Labs Feedback: Summary šŸ“Š

Making Monzo Monzo Labs
1

Thanks for opting in to test Summary via Monzo Labs. Your feedback will help us make sure we create the best view of your money that we can.

One thing weā€™ve learned so far is that everyone earns, spends, and budgets differently. Our aim is to create something that works for the majority of people, and is the right amount of opinionated when it comes to managing money. Itā€™s tricky to test an approach for something like Summary without a wide-range of people testing it out and giving feedback.

Our motivation, what we wanted to fix

Spending as it is doesnā€™t really work for current account usage. It only tells you bad news, treating your money like a one-way-spending-street. Paying regular bills, and large one-off payments break your daily ā€˜spending moneyā€™ budget, and you have to budget in calendar months. Itā€™s also not possible to see at-a-glance how much is coming into your account each month, and how much youā€™re setting aside into Pots. Nightmare!

Development Process

We absorbed the feedback weā€™ve received from the community and via support, and our design team huddled around a whiteboard and Sketch to put together some prototypes. We then tested them with some users in the office, refined, and started building. We enabled Summary for staff after a few weeks, then worked to smooth out the issues we found when using real transaction data.

To get feedback from people that donā€™t work a Monzo, we worked with our user researcher Samantha to run a Diary study, where 14 Monzo customers used Summary for a few weeks, and let us know what did and didnā€™t work for them, releasing some new features along the way.

Weā€™re now at a point where weā€™re ready to get feedback from a wider group, with an early version weā€™ll be improving as we go. With your feedback weā€™ll get Summary ready for the main stage

What the current version includes:

  • Income, Pots, and Committed Spending summaries
  • Calculation of ā€˜Left to Spendā€™ which automatically excludes Scheduled payments and Pots transfers
  • A dial which shows how much your your ā€˜spending moneyā€™ is left, compared to how much time is left each month.
  • The ability to start your current month from a recent deposit over Ā£500
  • The ability to exclude large on-off payments from your Spending and daily budget calculation.
  • Your monthly starting balance listed under Income.
  • Categorising inbound Monzo payments will now credit the same spending category, to handle people paying you back for things.

Whatā€™s yet to come

Summary is still a work in progress, and weā€™ll be adding more functionality over the coming app updates. The following features are on our list already, so no need to convince us that they are needed!

  • Spending Targets (now released!)
  • Predicting Direct Debits and Subscriptions.
  • Notifications and monthly reports
  • Data export
  • More flexibility for custom months.
  • Savings goals for Pots

Thanks again, looking forward to your feedback!

SEE UPDATE 1: FOR CHANGES PLANNED AFTER FEEDBACK

:bowing_man:

16 Likes
2

Canā€™t set dates in previous months in terms of salary etc, also shows bills as an incoming from a friend not actual bills

4 Likes
3

It would be great to have an option to permanently mark/check certain ā€˜incomeā€™ transactions as salary, currently for me, this is shown as transfers.
Iā€™m a freelancer/contractor so income does not always fall in the Ā£500 minimum spend.

14 Likes
4

Can you set weekly salary payments, it does it have to be a monthly cycle?

13 Likes
5

I think it looks great. Unfortunately it wonā€™t work for me as I get paid every 4weeks (it really sucks) so Iā€™ve had to opt out for now.

Loving the progress thoughā€¦keep up the good work.

4 Likes
6

Iā€™m not sure if anyone has mentioned this as Iā€™m in a bit of a rush. However, I wanted to share my feedback after enabling monzo labs:

I get paid weekly so at the moment this feature isnā€™t as useful as Monzo users that are paid monthly.
Because of the above I get paid less than Ā£500 each payment (Also, the amount can vary as Iā€™m a contractor)
From what I have seen in app so far though. the UI looks really clear and simple. Canā€™t wait to see what happens next.

5 Likes
7

For anyone who gets paid like that you can just reset it by selecting your salary again each time it comes through until they iron this out.

4 Likes
8

Is there a way to set your payday without having it transferred into my account monthly? I normally top up using a card with my budget each month. I love how it works though, and Iā€™m excited to see direct debits taken into account. Is this likely to predict future direct debits based on the amount previous direct debits have taken?

6 Likes
9

My guess is no as this isnā€™t ideally how Monzo wanā€™t people to add money to the card

2 Likes
10

Randomly I seem to have 3 ā€œgeneralā€ categories showing. Also Iā€™m not quite sure why it says Ā£5 in the top right of my pots category area?

4 Likes
11

Yeah that was my feeling too - do you know if Summary only takes into account bank transfer payments then?

12

So I can only set my pay day if my salary is paid in?

13

It seems to only pick up BACS and Faster Payments at the moment

1 Like
14

Nothing in-app mentions the Ā£500 limitation
Would it be better to hide the categories that have Ā£0 spending?

I donā€™t know if I would trust the ā€œIt looks like you will run out of moneyā€ given that Pulse always draws me as a kamikaze line.

6 Likes
15

All pots In minus Out
Green for positive, Black for negative

16

It looks like it yes - but as @Jackcrwhitney mentions monzo are keen to get users having their salaries paid in

17

Thank you!

18

Iā€™ve started my ā€˜monthā€™ when my wages came in on 29 March but my rent and another faster payment to a friend for holidays are showing as committed rather than spent even though they went out of my account on 1st Aprilā€¦anyone else got this?

Understand there will be more flexible options in future and they donā€™t want to over complicate things with calendar entries but would be great to select your pay to kick the month off then manually update the end, so the spending period is accurate from the beginning.

Pots also look at little odd with the green +values being withdrawals (though think this is the same elsewhere?), would also be really helpful to see a starting and current balance in the pots summary.

Get paid again on Monday, so looking forward to trying it properly over a whole month :blush:

19

It would be great if there was a way to link payments from people to a transaction. Something I spotted straight away was payments from people that were to cover a transaction that fell in the previous cycle(transaction was on 23rd payed me on 25th).

Is the concept of targets being replaced by summmary? Itā€™s confusing because of the sneak peek that said they were coming to Android soon.

One of the things I love the most with summaries is that incoming payments now effect the category totals, really looking forward to testing this out some more, great job Monzo :grinning:

3 Likes
20

I donā€™t get how this thing works not gonna lie lol

8 Likes