Monzo Life Hacks, Extensions and Improvements!

So Monzo has been in the UK for a while now! During that time, weā€™ve amassed a whole set of life hacks, workarounds, complementary apps and ways of extending the Monzo experience. And now itā€™s time for the UK users to give back and curate a list for new US folk as you begin your Monzo journeys! And itā€™ll also help us out to have a list of these all in one place!

So here we go! If thereā€™s anything missing, folk reply with it below and Iā€™ll add it in! US (and UK) folk, hit us up with any questions about how these work and weā€™ll try and help. :bowing_man:



Custom Pots Images

Need custom images for Pots? Head over here and create your own!

https://potimages.rknight.me/

(And hereā€™s the GitHub link)

Created by the wonderful @rknightuk


Adding Notes to Pots

You canā€™t add any notes to your Pots. But a screenshot of your Notes app used as your pots image will fix that:

h/t @Michalalaw


Automatically move money to a pot every time you spend on Amex: (Android Only)

If you use Amex and IFTTT, you can quickly set up a couple of recipes to move the value of every card transaction to a pot:

https://twitter.com/giloi/status/1171446969610326018?s=20&t=Tw2BTHpG6rRminEG_aMmFw

h/t to @giloi on Twitter and @simonb for reporting it on here.


Use more than 50 custom categories

  • Find a category you need but donā€™t use every day.
  • Tap ā€œremove categoryā€ - that will archive the category and not change any of the previously labelled transactions
  • Create your new category

When you need to use the old category:

  • Follow the steps above to archive another category
  • Find the category in a Trends and tap on Edit (top right)
  • Tap ā€œUnarchive Categoryā€ at the bottom.

Itā€™s super clunky, but if you have categories you want to keep but only use rarely itā€™s helpful.

(from over here)


Sync Monzo to YNAB

From here, you can roll your ownā€¦

ā€¦ or you can go for a hosted option:

https://syncforynab.com/


Monzo Dashboard

Created by our very own @Revels, hereā€™s a Google Docs dashboard that you can use to interrogate your Monzo dataā€¦

`* in the workaround sense, rather than cyber vulnerability sense :open_mouth:


Das Budget

A US exclusive! Das Budget is a budgeting app created and supported by Monzoā€™s very own @whileloop! And it plugs directly into Monzoā€™s API so itā€™s as live as live data can be. If you know how Simple used to do Budgeting, youā€™ll be familiar with Das Budget already!

(UK folk, the app kinda works for us, although the currency symbol is hardcoded to $ rather than Ā£. You canā€™t hook in external accounts, whereas in the US you can do it with Plaid. But most importantly, itā€™s not on the UK app stores, meaning we canā€™t download it. Or pay for it. Never mind!)

6 Likes

Bills Pot & Salary Sorter - How much to transfer?

Quick tip - if you have a fairly regular monthly/cyclic amount needed to pay the bills from a Bills pot, letā€™s say for example you need to put Ā£1,000 into the Bills pot to cover the monthly/cyclic bills - rename the Bills pot to ā€˜Bills pot - Ā£1,000ā€™

Then when you get paid, use Salary Sorter (where available) to move funds to the Bills pot. But how much to sort? - Never fear, itā€™s in the title of the Bills pot! :+1:

I keep renaming my Bills pot to account for any changesā€¦

4 Likes

Hereā€™s another one (someone else mentioned it on here, but I canā€™t find it to give them a shoutout - if you know who it was - or it was you - let me know so I can thank you!)

Want to see an external account that wonā€™t connect to Monzo?

Create a pot with $0 / Ā£0 in it, and use the pot title for the name of the institution and the account balance. E.g. ā€œApple Card: -$1327.78ā€. You could even take a screenshot of the other accountā€™s app (if thatā€™s allowed) and use it as the pot imageā€¦

(Very hacky, but a roundabout way to have the info all in one place).