Make categories categories and tags tags based on established classification theory

[awjdean]

@jph

1. I was under the impression this was only for Holidays/Expenses? 2. You’d have to be able to use it for almost every category, surely? 3. And how is it different to just getting rid of Expenses and using a tag instead?

1. It is only for Holidays/Expenses (and potnetially Bills/Committed Spend).

2. Not at all, it’s useful for Holidays/Expenses(/Bills) because transactions which fit in those “categories” also fit in other categorises and it would be useful to have further

• With a Holiday toggle, you’d be able to budget for specific categorises while on holiday. Maybe you only want to spend a certain amount on Eating Out or Shopping while you’re away.

• An Expenses toggle would be useful because Expenses are things you’re expecting to be reimbursed for. So an Expenses toggle would let someone easily track things they should be reimbursed for while also categorising their spending.

• A Bills/Committed Spend toggle would allow people to have an overview of their Committed Spend while also allowing them to categorise stuff like Netflix as Entertainment so they can get a better understanding of how much they’re actually spending on Entertainment instead of Netflix being lumped in with the household bills.

NB: I think the Bills category should be changed to Household along with the introduction of a Committed Spend toggle to help people understand how much they’re spending on stuff like Entertainment subscriptions (eg: Netflix, Spotify etc…).

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@jph

I think the last thing people want to do is spend more time itemising every receipt to break every line down into a different category.

That’s true, however, I think it’s the only way to currently enable meaningful budgeting. Of course, each person doesn’t have to give the transaction more than one category, but the option should be there for people who do.

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@jph

I still don’t know whether children’s clothes are Shopping or Family or something else. What is a universal converter plug (especially if you use it on holiday and also at home and also for business and also lend it to your mum sometimes)?

Each individual would have to make those decisions themselves, but I think most people would put children’s clothes under Family and the universal plug adapter would probably be categorised using the reason you initially bought it for (eg: if it was initially bought for a Holiday, it would go under Holiday).

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[quote=“jph, post:11, topic:75989”]
I still have no idea what a bunch of categories are for or how to classify many types of transaction.

What’s General for? What about “Personal Care”?!
/quote]

• General’s basically for anything you can’t categorise or want to keep separate and also for assigning income which would decrease another category, but I agree that the General category really shouldn’t exist. An Income category would be much more useful.

• Personal Care is for stuff like deodorant, shower stuff, make up, medicine, gym membership, supplements etc…

@jph

Is a beer and a gig in Viantiane Holidays/Entertainment/Eating Out/Family? What about my trip to the Hipermercado? Or bowling and food with the nephews and nieces?

With the Holiday toggle and the ability to split a transaction into multiple categorises, I’d categorise these transactions as:

• Beer and a gig in Viantiane ==> Holidays toggle + Entertainment. You could probs also split it between Entertainment and Family depending on if you want to split every time you spend on your kids out into the Family category (personally I’d just leave it as Holiday toggle + Entertainment).

• Trip to the Hipermercado ==> Holidays toggle + Groceries.

• Bowling and food with the nephews and nieces ==> if the bowling and the food are the same transactions, I’d split this between Entertainment and Eating Out.

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To be clear I completely agree with the part I’ve highlighted in bold here:

@jph

Custom categories . This I guess would be ideal but it isn’t really enough as the defaults ought not to be left broken. It shouldn’t be hard to come up with a set of categories that are actually unique to each transaction. Users shouldn’t have to do the work themselves either.

Custom categorises should definitely be built and would go a long way towards Monzo’s idea of letting people budget in the way that they choose, but I do think there should be a few more default categorises.

I’ll probs do a post of my own describing which of the default categorises should be changed and what new default categorises should exist.