a real buzz and sense of wanting to change the whole financial system. And if folks at Monzo do come out in any instance, big or small and say “Hey, we got this wrong and here’s what we’ll do about it” I’ll be the first to applaud that bravery. It’s extremely important that people feel empowered to do that, and most of all, it’s human.
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The change has completely broken my sheet and because of the convoluted way Monzo use the export with Flex, even more complicated than it is in the app, none of it tallies.
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So this is why my flex transactions have been thrown out of whack with the new trends stuff. Real cock up if so.
I’ll probably mostly continue to live in the balance tab anyway. It’s all I need out of Monzo’s budgeting tools to keep on target, and that’s unaffected by this change.
I do worry how Flex becoming it’s own account might affect it though, effectively making my expected balance lower than in reality (like it would with any other 0% credit card) because it focuses on the balance and not the repayments.
Worst case scenario, I guess I just don’t have the flex account selected, and it hopefully just shows my next instalment at the end of each month like it currently does.
But I am curious how they’ll make this work for repayments and having the account selected at the same time, because this doesn’t work at all with connected credit cards!
I pay in full, and Monzo doesn’t recognise my predicted payment will be going towards the credit balance which already has my estimated balance much lower than reality, and assumes me paying it off will just take me further into debt, as opposed to actually clearing it. If they can solve this with flex though, and apply it to connected credit cards, then fantastic.
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Oh I stopped putting effort in the last time this happened. There’s history here FYI: Useful uses for Monzo Plus Live Data Export? Share your tips! - #241 by RichardL
With Monzo flex, can you pay in 3 starting from 1 month from transaction date without incurring additional interest?
I do not have flex but on website marketing I see that the first payment is marked as ‘today’. This reduces the attractiveness of Flex comparted to a credit card, in my view. With my credit card, if I pay today, I won’t have to pay anything until 30th January, whereas with Flex I would have to pay 1/3 today, 1/3 on 15th Jan and 1/3 on 15 Feb. So I only benefit 1/3 of the transaction beyond my January paycheck and actually am worse off for 2/3 of the transaction. Any thoughts?
It depends slightly when your payment date is.
If it was 31st
You could buy today, your first payment would be 31st Dec.
If you waited two days, it would be 31st Jan
You don’t make the first payment if the transaction is within two weeks of your payment date.
Sorry - this is out of date - I’ve raised this internally to get it changed.
We no longer take the first instalment “today” - your first instalment will be taken on your next payment date (or your next next payment date if your next payment date is within 14 days of making the transaction as Revels mentioned above).
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Aaa ok, thank you for that information.
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First instalment is taken on first or second upcoming regular monthly payment date - in between 14…44 days time from purchase date. On par/similar to most credit cards and other instalment companies.
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Flex has totally bamboozled me with the categories being marked as Transfers. As Transfers are excluded from Trends I’m never spending anything. For example I paid for some gig tickets on Flex card, no payment made until payment date and now it’s a transfer hidden from my spending. All future payments will be Tranfers, so at what point is it a spend on my Gig Tickets category?
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