Per-tag statements

Feedback & Ideas
#1

Context

In the company I work for, we usually pay for our own expenses and then claim them back. This is working very well in the UK: I just need to attach the receipts and I get my money.

Problems arise when I go abroad though. I can either:

  • claim money using the relevant foreign currency;
  • claim money in GBP.

If I use foreign currencies, receipts are enough but I lose money (bad exchange rates set by the company). If I use GBPs, I need a statement.

Existing solutions

  • Take screenshots | Doesn’t scale well. Soon to be rejected here.
  • Existing ‘export statement’ | My company doesn’t have to know where I shop.
  • Export and edit statement | Quick’n’dirty line blanking impossible: must look official and genuine. Nice editing does not scale well.
  • Use company card | I wish I could.
  • Make finance pay | idem
  • Use dedicated account (Transferwise, etc.) | Works well, just need to provision it.

The bottom line here is that there are solutions, however the simplest ones are not Monzo-based and the point is to make Monzo better, isn’t it?

Suggestion

We have notes and tags. We have a nice tag view. I suggest generating per-tag statements.

From the UX perspective, I would suggest only updating the tag view (e.g. by adding a button there) and not adding new entries to the existing ‘export statement’ functionality. That way the UI stays the same for the ones who don’t need the feature (no new confusing lines and entries).

The coupling between notes and tags may also be leveraged: the note could appear in the statement to include relevant comments.

Example

I went to SuperSymposium in Germany. I payed for:

  • registration fees: Registration fee for #SuperSymposium.
  • couple of meals: Meal (#SuperSymposium)
  • flights: Flight UK <-> Germany for #SuperSymposium
  • etc.

I click on one of them, then click on the #SuperSymposium tag and press ‘Make statement’.

I get a statement limited to this tag including the notes as comments.

Note that this idea is flexible enough to be (positively) abused (whatever that means) by people who want a per-transaction statement.

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#3

Would an option to export all the transactions marked as Expenses for a custom time period work?

#4

Well, practically, yes absolutely! :slight_smile:

That being said, our finance department is split: I have to send different things to different people so tagging-based statements would still be superior. But I don’t care people paying for transport see how much I paid for my registration so as far as I am concerned, that would work well indeed.

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