✅ Split a transaction into different categories

Don’t know if this would be possible, but it would be cool to be able to split a single transaction into different categories, like groceries and cash. I often get cash back when I buy a couple of things, but as it’s all one transaction it looks like I’m spending way more in the ‘groceries’ category than I actually do.

11 Likes

Welcome to the community Zane :slight_smile:

As far as I know this feature was first requested in the below topic & here’s Hugo’s explanation of why this hasn’t been built -

https://community.monzo.com/t/custom-categories-1/649/14

I’d like to be able to do this too, if OCR of receipts was possible or the itemised breakdown of receipts could be fed through to Monzo from the merchant, that would make the functionality much more user friendly…Yoyo are working on a system which provides the latter.

Thanks for your reply! I’d had a search for similar suggestions but must have missed this thread, will have a read!

2 Likes

I agree, this would be a great feature. For instance, sometime I buy groceries from the mini-mart in my local petrol station. Ideally I’d like to split (cosmetically) my single transaction between Transport and Groceries instead of it only being marked as Transport.

2 Likes

Hugo’s response does NOT address this important question of splitting one transaction in to different categories. He is referring to custom categories.

What we desperately need is the ability to split a transaction into the pre-set categories, as quite clearly (to anyone who does any financial management of anything) that you buy different types of items from one supplier, e.g. I Could buy sandwiches and drugs from Boots one week and just drugs the next.

4 Likes

Yes or pay for fuel and groceries in one transaction and wish to split it

First Post

Yes, this is definitely needed and could be achieved in a number of ways. Below are a couple of thoughts in order of ease to implement and desirability;

1. Manually amend based on receipt. Should be easy! 
2. Use OCR to manually extract. AWS has this baked into their stack but unsure what Monzo built on. 
3. Get a receipt breakdown from the merchant terminal. As an accountant dealing A LOT with accounting apps tackiling similar issues (See Xero machine learning and Receipt Bank OCR) if this is possible, it would be phenomenal!

On the few occasions where I’ve needed this facility I put my groceries through on one transaction and a second transaction for the non-grocery purchases. It’s easy (easier?) to reassign the category of the second transaction, particularly with multiple items.

2 Likes

It would be a great addition if I could breakdown transactions over multiple categories so for example I might go Tesco and spend £100.

At the moment that would all be categorised as grocery spending but in reality it might be:

£60 groceries
£40 Entertainment (eg Xbox game)

Would be good to be able to set a transaction to be split in this way for more accurate spending analysis.

Also, a less pressing one but for test transactions (eg when someone checks your card is valid and holds £1 for a few days) can these be shown somewhere else in app from main app - if can’t be done automatically then give us a “temp” or “test payment” category to manually assign so we know they’ll disappear after a few days.

2 Likes

For me, a dedicated category for these transactions feels like more attention than they deserve :smile:

But it would be good for Monzo to create a way to handle them better, in an automated way perhaps, once they can spot them accurately.

In the meantime, we know that you’ll be able to mark transactions so that they’re not applied to your Targets once the changes to the Spending functionality (I think that’s mentioned in this talk) are launched, which might solve your problem?

2 Likes

It would be a great if there was a way to split a transaction into sub-transactions. For example, if I buy multiple unrelated items on Amazon, it would be great to be able to break these down into each item so they are easier to categorise correctly.

Even better, maybe there is a way for Monzo to read the purchase history on our Amazon account and do this automatically?

5 Likes

I’d happily allow Monzo access to my email to link online transactions and breakdown purchases. I’d imagine it’s quite a big thing to develop though.

This is a cool idea, could definitely help with organising spending! The only hurdle I can think of is that we’d need to get the data from the merchant on each individual item that you purchased :confused:

I had a similar idea about auto-populating the note against a transaction with an extract from the related email receipt (possibly similar to how the flight info is done?) for the likes of Amazon etc. Splitting the transaction up would have been a bonus.

As you say it’s getting at that data that’s the thing. I investigated trying some mix of IFTTT recipes to accomplish it, but gave it up as too much like hard work in the end!

It is doubtful that Amazon provide a way for developers to access a user’s purchase history via an API. I imagine the only feasible way to build this would be for Monzo to link with a users gmail account, or have the user forward the receipt to a special Monzo email address, that will then scrape the receipt information and add it to the recent transaction. (i.e. in a similar way to how Tripit.com does it for booking flight/hotel/event emails)

1 Like

This is something I’ve seen mentioned a number of times on this forum and think would be really, really useful.

I think Monzo’s response has previously been something along the lines of “it would make stuff overcomplicated for users” (I could be misremembering though!). This argument doesn’t make sense to me because the ‘split into multiple categories’ option could be easily placed as the last category option when you go to change a transaction.

Integration with Amazon/supermarkets etc… (like you suggest) in the future would be great.

Phase 1: Let users forward email receipts from their verified email account(s) to a dedicated Monzo email address that will then attach the receipt automatically to the relevant transaction.

Phase 2. Parse email contents to automatically break transaction down into each individual item.

Easy, right? :wink:

2 Likes

shudders I hate parsing emails.

My Amazon mastercard tends to put things as separate items even when made as a single order, unless that’s just because it’s different sellers?

Is there any plans for the ability to split a transaction between multiple categories to better reflect spending? For example, I bought a new top, some veg and some cleaning stuff at a supermarket recently but had to assign the transaction to just ‘shopping’ (that I use as clothing mostly) as the top was the most expensive item. But now my shopping summary is under the impression that I have spent more on clothes than I actually have, whilst my groceries category is blissfully unaware of my food and cleaning purchases.

Splitting transactions will definitely be a big step in helping me better manage my finances. I’ve used YNAB in the past and really want this feature to be implemented so badly by Monzo!

8 Likes

Not yet. To do it today you’d need to split your items over multiple transactions and categorise each transaction accordingly. You can also use tagging as well but this wouldn’t be shown on the summary screen

1 Like