Better categorisation functionality was why I signed up for Monzo Plus, but both custom categories and category splitting have been implemented in a way that limits their usability for me as a budgeting tool.
1. Updating category names
It’s frustrating that changes to category names don’t propagate to the Google Sheets export automatically. I’m guessing there is an infrastructural limitation that makes batch operations difficult as bulk category changes also aren’t supported.
A workaround is to disconnect and reconnect the export to your Google Account, which will create a new sheet with the updated category names. The manual CSV export also uses the latest names.
2. Normalise split categories into separate rows
I have a budgeting spreadsheet set up that relies on the transaction category and amount being in specific columns. This requires the export to represent transactions with multiple categories as multiple rows (with the same transaction ID).
I’ve looked into using formula to normalise the data in sheets, but it looks like a complex and brittle solution, so I’m most likely going to either go without category splitting, or write an App Script function to normalise the data prior to ingesting it into my budget spreadsheet.
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It’s a shame these features have such obvious rough edges. It makes me wonder whether the Monzo team use the product for budgeting themselves. If they don’t make improvements to the categorisation tools before my 3 month minimum term expires, I’ll likely move to another tool (e.g. Emma) and cancel my Monzo Plus subscription.