Labs Feedback: Summary 📊

[raysguy]

One more thing I noticed this morning - couple of cancelled orders. Excluded transactions from summary. Received refund but I cannot exclude that refund from summary. So now I have to e
re-enable the original payment and set it to an empty category of general along with the refund to just to zero sum it. Would be great to have an option to also exclude the refund because essentially the transactions overall is as though it is null and void and never happened.

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Yeah, we’ve heard this a few times. It’s on our list

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Hey Peter,

Thanks for all this feedback, I’ll try and answer each point.

@Peter_G

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 intention of Spending targets is to use them as an upper limit you want to spend. I agree the name is a bit odd. In terms of Savings, we hope to have savings Goals in the future, which are a little different (“I want to save £x by date y”)

The point about deviation from a precise budget is interesting. Something for us to think more about.

@Peter_G

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).

Agreed, this is something we need to improve. Soon we’ll at least prefill the stepper with your average monthly spend to reduce the amount of taps, but the ability to enter a custom amount is definitely required.

@Peter_G

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.

Nice idea, will discuss it with the team!

@Peter_G

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?)

The next app updates will improve upon this, showing how much of the month is left, so you can compare that with how much target you have left. The ‘progress bar’ will also go red if things are looking critical.

@Peter_G

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).

The idea is that Committed Spending stays in there, so your monthly fixed costs are separate from your day-to-day spending and targets. Then you can better work out how much money you have left over to spend/save after bills etc each month.

What you described about setting your targets with an understanding of available funds, and committed spending is what we’re aiming for, it’ll just take a few steps to get there.

Hope this helps, and thanks again!

[Peter_G]

Thanks @jami, much appreciated!

@Jami

The idea is that Committed Spending stays in there, so your monthly fixed costs are separate from your day-to-day spending and targets. Then you can better work out how much money you have left over to spend/save after bills etc each month.

I get that you’re thinking about fixed vs variable costs, but (rightly or wrongly) this isn’t how I’ve been interpreting Summary. I’ve been looking at it as Committed Spending being stuff that’s coming up, and Spending as transactions I’ve already made.

On a more practical level, it doesn’t (seem to) work with targets. I transfer a regular amount to savings each month (tagged as Finances category). These only appear under the Committed Spend section, not under spending - so aren’t counted for Targets purposes. Basically, there’s nowhere to see a total of all transactions under each category, or to get an accurate view of progress against targets if recurring standing orders are involved.

Some random wonderings from a feverish mind:

• I might like to see a logical / template month, maybe (i.e. to see recurring incomings / outgoings for a basic month - not a real month, but basically the template before any discretional stuff).
• For the current month, I think I’d like to see transactions move from committed to spending once they’ve happened. If we’re looking at a monthly view then it feels like the app should represent the live version of what’s happened (but see previous bullet 'cos that info would be useful somewhere!)
• I’ve mentioned this before, but seeing future months, so we know what we’re committed for in those periods (particularly as I have some bills that are quarterly - Thames Water, I’m looking at you…) would be useful…

Hopefully this is helpful for you in seeing how I’m interacting with the app to date. As always, very happy to give more feedback!

PS Keep up the excellent work!

[nick69g (Nick)]

When in the new Summary (Labs) screen; how can I manually set the start and end dates for the budget.

I get paid on the 28th of each month, but still like to budget from the 1st to the 30/31st of each month. Therefore I don’t want to choose my salary date but would like to manually choose the date of 1st.

How do I do this please?

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

You can’t yet but this is coming

[nick69g (Nick)]

OK - shame it did not make it into todays update then…

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

Actually, sorry for the dodgy info - it sounds like if you select your payment from the 1st of the month, the Summary period will run until the 1st of the next month etc.

Labs Feedback: Summary

For now - If you are paid early, you can choose to either ignore it, and let your new month start on the 27th as normal (with your early salary payment being carried over), or you can start a new month from the day you were paid, which will run until the same date next month. We plan to make this more flexible soon, to better handle being paid early/late.

Is that not what you’re seeing?

[nick69g (Nick)]

Confused… so how do I choose the payment to be 1st of the month?

[alexs (Alex Sherwood)]

Assuming that you were paid on the 1st of the month this month, you set the start date for the summary period by tapping ‘this month’ at the top of the Summary screen, then selecting your salary payment from the list of available transactions. That will set the start of the summary period to the 1st.

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

By default, your month will run from the 1st to the 1st (normal calendar months). You don’t need to do anything for it to work that way.

However, if you’ve shifted your month to match your payday already, it’s not currently possible to go back to calendar months. We’ll add this soon.

You can force it back next month, by transferring £200 or more to your account on June 1st, then using that payment to change your start date again.

[nick69g (Nick)]

OK so it has to be a minimum of £200?

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Yup - but we’ll be adding more flex to date ranges soon!

[nick69g (Nick)]

OK thanks.

[Alexxxxx (>50 categories pls)]

Just a random two pence but I wanna say that I miss old targets so much.
I understand they’ll go red now if going over, but why not have the green and amber too?
The black bar is a lot less eye-catching and not at all helpful for easy or at-a-glance checking, which is surely what you’re going for here?

And I’m not sure if this has been explained before, so feel free to shoot me down, but what exactly is the benefit of the dial over the old targets bar? It takes up a ridiculously large amount of screen real estate, again making me have to work harder to quickly see targets and spending progress, and doesn’t seem to have any benefits?

[technicolor (EJ)]

Really glad to hear that [quote=“Chippy_j, post:543, topic:36841”]
income?
[/quote]

[dixonbainbridge (Chris)]

I like to download statements so I reconcile with accounting software (YNAB) (statements are the only thing to contain running balance). By turning on labs it removes the button to download statements so I have to keep turning labs on and off. Will this option by reinstated within summary?

PS I’m on Android.

[Jami (Jami Welch)]

Transaction export and bank Statement export are in progress. We wanted to update them to work with the flexible month start dates that Summary offers. Coming Soon!

[dixonbainbridge (Chris)]

Great, thanks.

[neovo]

Any news on inc direct debits under commited spending