Great post, thanks
Another vote for this. I clicked the “Get Monzo Plus” button hoping to see something a bit more tangible [can something be virtually tangible?] but there was nothing like it to be seen, so I backed out.
I have since had an in-app message asking if I’d like to speak to someone about M+. Once I’d recovered from the shock of my visit being noticed, and impressed with the AI that responded - I said yes. I will report back on what happens. If you don’t hear anything … R-
This is the key feature for me and I’ll probably type up some more thoughts when I’m at a proper keyboard, but my first thought is that really at the moment it’s only good for those who know how to work a spreadsheet.
People on here are a very small (probably geekier) subset and I can use a spreadsheet and lots of others on here are far smarter than I am. So it’s to be expected that we can use some formula for our sheets and make it do most of what we want.
But what about those don’t know what a SUMIF is? Or even the people that would like a bit of help/guidance with what can be done.
I think there should be a second sheet that basically gives an overview, “Your Monzo Life”
Your top merchants, spent money per year, a few other facts and then people will realise what they can do with it.
But to just see a big list must be quite intimidating for people. “Where do I start?”
For me, this makes the data export almost useless for me, the most basic things I want to do is be able to plot/calculate totals for pots and see all transactions within a pot over a certain time period. This would be so easy if transactions with split categories were listed as separate rows for each split but as it is the data is basically useless. I’m someone who does have the knowledge to write a script to fix it but honestly I don’t want to spend my time & energy fixing something that should have been thought about at the monzo end
I was today years old when I found out about this:
So some time ago in a sale frenzy I bought Emma Pro for a year (I think it was 70% off at the time). - and just went back to look if they have a data export.
Turns out they do - and it captures all accounts you connect to as one stream. It’s not live, which is a shame, and Pots aren’t handled in the best way possible - but this would be a good version of what one “omni stream” looks like. I may at least use this as a source for my other connected account data in my Dashboard, at least until my subscription at Emma ends.
If you could merge the best bits of Emma’s and the best bits of Monzo, it would be one super tool.
@edo1493 Time to buy Monzo
LoL.
We should be able to add export to Google Sheets.
ps: we have also added Accurate Net Worth + the fastest category editing you have ever seen over the weekend (in Emma Pro).
Seems there are many budgeting apps that will export a CSV file - MDB, who I currently use for instance. The problem there is the L1 and L2 tags [categories of transaction type according to MDB] that they assign to each transaction have to be edited - or added. Then the CSV data needs to be imported to the spreadsheet app of your choice. This used to be my process each month. I gave up. I am waiting for Money in Excel to come to the UK
Download CSV for the last month from MDB
Import into Numbers [usually, I have used Sheets and Excel - the process is similar]
Adjust the supplied categories to match your expectations
Delete - or hide - the ones you know you will never use
DIscover that one or two are incorrect and adjust again
Discover that you have far too many categories to make sense of your Spending
Create new category to capture little things - perhaps House
Create another new category to capture one-offs - perhaps Garden
Merge others so that your spreadsheet is not 2 yards long
Manually input that data into another spreadsheet that captures annual figures
Realise that none of it makes sense anymore - give up.
Get glass, ice, Gin, lemon & tonic
R-
A very interesting thread. As a Product Manager (albeit in a different industry), there’s a useful warning about a “partially agile” approach. If you don’t iterate then all you’ll ever have is an uncompetitive Minimum Viable Product.
As a Monzo user, Monzo Plus seems either like a way of creating a lot of work for yourself or a way to save £5 a month.
I shall watch with interest to see how Plus develops.
I’ve been busy manipulating the data from my Google sheet into this dashboard in excel. It’s a shame I have had to do this in the first place and (like others) I wish Monzo could do all this stuff in app to allow users to really track their finances month by month. Some of the stuff I’ve made on here (like the left to spend tile) is available in Monzo but is completely useless to me because I do most of my spending on Amex and you can’t currently connect Amex to Monzo and even if you could you can’t categorise those transactions. However, I’ve set up IFTTT to transfer Amex transactions into a pot which then shows up on my Google sheet and voila! I am dreading the day that Google sheet gets changed by Monzo and breaks my dashboard.
Truly a thing of beauty.
How did you make it look so good!
Can you guide us how to do this ?
Stunning. Wow!
That looks incredible.
If monzo offered something like that out the box then that would be worth the £5 a month.
Here are the instructions I followed to connect my Google sheet with excel and then I manipulated the hell out of it in Power Query Editor in Excel. Mine was only so complicated because of how I handle my Amex transactions (transferring my spending to an Amex pot and then using hashtags in the notes as categories) but I’m sure it would be a lot simpler for most. Power Query was relatively easy to pick up with a bit of trial and error. Once you have your transactions in Excel, the World is your oyster when it comes to what you then do with that! Design wise, I made my background and the tiles that you can see in Adobe and then used it as a background in Excel, resizing the rows and columns to fit my data nicely.
Thanks for sharing that - really interesting - hadnt considered there possibility of adding the data to excel!
I wonder if it also means I can use the same data in Power BI which is like Dashboarding dialled up to 11…
One to look into…
You sure can - Power BI also makes use of the Power Query editor but I’m really not familiar with Power BI hence why I opted to go the Excel route!
Brilliant. I would like to be able to categorise a pot transfer. That way you can categorise the transfer as whatever you spent on your Amex.