Let me share with you a tiny but handy shortcut we’re considering adding to the iPhone app.
What if we had an easy way to set up a Monzo.me link right from every transaction? You’ll tell us how big the party was and the app will split the amounts and carry merchant name and emoji right to the Monzo.me screen so you can send the payment requests to your friends.
Think about this as a version 0. Just a helper that we can build really quickly while we work on the bigger/proper bill splitting functionality.
It looks like this version would simply calculate the total transaction value divided by the number of people in the party so that when you view the Monzo.me page, a link with the correct amount is ready to be sent to each person, is that correct?
For me, the time consuming piece is looking up each person in my contacts & sending them an a message one after the other. So unless that functionality is there (i.e. scrolling through my list of contacts & selecting several at once - similar to selecting multiple photos to delete in the Photos app), I’m not sure how much value this is really adding to be honest. If it can be released without any extra effort vs waiting until later & releasing the additional functionality, then great. But if not, I’d be happy to wait & get that functionality sooner.
Obviously the reconciliation piece will add the most value - adjusting the transaction amount, as payments are made (from people paying you back) & being able to see who still owes what but I guess that’s coming in later versions
Bill splitting isn’t a feature that I’d use.
For me it’s solving a problem that doesn’t really exist in the first place - I’ve never had a problem splitting at the time of payment and if I did, getting paid/paying is hardly a chore (especially easy in the hypothetical future where everyone has a monzo card).
I used MonzoMe to split a very large restaurant bill the other day and this would have definitely speeded the process up
Another point is that the bill knocked my ‘eating out’ target completely. If it could be done so that if you split the bill only your portion of that bill gets included in your spending it would help with targets and an accurate representation of your monthly spend.
I’d prefer the “split bill” button to appear after the starbucks history section.
Most of the time when I’m on this screen I was to look at merchant details.
Considering this is a version 0, I like it. Lots of useful functionality in very little work.
My comments would be that I’d like the ability to not split at all and simply send the full amount using Monzo.me. This is the most common use case for me personally where my card is used but somebody else ends up paying for it (when I run errands, order something for a family member using my Amazon Prime shipping, etc.). To add to this, I’d argue that the language is maybe too specific to bills, I frequently split things that I wouldn’t call a bill (GroupSave train tickets are a good example).
I cant quite visualise this but rather than the step 2 pic, why not pop into a separate screen where at the top you pick names rather than specifying people (bit more human). You’d then get some kind of table with the amount to be requested defaulted to 1/n… but display it next to some kind of slider element so you can adjust easily (rather than having to figure out the maths)
done this way around, couldn’t you have a split flow between people you identify as being monzo users (and in that case, rather than getting them to do a monzo.me payment, instigate some kind of authorisation request in app; no hassle) and those that are not. For the nots, include a link to sign up with a golden ticket?
once requested, when one comes back to the trxn one should be able check the status with a green traffic light indicating paid. Putting a unique trxn ref in the request would support the reconciliation.
For students who often eat, socialise etc. in medium-large size groups, owing eachother small amounts of money is a frequent problem. I can imagine using this really frequently for those bills where everyone paying by card is too much hassle!
Ahhh! Yes the good old student days we also used to settle up once a month because you would get the usual suspects paying (not necessarily one) and then we had to try figure out who paid what, how much, who owes who etc. i.e. Lots of pluses and minuses and then a final number per person to person.
These days I have bill splitting app.
Anyway, not sure you could put these complexities in a bank app but you could integrate it with bill splitting app.
Yes! This has got to be my number 1 frustration with Monzo at the moment. I look so stingy because I’ll never pick up the bill first and let people pay me later, I’m always the one wanting to keep my budgets right. Every month I go over my £500 budget on paper, but looking through the transactions, I’ve had over £100 extra put it from friends. I should be able to link top ups to expenses. If I spent £50 on a meal, then receive a £25 ‘Top Up’ from a friend, I want that to count against my spending and cancel it out.
I personally would like to see a £25 meal. Then once I click on it, it would say ‘£150 cost’ followed by a list of ‘£25 Top Ups’ from each of the people that paid me. All neatly packed under one expense. And only counting my contribution towards my budget.
This is looking great as a feature. Though as you may be splitting with someone that is not with you in person how do you track those requests?
It would be great if you could have a ‘pending payments’ area that lists all the outstanding requests. Where you can then ‘prompt’ or ‘settle’ should they need reminding or have paid you by other means. This could then tie into the budgets by showing the true balance spent and reduce when the payments are received.
In the same way you can mark an eBay parcel as dispatched if you didn’t use the eBay built in mailing feature.
we also used to settle up once a month because you would get the usual suspects paying (not necessarily one) and then we had to try figure out who paid what, how much, who owes who etc. i.e. Lots of pluses and minuses and then a final number per person to person.
