Set Start of Month

So like a lot of people, I get paid at the end of the month (26th) - could there be an opportunity to define where I want my month to start?

I got my Mondo card on the 26th Jan at the office meet invite thing and it’s a little bit tedious now that its the 14th Feb and my expenditure is split over two months so far, so really think having the option to define when my month starts would be cool.

Might just be me not having the card for a long enough time and I may come to realise this is a stupid idea - or the fact I got tap happy with Mondo in the first few days.

36 Likes

Why would the start of the month matter? As long as you’re paid on a monthly basis on a reasonably consistent date, when the money comes in shouldn’t have any impact on the calculations.

Yeah you’re right. Just looks odd because I’ve not had my card for an entire month yet.

Could be useful for business/corporates though ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Really interesting topic. During our customer interviews we’ve seen different approaches on what people like to consider “a month”. Let me share with you some of the nuances:

  1. For some people the fact that some months have 5 weekends instead of 4 is huge, potentially 25% more of spending on entertainment.
  2. For a different group of people a 4-week rolling window seem to make more sense (4 Mondays, 4 Tuesdays. etc.) but then again they don’t always get paid during that window.
  3. The last option is to consider a “month” the window from payday to payday, but the problem of that is that it’s really difficult to predict when you’ll get paid before the fact.

So, even though we don’t have a good answer yet (that’s why at least for now we’re sticking with the classic concept of calendar month) you can see we’re working on it. Trying to understand a bit better how people manage their finances. Please don’t stop sending your suggestions :slightly_smiling:

12 Likes

Hi there,

I’m not sure I understand how this does not matter. I use Mondo as a satellite ‘disposable income’ account and pretty much run it down to zero before payday on the 24th of each month. I’d like to be able to properly see month on month how my spending in various categories fluctuates as I work to reduce outgoings. I would prefer not to see the tail end of March’s (between 25-31) spending coming out of what is in effect April period. Salary in my case is a fixed monthly amount, I just want to see at a glance what I spent for a given pay month, and on what, if that makes sense?

14 Likes

Hi!
Same here for me, I get paid on the same date each month… So I would love to be able to set that date as the beginning of my month… As in 26 May- 25 June is one month. Otherwise I feel like I’m not getting useful information from my insights- it’s always skewed by last months pay.

I really think being able to set your own start date for the month would be amazing!

4 Likes

Well, as was posted above, everyone has different financial circumstances.

I can’t see it being a large technical hurdle (I’m a dev not affiliated with Mondo) to give people the option of picking how a “month” works - A month is a month. A salary month differs. Loads of people get paid on the last Friday of the month. Some companies pay mid-month on a fixed date because of their invoicing terms, the drive to sell at months end etc. Every business is different.

Putting my business analyst hat on, I guess I’m just trying to say that everyone has different circumstances, you are not the world but might be one of the few common cases, but it’s hard to code for something that’s not repeatable or commonplace.

Ta,

Phil

1 Like

Hi - same here, I get paid on the 15th of every month. Would be great if you could mark a credit into your account as your salary and then all stats would reset and start from that period until your next salary is marked. This would work even for those who get paid weekly etc. By default the app would be set to the regular monthly cycle absent the user marking a credit as “salary”…

7 Likes

I too would like the option to set a custom month ‘start’ date for stat purposes, but of course this might vary month-to-month (like where the given month ‘starts’ on a weekend, for example), but I like this idea even more - the ability to mark a credit from a particular source to be the trigger to reset the statistics.
I wonder how this could look in the app though - I guess there’s a bit of a trade-off here between functionality and keeping things straightforward for users that don’t want anything too advanced. Maybe a ‘Mark as Salary’ toggle or something similar in the feed? - In any case, this is probably something for the ‘bank’ and not a pre-pay card…

4 Likes

Maybe the option to have a month start/end when an income marked as Salary arrives.

7 Likes

This x100! I feel like the app is basically useless to me for budgeting at a glance since I get paid monthly on the 28th.

2 Likes

Is this likely to happen? Paid on the 25th of the month, would love current month to start over same day.

Bumping this thread - I get paid on the 24th and would be hugely helpful to be able to customise exactly what my month is and better monitor the flow of outgoings.

3 Likes

I’m using the Tink app to automatically categories my spendings as it reads from my Bank account directly. And one interesting feature that it has is that you can set the Month period based on two options “Calendar Period” and “Salary Period”, and if you select the latter you then choose the “Payday” to start the month.
I’m setting it to use “Salary Period” and it looks great.

3 Likes

I get paid at the 10th of the month by the way, so salary period makes a lot of sense to use.

Love this solution, nice and simple:

I definitely would like to see ‘salary periods’, I think it would work better for a lot of people.

2 Likes

Just a quick comment on point 3 - I do know I’ll get paid on the 15th every month and this always cuts across months. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve not found a budgeting app that works for me.

So like the other posters I’d be really interested in this function and if/how it develops.

1 Like

And for those paid 4 weekly rather than monthly it would be good to have a choice between one month and 28 day settings

4 Likes

I always top up on the day I’m paid so it would be good to select the 23rd to 23rd as my “month” rather than a calendar month

The good news is, this is being worked on now.

https://community.monzo.com/t/targets-custom-timeframes/6242/2?u=alexs