✅ Split a transaction into different categories

Didn’t see this and went ahead and posted my own idea Split Transactions which is identical to this. sorry

Split transactions are a must at least for me to move fully to Monzo, only today did I make a purchase where I needed to split the transaction over two categories and couldn’t, while spending on a credit card then paying the card off later may be a “work around” it sure is messy and takes away from the elegance that Monzo brings to the banking experience in my opinion.

Monzo could still use it’s wizardry :mage: to figure out where I have spent my money, if I swipe at Sainsbury’s 9/10 that is going to be groceries but that one time I went in to get food and flowers isn’t always just groceries so Monzo can still categorize that as Groceries but if I had the option as outlined in my idea linked above to split the transaction after the fact it would make managing that money SO MUCH easier.

Just my two cents. (Up voted)

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Why are some people over complicating this request?

Automated receipt readers? Amazon APIs to track merchant data??

NO! Just a very simple user option to allow a manual split of a transaction. Why is that so hard for Monzo to sort out?

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Because it isn’t a simple thing to build.

Someone might want to to follow one way of doing this; tap transaction, tap split, then … what? type a number and select a category?

Whereas I want to tap transaction, pick the categories to split it across, and then type the number. Ohh and I want to be able to split one transaction across as many categories as I want…

It can get complex quite quickly. Which way is best?? Which way makes sure that any future additions in this area won’t be harder to add (custom categories for example).

TL;DR - These things take time and Monzo are working on a lot of other things at present I guess.

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Ok fair enough I didn’t appreciate all the different user requirements that need to be considered. Having said that, something would be better than nothing and clearly there’s a demand for it given the feedback on this forum already.

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Not doubting the demand at all.

As a software engineer, I completely agree with you that people underestimate what goes into ‘just add this simple thing’, and of course I underestimate how long it’ll take me to do, too!

In this case though, given it was ‘coming in the next few months’ three years ago, and it’s been radio silence since, I’m pretty well convinced there’s been a product decision not to support category splitting. Perhaps because Monzo wants the marketplace to take off to such an extent that ‘categories’ isn’t a core feature, so enhancing it further is short-sighted. Just guessing.

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Yep, that will be good even if there is only possibility to split in two categories and have quick slider to adjust value without need of typing specifically.

Up voted!

Sometimes a single transaction may cover more than one section in my budget and it’d be really helpful if I could allocate a portion of the spend to different sections eg split between groceries and personal care.

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Hello :wave:

I’ve moved your post into here as the suggestion is really similar, I hope you don’t mind. If you cast your vote at the top it will help Monzo prioritise what features the community want next.

The whole categories thing is completely broken. It should be blindingly obvious that categories need to be exclusive. Whoever came up with the current options clearly has never had to deal with data management before.

What are your suggested categories? I’m found them to cover most situations

Criticism is cheap, solutions are hard. Can you describe what you’re actually looking for since I don’t understand your issue from what you’ve presented so far.

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I would have thought it would be blindingly obvious

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:man_shrugging:

Er, really?

Exactly what I said: it’s utterly pointless having non-exclusive categories as anyone with a modicum of experience about this sort of task would know.

What do we currently have?

Bills
Charity
Eating Out
Entertainment
Expenses
Family
Finances
General
Groceries
Holidays
Personal Care
Shopping
Transport

It’s completely pointless because each time I categorise the same thing as something different because it’s so far from clear.

I pay friends mainly for things like drinks, meals, gigs, accommodation, etc., etc. but I never know what’s the “right” place for something and similar transactions end up spread about which completely undermines the purpose.

Let me go through my last payments.

Double glazing. Is this General, Expenses, Family, or Bills?
Dinner with clients. Expenses? Eating Out? Entertainment?
Sunday lunch quiz at social centre in aid of refugees. Eating out? Charity? Family? Entertainment?
Train, gig ticket and hotel room. Bills? Expenses? Holiday? Transport? Entertainment?
Bottomless brunch. Entertainment? Eating out?
Phone credit. Expenses? Bills?
Spanish Hipermercado getting new socks, filling the cheese drawer, stuff for sushi party, bisque and rillettes. Groceries? Shopping? Entertainment? Holidays?
Petrol, bowling and food with sister’s family. Entertainment? Eating out? Family? WTF is the point of this?!
Deposit to bet365. General? Finances? Expenses? Bills?

The very first thing should be making exclusive categories where it’s obvious where each item goes and it can only go in one place. Ask any librarian for a start. Anyone dealing with a filesystem with 1*10^12-18 inodes. You think about this stuff at a very basic level and make it better than this. The current system as something someone though was suitable really beggars belief.

It’s simply not fit for purpose.

There is no right way to categorise things, you put them where you want. You really want a list of what goes into each category?

I use expenses category for childcare as it’s an expense for working, others use it for expenses they can claim back.

Custom categories are coming which might help

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Custom categories are the only way you’ll keep everyone happy.

I think the current categories were a good starting point and need to evolve. Which is kinda how Monzo work.

To repeat the question @jph - what is the list of categories you think Monzo should have? You’ve given your thinking but not an answer? Curious to see what you say as I have no idea what an inode is, so be good to get a more educated view maybe?

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I have no idea what a Hipermercado is

Just a big supermarket I guess (french say hypermarche!)

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I don’t understand your issues, forgive me… You put your payments where you want, it’s not up to Monzo or us to dictate who does what. If you feel a meal for refugees is classed as charity, put it there. If you go out for drinks with clients and you’re claiming it back off work, put it in expenses…

Where the current categories fall flat is when you buy more than one type of thing in one transaction, the classic example being food as well as clothes in a supermarket - I’d want this to be split between food and shopping.

The only workaround at the moment is to physically split your shopping in two at the till and pay twice or pay on a credit card and send two separate lots of money to pay it off.

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