So I’m loving the ability to add custom categories to better manage my money, however I’m finding it incredibly frustrating that I can’t remove the original categories that Monzo provide. It seems a bit self obsessed on their part, as though their categories should be adequate for our budgeting needs, however it’s adding confusion!
Also, a few ideas that would make it much simpler…
Rather than the icons/colours being on a sliding scale of sorts, I think it would be helpful if they could appear in a list/grid form. I’m finding myself forgetting which icon I just had in mind whilst I scroll through to look if there’s a better suited one!
Choosing a “sort order” for the categories e.g. alphabetical, date created, by colour etc. As I’ve created a system where each colour represents a type of spending e.g. transport, bills, shopping, expenses and then within that colour there are multiple categories e.g. for transport there are taxi, bus, train. At present, the categories just appear in the order you created them, above the original ones which I find doesn’t satisfy my organisational OCD!
The option to change bulk change categories on previous similar transactions. So if I put a transaction from Trainline in the train category, it would be handy if all other Trainline transactions appeared on the next page, perhaps with a tick box besides them and a “select all” option. This way I can quickly categorise all relevant past transactions without going through each individual one. (I’m fairly sure I recall seeing this facility available on Yolt)
2 and 3 are good suggestions. There were comments from the designers/devs about how pleased they were with the pickers, so I don’t think that will change.
Removing categories just adds complexity that isnt needed. Not sure how you think that is self obsessed.
I’m honestly quite surprised this isn’t something that has been sorted well before now. I don’t really use anything beyond the default categories, but I’d of thought updating previous transactions was a core part of managing categories if you’re going to allow them to be changed.
Purely out of interest, I also checked Starling yesterday when someone mentioned this and it looks like they have an option to update “all past and future transactions” when changing a transaction category. I thought that was interesting given that their money management tools in general are more basic.
It would be good to ignore whole categories from the budget/summary.
Or to get to the same place be able to exclude payment requests from the summary and include faster payments/ Monzo.me requests into the summary. (Especially when you do a friend not on Monzo in a bill split but then can’t allocate their payment against the original payment).
I was disappointed to see that they’ve put custom categories behind a paywall. I can’t help but feel that the majority of new options are going to put behind a paywall and they won’t come through to non-plus users. The custom categories would have been great!
Also, this is a genius move by Monzo. Anyone who signs up with an idea of trying Plus for 3 months, will stick around because they wont want their custom pot data ruined!
Yeah, but there’s no such thing as “should” is there. It’s just counter-opinion without any absolute scale of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ against which to measure it. My ideal world doesn’t include paid bank accounts at all.
Just been though all my transactions for 2020 to fix the categories, should be easier from now on.
What would have been brilliant here is a Flux integration. I have absolutely no idea what I bought from Amazon 3 months ago without also checking my order history.
I might just make an Amazon category and be done with it!
I’m curious as to how this is all working behind the scenes. I ask because I set up a new category for fuel a few days ago then filled up my car at a petrol station I’d never used before, in fact Monzo don’t seem to have any merchant data on the petrol station at all.
I noticed that the transaction had automatically been assigned to my new fuel category.
So I’m wondering, behind the scenes are these being matched up to things like the merchant category code automatically where our custom categories match?
It’s not a problem if a company charges you for their services.
My main gripe is that the core offering going forward will probably be diminished as it’s new additions will be held behind a paywall. Monzo have always been transparent in their product pipeline, but why would they offer these developments to everyone going forward if you can offer them to a band of people who are willing to pay for it.
By offering a paid for service (especially within banking) they’re trying to please a very small percentage of users, compared to the majority.
Monzo also make money from the customer, it’s a two way thing - it’s in their interest to retain customers and attract new ones in a competitive market
But they can’t operate their company at a loss. And I’d much, much prefer to directly pay for my bank rather than having them try to make money out of me obliquely. Look at how the legacy banks try to upsell you a random package of insurance, and try to make payment dates so confusing that people end up in their overdraft and paying lots of fees. Down that path also lies “the user is the product”, which is what you see when Facebook and Google try to exploit you and sell your eyeballs to advertisers. And when you end up down these paths the real customer - that’s not you - gets to (explicitly or implicitly) dictate the direction of the product. I’ve seen it both through many companies externally, and also first-hand in my own career. No longer will the company build interesting, innovative things that are in your interest, instead they will just try to game you to perform whatever actions best facilitate increasing their revenue stream.
It’s better to be the customer, than to be the product.
