Refinements

[Sam22]

Hello,

I don’t usually post but I am a big fan of Monzo and thought I would give my two pence. I love so many of the features that have been/will be added, they really have changed the way I think about my money for the better but I think there is room for refinement.

Custom categories:
Now I know Monzo are reluctant (last I heard) about putting in custom categories for fear of over complicating the experience but I think it would actually simplify it because at the moment users can ‘tag’ a purchase. However this has to be done manually (which takes time and assumes I will remember to put the same ‘tag’ as last time) and only shows me purchases with that tag whereas the summary page shows me how much I’ve spent that month on everything with a particular category and not tag!

Firstly, I think the option for custom categories should be buried in the settings to allow ‘power’ users access to the feature without forcing it on all users who might not need it! And I think Monzo could implement this quite simply by just supplying a bunch of category icons and letting the user choose/name kind of like with pots.

Secondly, I think there should be an option for primary and secondary categories. As a ‘power’ user it would be nice to see how much I am spending on my car (Primary) but breaking that down into fuel, insurance and maintenance etc (Secondary).

Clearing up the “feed”:
I think more needs to be done to manage the feed! I’m not sure about other people but this is something I would appreciate a lot.

Firstly, if I’ve been down the pub, I will get multiple feed items from the same place in a short space of time where I have been up to the bar to get another drink. I think if this is the case they should get bunched into one, perhaps with an option to separate items (sort of like android notifications are)

Secondly, please combine all coin jar items into the feed purchase item because otherwise you get two feed items for every purchase. Also i think there should be an option to remove any pot feed items that equate to £0 net change (some people might want it for their records but for me it’s very annoying)

Also on the subject of pots, I think everything should get rounded (Including direct debits and incomes) because otherwise it has to be done manually half the time and automatically the other half and is an inconsistent experience.

Summary:
Whilst I’m here I think there should be an option for rules for custom pay days. I get paid on the 10th working day and so the date changes from month to month. This isnt the biggest problem for me because I can change it but it would be nice if I didn’t have to.

Idea:
And something I just thought of, it would be cool if you could automatically export my monthly data into an Excel sheet and possibly email it to me, or something along those lines! (Just an idea)

Sorry if this doesn’t read very well, I wrote it on my phone at work but thank you if you read all my waffling haha

[nanos]

Some really great thoughts!

Just a few notes:

@Sam22

Also i think there should be an option to remove any pot feed items that equate to £0 net change

Curve does that, and it’s so annoying! In Curve you often have no idea how a transaction amount came about, as the original transaction and any refunds are just folded into the same transaction. Just my opinion, of course, but I hate it with a passion

@Sam22

Secondly, please combine all coin jar items into the feed purchase item because otherwise you get two feed items for every purchase

They are planning to do that, but it turned out to be more complex than first thought, so it might still take a little while. But it’s already being worked on, I believe.

@Sam22

I think everything should get rounded

Monzo have said somewhere (I think in connection with the coin jar / feed tidy up project) that one of their main aims is that the feed items need to add up to the total displayed. For that reason I assume this won’t be happening (and indeed, being a pedant, I’d hate that - see my first comment on removing £0 items )

@Sam22

could automatically export my monthly data into an Excel sheet and possibly email it to me

You can at the moment do this manually from the bottom of summary tab, or from the account > settings screen if you need data for the past months.

If you wanted to automate it, you could probably do so using the API, if you know how to do that sort of stuff and have a spare half hour.

@Sam22

Sorry if this doesn’t read very well, I wrote it on my phone at work

I wish I could write that clearly and use formatting on my phone

[nathanthomson8 (Nathan)]

Agree!
Now we have apple pay the coin jar tidy up and custom categories are my top 2 wants. Just seems counterintuitive for them to want to help me to budget but then try to tell me how i should budget by giving me chosen categories. I want a pints category… a 5 a side football category… a dates category… a lunch category… a coffee category and so on and so forth all tailored for my individual budget and needs.

Have they ever come out and gave a reason as to why a custom categories is a no go?

[redshift]

I love the idea of bundling multiple consecutive transactions from the same merchant!

I imagine this would be made more possible after they overcome the stuff that needs to happen to tidy up Coi. jar.

[redshift]

@nathanthomson8

Have they ever come out and gave a reason as to why a custom categories is a no go?

There is a post somewhere. If I have time to search for it I’ll link it.

I think there’s quite a few reasons. The main ones being having custom categories would be useful for the individual but it wouldn’t benefit everyone in the long term.

The data would become too fragmented and pretty much unusable if they wanted to use it in the future for predictive services, automatic categorisation, use in third party apps and so on.

Eventually, I hope, categories should become more specific with sub categories and other tags that are seamlessly and automatically applied.

[Sam22]

Hello, sorry its taken me a while to respond, you raise some interesting points and here are my thoughts:

@nanos

Also i think there should be an option to remove any pot feed items that equate to £0 net change

Curve does that, and it’s so annoying! In Curve you often have no idea how a transaction amount came about, as the original transaction and any refunds are just folded into the same transaction. Just my opinion, of course, but I hate it with a passion

I haven’t used curve so couldn’t comment on that but I don’t understand what you mean and I think you may have misunderstood because this would purely be on transfers between pots (internal transfers rather than external transactions). The reason I said this was because one afternoon I was moving money between pots figuring out how much I wanted to save for each item I have a pot for, and before I knew it I had about 10 pot items clogging up my feed and just wished I could remove them because it was all internal and none of them were external transactions, hence £0 net change in my balance.

@nanos

They are planning to do that, but it turned out to be more complex than first thought, so it might still take a little while. But it’s already being worked on, I believe.

That is good to hear! I didn’t think it would be that complex to be honest but I know nothing about coding!

@nanos

Monzo have said somewhere (I think in connection with the coin jar / feed tidy up project) that one of their main aims is that the feed items need to add up to the total displayed. For that reason I assume this won’t be happening (and indeed, being a pedant, I’d hate that - see my first comment on removing £0 items

Again I don’t think my explanation was very good because I’m not sure you understand. The feed items would still add up to total displayed. If I buy a drink for £3.05, it automatically rounds it up to £4 and puts the £0.95 into the coin jar, which is good I like having a round figure for my balance and seeing the coin jar accumulate. However, when I pay my car insurance £50.80, it doesn’t get rounded up and I have to do it manually. From my point of view, it is all the same, money leaving my account, why does it round for ‘direct’ transactions and not for direct debits?. Same for my salary, if I got paid £3000.30 (I wish haha), then, in my opinion, I would like to see it get rounded down to £3000 and the spare £0.30 put into the coin jar because that’s what I do now anyway and id be surprised if others didn’t do the same as well. That way the total balance would always equal the sum of the feed and I would always have a rounded figure and wouldn’t have to do anything manually.

@nanos

You can at the moment do this manually from the bottom of summary tab, or from the account > settings screen if you need data for the past months.

If you wanted to automate it, you could probably do so using the API, if you know how to do that sort of stuff and have a spare half hour.

Thank you, I’ll be honest I didn’t recognise any of the formats apart from PDF and assumed they wouldn’t work with excel. Lesson learnt. As for automating it, I know nothing about coding but perhaps it could be a cool project to learn on.

@nanos

I wish I could write that clearly and use formatting on my phone

Hahaha, it was a quiet day and my boss was in meetings all day so I had some time!

@nathanthomson8

Just seems counterintuitive for them to want to help me to budget but then try to tell me how i should budget by giving me chosen categories.

Exactly this!! It is really counterintuitive to me and ‘tags’ seems like a lazy attempt at implementing custom categories which confuses the experience even more, in my opinion!

@redshift

The main ones being having custom categories would be useful for the individual but it wouldn’t benefit everyone in the long term.

I don’t think this makes sense? If you gave the user the option to have the feature or not by putting it in the settings then each individual could choose if it was beneficial or not!

@redshift

The data would become too fragmented and pretty much unusable if they wanted to use it in the future for predictive services, automatic categorisation, use in third party apps and so on.

Good point but for me it would be worth the trade-off, I can’t speak for others ofcourse! Isn’t this something AI could help solve? Again, I only know how to use a computer not how they work haha!

@Sam22

Summary:
Whilst I’m here I think there should be an option for rules for custom pay days. I get paid on the 10th working day and so the date changes from month to month. This isnt the biggest problem for me because I can change it but it would be nice if I didn’t have to.

I just want to re-iterate this point because i’ve since realised that it has only work for half the months (January/February etc still done by month, whereas recent months are pay day to pay day) and doesnt give me the option to go back to monthly (1st to last day ofthe month)

That’s my ranting done again, thank you to those that responded!

[Mcoliver88 (Michael Oliver)]

@Sam22

If I buy a drink for £3.05, it automatically rounds it up to £4 and puts the £0.95 into the coin jar, which is good I like having a round figure for my balance and seeing the coin jar accumulate. However, when I pay my car insurance £50.80, it doesn’t get rounded up and I have to do it manually.

This is exactly what I would like, I have to round mine up all manually too.

Just my 2 pennies worth, I hate the UI of pots, I hate scrolling theough my pots. Especially when you have the maximum amount of pots and the one you always need is at the end. I would rather they were all in a tile like format, with the ability to add custom photos. In my opinion they need to overhaul the pots experience.

[Vladislav (Vladislav Kozub)]

@Sam22

Firstly, if I’ve been down the pub, I will get multiple feed items from the same place in a short space of time where I have been up to the bar to get another drink. I think if this is the case they should get bunched into one, perhaps with an option to separate items (sort of like android notifications are)

Great suggestion here, this is exactly what my “backup bank” does with such things. Or generally, things that are purchased in the same location, from the same merchant within a short time (usually within a few hours). Also applies to retail websites:

When I bought a bunch of things on Amazon using Monzo card, it generated about 10 separate transactions which is not of great convenience.

Hope something that could be an easy fix.

[WillP79]

@Sam22

If I buy a drink for £3.05, it automatically rounds it up to £4 and puts the £0.95 into the coin jar, which is good I like having a round figure for my balance and seeing the coin jar accumulate. However, when I pay my car insurance £50.80, it doesn’t get rounded up and I have to do it manually.

This is because the Coin Jar is triggered by the card authorisation, and DDs obviously don’t use the card. Similarly, if you buy something in a foreign currency and the authorisation happens to translate to a round number of pounds, nothing will go to the Coin Jar, even if the final GBP settlement has a pence value.

Due to other priorities, I can’t see this changing any time soon.