Monzo Labs: Hide 'Left to Spend'

Hello!

Following up from our blog post last week about what’s next for the new look Monzo, we’ve added another small option to Monzo Labs while we design a full solution.

In the new app layout, the budgeting bar and ‘Left to spend’ figure from Summary are also shown on the Home tab. For some people this can be confusing or annoying.

We plan to improve how the different budgeting options work, how they’re introduced to people, and what the default behaviour is. However, in the meantime, we’ve added a quick fix for people running into problems.

If you head to Monzo Labs and enable Hide 'Left to Spend', the budget bar will only be shown within Summary. You’ll need the latest version of the app to do this.

We hope this helps reduce some friction while we take the time to explore more fleshed out solutions.

Let us know what you think!

:bow:

26 Likes

Just tried it, looks okay but the balance appears lower on the screen than the balance of other pots, it needs to be positioned higher up directly under “Current Account” as was previously? Hope that makes sense.

6 Likes

Thanks for the fast feedback! We tried that and it looked very strange with a big gap underneath.

We’ll likely work on a better visual solution over time, but for now we opted to centre whatever we show in this area, to avoid lopsided gaps.

10 Likes

Just tried it.

Would prefer I think the balance to come down a bit further - the gap looks too big in the standard form, in my opinion.

But on the whole it’s good - I like the idea about more of these toggleable customisations coming - makes the app way more flexibile.

What I think would be a good addition too to Summary is a mini tutorial on setting it up - I’ve had a Monzo account for ages - but broadly ignored Summary as initially I used it as a spending card, and then after going Full Monzo didn’t really pay attention to it, because I don’t categorise things, and now Bill Pots is here - I kind of want to utilise it - but I feel like I can’t trust it, because I don’t know how things in my account are affecting it.

9 Likes

Id agree with this.

This… I set my overall budget and then realised that committed spending isnt included. This wasn’t very clear to me at all.

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Yay!

Simple and effective, I like it.

Does kinda ‘float’ there mind you but I’ll take that over having info that is confusing/doesn’t make sense (for now!)

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Like it but I ended up disabling it again because I actually like knowing how I’m going. I initially didn’t like the budget bar being there on the new app, but I’ve got used to it now.

If I could change anything I’d like to show the bar but not the numbers above, so I can have a visual reference of my current budget status, but not the numbers

6 Likes

Augh! I want this more prominent, not less. knowing how much I have left is more important to me than my balance any day.

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Great work. It would be great if you could choose to hide one or both accounts if you are a JA holder. I use the Summary for CA but not for JA.

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Yes please, I only use it for my JA

100% agreed, and this is why we added this toggle to Labs rather than putting it directly into the app to start. I don’t think ‘show/hide’ is the right solution long term.

I think there’s an opportunity here to clarify how the different options for ‘overall budget’ work, and introduce them to people properly - without defaulting to ‘automatic budgeting’ which throws lots of people off at first glance.

In my mind there’s three options currently, but they’re not presented as three options to explicitly choose between.

  • No overall budget (just show my balance and maybe total upcoming payments)
  • Automatic budget (this is the default behaviour now)
  • Manual budget

I think we should provide a clear choice between these, with each explained properly - most likely defaulting to ‘no overall budget’.

There’s a bunch of design work needed before we jump to building something like that though, so it’ll take a little time (and we might find it’s not the right approach!)

13 Likes

A tutorial would be really helpful.

It took me a while to understand the behaviours of the automatic budgetting and realise it just won’t work for my situation (always thinks I’m running out of money because I pay all bills and get transfers from flat mates).

So I worked it out and set my own budget at it works great, but I always find it hard to remember how to get to where I change spending budgets. I don’t the find the icon for this on the summary screen indicates what it is to me.

6 Likes

Excellent. Keep producing app tweaks like this :+1: .

Hide the pie chart symbol as seems pointless having two ways to get to summary!

Great feature.

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Not sure where to post this regarding budgets but when it comes to setting a budget for next month is there a way we can click on the categories when on the budget screen and see what we spent the previous month - what would be really helpful. Also, can we adjust the budget by clicking and typing rather than the + and - symbols?! Thanks.

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Just enabled and prefer it. I hate the bar especially when it goes to orange/red as it isn’t a true representation of my spending.

I know it is just labs but increasing the size of the balance would make it look better or lowering it. :slight_smile:

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As mentioned by others, it would be great if we could select the account on which to hide this. Personally I only want the left to spend on my personal account, not the joint account.

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I already get something like that:


By going to Summary, then Budgets.

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Yeah but you can’t click them individually to get a better break-down. Should have been clearer. Sorry.

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