Monzo Labs: Bills Pots šŸÆ

The only major bump I would say is the original attempt going quiet for a fair while. The expectation maybe needed to be managed more there as that mystery unrealised staff testing gave people some concerns this go around

Once it was reborn a few months ago it has been very good since

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So if we could use savings accounts (not fixed for obvious reasons) this would solve it.

The issue I assume is the one day delay to get money. This could be solved with this idea: Getting Paid Early on Interest Pot Withdrawals

Yep, totally fair and something we deliberately set out to avoid once we decided to rebuild it. Essentially although the result is the same, code-wise this is a separate feature solving the same problem. The original thing we built last year was scrapped and we built this one from scratch.

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A little request as Iā€™m iOS and yet to use this.

It would be awesome if the pot would display the amount of the bills thatā€™s assigned to it. So you know if the pot is below the required balance!

Great job on making this a reality though! This has whatā€™s stopped me transferring my direct debits to monzoā€¦

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My salary doesnā€™t go in on the same dateā€¦ I didnā€™t mention salary in my post so am a little confused as to where thatā€™s come from.

This is what Iā€™m doingā€¦

  • My salary arrives on the last Wednesday of the month. I shove it all into a pot to keep it hidden from my current monthā€™s budget.
  • The last day of the month I pay myself that salary back.
  • Iā€™m now setting up all committed spends to come from a pot for neatness so wanted clarification if I can schedule a deposit into this pot on the 1st and be confident all DDs set up for the 1st will run after this pot deposit

I think in that instance you just wouldnā€™t use this and would continue doing what you did before. Itā€™s a choice over what is more important to you really.

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Are Standing Orders being incorporated in a matter of days, weeks or longer? :eyes:

Weeks :slight_smile: ASAP

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We are currently testing this with staff. We just want to make sure everything works the way it should before we ship it :rescue_worker_helmet:

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Ah apologies i seen you said Ā£1200 inwards and assumed it was a payday movement.

Could you not split the transfer you do into the ā€œSweepā€ pot into 2 so that enough for your bills is transferred to the bill pot straight away?

This is a really interesting feature, but it seems a little clumsy to use. Hereā€™s how I think you could make it easier to use:
A user flow that allows you to select from a list of direct debits which ones youā€™d like to be deducted from which pot.
A total, based on the last amount taken, of the total amount that will be taken from each pot (per month)
A way to create a scheduled pot transfer to cover the total amount of all the DDs in each pot.

Right now I have to use a calculator to figure out the total of all the debits for my DD pot and manually create a scheduled pot payment.

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As both @SouthseaOne and @Chris7 have pointed out - showing a total amount of bills ā€˜paid from potā€™ is a much needed feature. This is crucial to show how much money you need to put into the pot(s) to cover when they are paid from it/them.

Summary needs to follow this accurately also. I havenā€™t got my head around how it works or doesnā€™t work just yet, so Iā€™m tracking with YNAB at the same time to ensure nothing goes awry. After a quick check, it seems to be reacting as it should - but Iā€™ve not had a D/D paid from the pot yet so weā€™ll have to seeā€¦

EDIT: Summary doesnā€™t work properly. Adding an amount to a bills pot to cover bills within it reduces the account amount (obviously, youā€™ve moved it to a ā€˜safe placeā€™) but Summary still shows the items as a committed spend and therefore deducts them from the left-to-spend. They ARE a committed spend, but the commitment has been covered by the transfer of the amount into the pot so the left-to-spend isnā€™t correctā€¦
This may make Summary quite complex to understand unless Iā€™m missing something simple.

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Would TF users get it today/tomorrow once itā€™s released ?

Iā€™ve asked for this internally, and weā€™ve agreed from the start itā€™s a helpful feature.

Especially if you want to check throughout the month where youā€™re at and if youā€™re over / under what you need if you want to reprioritise some money for things.

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We are looking into this :crossed_fingers: Question, What would you like the total show? Total amount going out that month? or Week? What would it show if you have bills coming out weekly and monthly from the same pot?

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No but your money could be in a savings pot earning interest? Why assume it would be in your main account?

Thatā€™s what I think Iā€™m going to do, yeah. I was just interested in how stepwise/robust money moving is.

Itā€™s for a different topic, but I feel this should be the order for scheduled payments/withdrawals/transfers:

  1. Pot withdrawals
  2. Pot deposits
  3. Standing orders and DDs

That way costumers can be confident any pot/account tinkering they do will happen before external payments are made.

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Me personally, a total amount plus a remaining amount.

For example:

My bills pot is Ā£1200 and a Ā£400 direct debit has come out. It would show Ā£800 of Ā£1200 remaining. Similar to a pot progress bar or summary bar.

That way it shows how much needs to be in their at the start of the month, and how much is pending going out that month at any given time

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Have you thought about doing it? Loosing interest for the sake of having money in one place instead of another is not particularly useful I donā€™t think. Your money could be working better.

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Could it show the total on a monthly basis? I know not perfect but imagine more bills are monthly than weekly or quarterly, so perhaps the most relevant?

And similarly, I know not everyone, but a monthly salary probably the most common too right, so transferring a certain amount each month would seem to be best too?

With these two together, I would expect the monthly account to be calculated as follows:
((weekly bills x 52) + (monthly bills x 12) + (quarterly bills x 4) + etc ) / 12 = monthly amount

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