Labs Feedback: Summary 📊

[redshift]

That’s an interesting form of recurring payment I hadn’t thought of initially. I’d assume we’ll be able to set payments as recurring, however, it would just assume it recurred on the same day of every month. Maybe there should be an option to set a reminder if the recurring payment needs to be completed manually?

There’s also Direct Debits which fluctuate in value every week/month. I wonder how those will be presented in committed spending?

[raysguy]

Glad you’re looking at this. I think trying to combine a financial overview with budgeting features in a single section is creating difficulties in designing an appropriate solution. If the Summary view was fully rolled out as is then Monzo would have lost all use to me as a budgeting tool. For me the main driver in switching to Monzo was to be more aware of what I was spending and try to gain some semblance of financial control through budgets so without that Monzo would have lost a key differentiator.

I think there needs to be a way of separating out the info to show both “funds available” and “budget remaining”. Both are key pieces of information and I don’t think it should be an either / or situation. Perhaps show at the top starting balance and total funds remaining because including starting balance in the figures as “income” is both inaccurate and misleading. Similarly, incoming transfers allocated to a spending category should offset that category as opposed to being “income”. For example, my mortgage provider collected £111 too much from my Monzo direct debit this month and then manually refunded via transfer. I assigned that transfer to the Bills category but it doesn’t show there so Summary now has my Bills spend as £111 too high and my income artificially inflated by £111. This makes the Summary quite inaccurate and unhelpful. Just like if I get refunds from Amazon and I assign these to the appropriate category I’d expect them to reduce my spend in that category as opposed to inflating my income figure.

[srrvnn (Saravanan Ganesh)]

Scenario:

1. A standing order of £2000 went through to my landlord to their bank.
2. My roommate paid me on my other account by mistake, and I transferred that to Monzo.
3. I categorize both these transactions as bills.

What should my summary spending category be?
I does not show both these transactions.

[Areeb1]

It’s a good idea if you are using Monzo as your primary account with your salary paid into it. In my situation, I just transfer from my primary account whenever I run low so I actually prefer the previous budget screen rather than this summary screen.

The budget screen works better when you are using Monzo as a top up type of account.

[MRMR (Marcel Ruhf)]

Yep. I believe one of Monzo’s current aims is to get people to use it as their primary account, so this is a logical step.

[jrlagerman (Jorge)]

Hi @Jami! Will we get a yearly summary? or a graph with all the information for JAN-DEC or different 12 month period? Or YTD?

It would be awesome to have on a glance how much money went in, out and off to pots in a whole year!

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Right now only Scheduled bank transfers show in Committed Spending next up will be Direct Debits and Online Subscriptions.

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Nice idea! no plans yet - but once we get the fundamentals right month-to-month, a longer term view would be ace (especially if you have some long-term savings goals).

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Right now, being paid back via bank transfer doesn’t do anything smart unfortunately.

Given your scenario I would expect:

• Your £2000 standing order to be shown under Committed Spending
• Your transfer from your other account to show up under Transfers within Income

Is that what you see? We have plans to improve this flow, no ETA yet though.

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Most likely we’ll do some sort of averaging / rough estimation - the more historical data we have, the more accurate we’ll be able to be.

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Thanks, all fair points and tings we plan to improve soon!

[Trash (JoeO)]

Hi Jamil -

This answers @Redshift’s question (the first part of which was a response to my question) but doesn’t actually answer my original question which was:

@Trash

I have to renew my travel pass every month here in Paris. This has to be done in the last week of the month.

What this means is that, although it has to be done even month, it is not done on a particular day. Is there any way that I can mark my pass renewal as a recurring bill so that it is considered as committed spending?

P.S. Loving the Summary screen so far BUT I am not sure how it interacts with the targets functionality. Do targets still have a purpose?

Many thanks
Cheers
Joe

[Dan_R (Dan)]

@Jami

Right now only Scheduled bank transfers show in Committed Spending next up will be Direct Debits and Online Subscriptions.

Any ETA on this? When Summery was added to Labs it was said it would come the next week or one after, that was last week I think?

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

No ETA right now - it was targets that was due in a week’s time

[Dan_R (Dan)]

Fair enough mate my bad keep up the good work!

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

We’re still playing with the rules, but the idea is to allow you to mark certain transactions as being part of a ‘subscription’ which will then create a monthly estimation. Not everything will need to be a Direct Debit, we want to make sure it’ll work for things like Netflix etc, and perhaps your travel pass purchase each month can fall into a similar flow.

For targets, right now they just work for day-to-day spending at the category level. We’re working on bringing back the total spending target, which will then be much more closely tied to the dial etc.

[DanF508]

did you recently test direct debits showing up, I’m sure my BT DD that came out on 6th was showing under committed before bank holiday? Which was great to see how it’s going to be working in future.

[Dan_R (Dan)]

Its a bug @DanF508, it shows a few days before then disappears after its gone out

[Peter_G]

Some feedback on the integration of Targets with Summary:

• I’m a bit confused over whether setting a target means that I’m setting a spending figure to aim for, or whether it’s a maximum limit. The name implies the former, but the behaviour is a bit like the latter. In reality, there are some categories that I’d like to under-spend on (such as eating out) and some that I’d like to over-spend on (such as savings). There are also some (e.g Family, which I use for housing - council tax, mortgage etc) that I know the precise values of and would want to come in to the penny and to be alerted if that wasn’t the case.
• The tapping +/- to set targets isn’t great. I’d rather be able to set a precise amount, but the tapping is laborious when you might have four figure targets. Personally, I’d also rather greater precision than to the nearest £5 (so I could tell if something’s gone funky with my mortgage payment, for example).
• On the main summary screen, I’ve found a bug where if you tap “more” under spending (to show all categories), switch to a different app then back to Monzo, it still displays “more” at the end, instead of “less”
• It feels odd that targets are so separated from Summary. I found myself wanting to tap on a category under Spending in the Summary tab, and be able to amend the target from that screen.
• Looking at the little line graphs that show much much you’ve spent against each target, it’s not clear to me whether I’m doing well or otherwise. I think this relates to the first point (are targets to be aimed to exceed or to come under?)
• I also have a bug in the Committed Spending section. Money that went out of my account in the first few days of the month (standing orders) are showing under the Committed Spending section and not in Spending. (Monzo folk, DM me if you’d like screenshots etc).
• I wonder if there are better ways to integrate Summary and Targets? I’ve noted below what I did to set my targets. I wonder whether this is too complicated for most people, but for me it would have been cool and might be a method for bringing Summary and Targets together.

Setting my targets:

1. Go to Monzo to find my monthly salary amount. Write it down
2. Go to Monzo to find my recurring transactions per category. Write them down.
3. Subtract 2 from 1
4. Proportion the remaining spend across the categories according to preference.
5. Copy these figures into the app.

What I would have loved to have happened:

1. Monzo to “know” my monthly salary figure (or for me to either enter it or select it from the transaction list). This would then set the total amount that all targets should add up to.
2. For each category, be able to select transactions that represent typical monthly transactions. So, for bills I might select all my DDs. This then gives me my target figure for that category.
3. The app would then build up a target based on each transaction I select and give me a running total of how much of my monthly salary is unallocated.
4. Once I’ve allocated all my financial obligations, to be able to set additional amounts for fun stuff - eating out etc. Or just have the app proportion the remaining amount across categories.

If you’re being super-smart about it, these targets could then help drive the Summary page…

cc @Jami

[Trash (JoeO)]

Thanks Jami -
Appreciate the response (and seems to be a decent solution).
Definitely looking forward to the return of Total spending target as I found that much more useful than setting targets for individual areas - too much like hard work

@Jami

We’re still playing with the rules, but the idea is to allow you to mark certain transactions as being part of a ‘subscription’ which will then create a monthly estimation. Not everything will need to be a Direct Debit, we want to make sure it’ll work for things like Netflix etc, and perhaps your travel pass purchase each month can fall into a similar flow.

For targets, right now they just work for day-to-day spending at the category level. We’re working on bringing back the total spending target, which will then be much more closely tied to the dial etc.