Introducing Salary Sorter and Bills Pots šŸŽ‰

Automated and allowing percentages I can see happening. Not sure how good of an idea it would be help you move your funds away from Monzo - who knows though :man_shrugging:

:rofl: and solve world peace too? :wink:

Hey all,

I played around with the Salary Sorter yesterday when I got paid, and everything seems to be working nicely, coming out of my Bills Pots as needed etc.

However - how do I edit the Salary Sorter? I forgot to add one payment into the Bills Pot, and want to edit the amount that goes into there on Payday. I canā€™t see an option for it anywhere? Has anyone managed to find it?

Thanks!

Wait until next payday.

You can only do it by clicking into the payment like you did this time round. So as mentioned above youā€™ll need to wait until your next payday.

To answer your future questionā€¦ yes Monzo will be improving this :wink:

Oh ok! That makes sense - but yeah, would be great if you just do it on the fly.

Thanks @Feathers and @Ordog!

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If you mean just for DDs that are about to come out (i.e. already showing in greyscale on your feed) then yes - I think this is a bug that is affecting everyone. Still waiting to hear about it, hopefully theyā€™re working on it.

If you mean for other DDs, no - the left to spend should be accurate and only deduct payments that will be coming from your main account, not ones that will come from your bill pot and are covered there.

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In the bill pot itself, it just totals what is left to pay, it would be good if it also totalled the total for that month and also made it a bit clearer what has been paid already by prehaps splitting the list into paid this month and left to pay items.

Sorry if this has been suggested already but Iā€™m not reading 562 posts to find out.

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Iā€™d like to see automation and percentages too. It would be great if they could make the sorter run on the last day of month as well as the first. So it would act as a sweep feature, allowing me to move any left over money at the end of the month into pots.

Got to try using the salary sorter properly for the first time.

It didnā€™t go well :frowning:

Tapping the payment and opting to sort it brought up the flow nicely. And the first two items I sorted fit the predefined value bounds (that is, I just tapped on + until they were correct).

The third one was a slightly odd amount, so I had to tap on the figure and type it in.

Then, while trying to confirm this amount/hide the keyboard/carry on with the sorting, I accidentally tapped the ā€˜Sort Salaryā€™ button.

Didnā€™t ask for any kind of confirmation, went in to ā€˜Sorting!ā€™ right away, with no option to cancel.

To add insult to injury, it then only sorted the first two items and not the third one that was the cause of this mess in the first place.

Tapping back on the initial transaction, I now no longer have the option of sorting it.

Having already deleted my scheduled transfers in anticipation of using this tool, Iā€™m now having to manually sort pretty much the whole thing myself instead.

So for me, what was a great idea has ended up being a pretty awful experience. At the very least, I think the flow should be amended to add a ā€œConfirm you want to process now / Carry on making changesā€ screen so that misstaps arenā€™t a sudden-death event.

Has anyone else had this happen to them, or am I just clumsier than the average Monzo customer?

3 Likes

Iā€™ve not had any accidents yet with Salary Sorter, but your experience of the results of a clumsy/unsure tap highlights a UI issue which could be improved.

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This is exactly what I came here to ask for as well.

The other thing I am struggling with is why this month for example I havenā€™t got enough money in that pot whilst last month I did. Clearly I have added something to it, or an amount has changed but there is no way of working that out from what I can see. So being able to see the last payment for each item maybe so you can quickly compare and see what is causing the fluctuations?

Thanks

Great suggestion. At present itā€™s hard to easily determine which direct debits have been paid against those yet to be paid. I hope this functionality is included in a future update to the app.

Does Summary > Committed Spending > Bills
help? Thatā€™s where I usually go to see whatā€™s happened.

hello everyone

can someone tell me how i edit my salary as i chose pot to put money when i get paid but now some money need to be raise but now i can not make edit for next month.

Tell me how i can edit money for next month pay please

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Hi @MonzoNo5 & welcome :wave:

Once you use Salary Sorter to ā€˜sendā€™ money to one or more destinations (pots), it goes away until the next time the same deposit is received. When it is received next time, you can do the same ā€˜sendā€™ or choose to do it in a different way.

If you need to change things before the next time Salary Sorter is available, then you will need to manually move amounts from pots to your account.

I hope this is helpful!

hello

when i set up i select remember for next time though so it will do it again so i will have to add more money next pay it.

I should be able to go back to old pay and change it for next time or there should be option somewhere to change

this is not good to have remember for next time but no way to change as people bills do change

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If you selected ā€˜remember for next timeā€™, then Salary Sorter will auto-fill the ā€˜transfersā€™ that you did last time. But it will still give you the option to adjust them before you commit. It isnā€™t fully automatic yet.

Once you are used to how it works, it works really well.

hello

that is good to hear shame it was not so clear when i set up first time

thank you

Iā€™ve been thinking a lot about Salary Sorter (and, to a lesser extent, Bills Pots).

I love the idea, but I think the current implementation doesnā€™t really work for me. Hereā€™s why:

Background:

  • Iā€™m paid on the last working day of the month. I have most direct debits set up for the first week of the month, all standing orders on the 1st and all Pot transfers on the 1st.

Pain Points:

  • The two months where I have tried to use Sorter, itā€™s failed or become too frustrating - the first month it kept crashing; the second month I started to write down the value for each Pot transfer (Iā€™ve got a few) and calculate the sum total of all my bills - but then I had to flick back to see my transfers by which time the Sorter had forgotten the values Iā€™d input.

  • Having manually moved money to a new Bills Pot last month, I found that it was actually more difficult to keep track of than using Summary. The left to spend figure is clear for me - having money in Pots just confused the landscape and I was never entirely clear on what was where. (Although I did end up with a surplus, which was an unexpectedly positive side effect of confusion!)

  • This was compounded this month as Iā€™d hadnā€™t taken off the Bills Pots setting. So my Bills Pot was empty, but Summary wasnā€™t taking that into account - so Iā€™ve overspent quite a bit already.

  • Salary sorter isnā€™t automatic. I like to fire and forget - especially if payday is exactly one day before the 1st. I worry that Iā€™ll forget to jump in and manually tap sort - if I donā€™t do that before then, itā€™s kinda pointless anyway as most direct debits and standing orders happen then (or thereabouts). I like the certainty of scheduled transfer.

  • Speaking of which, as Salary Sorter only works with Pots I still have to handle my external transfers anyway. The best way I can currently do that for my payday is to schedule those for the 1st. So I might as well keep my Pots transfers for that date, too.

How would I improve things?

I like that itā€™s clever to package Salary Sorter up into a branded and marketable concept. But Iā€™d like it to be more integrated into the core app functionality:

  • On the transfers screen, Iā€™d like to be able to just change my existing 1st January transfers to say ā€œWhen Salary is Receivedā€ (or something). So I donā€™t have to remember all the values - I can just change the trigger date.
  • Similarly, Iā€™d like this to work for external transfers, too.
  • Iā€™d fix the Left to Spend figure so that it takes into account lack of money in Bills Pots - and gives an accurate reading of how much money is left / will be left over.

I know that predicting salary in is difficult, and that automating it runs the risk that different incoming payments might accidentally trigger it. I wonder if a bit of human intervention might not be useful here? e.g. allowing us to set rules for salary payments. Something like thisā€¦

IF payee = Employer AND date = last working day of month AND value > Ā£2000 AND value < Ā£2500

ā€¦ but obviously without the pseudo-code and with a nice interface.

Anyway, these are probably niche points. And I think Iā€™ll keep using Summary and scheduled Pots transfers for now, but sharing this in case itā€™s useful insight for the team in understanding how this madman manages his money!

8 Likes

I agree with this near enough word for word. Automating the sorter, based on my own rules would be ace! I have no issue with a one time setup of what rules I consider make an incoming payment salary to me (And making it percentage based as well as a fixed amount would also make things a lot easier).

3 Likes