Who knows!
Might be an interesting ‘how we built…’ feature though, with an explanation of why they went for the current design and what other options they considered along the way?!
1 Like
Think of it as petrol gauge - as you’re spending you’re slowly running out of £££s
6 Likes
Yes! Oddly that analogy (now) makes perfect sense. Why didn’t i think of that.
Cheers!
1 Like
For me this is a clear how you think of money moment.
Some people think of a butget like a target and spend up to the target.
Some people think of a budget like a bucket of money and spend from it until it is empty.
This :mondo: interface is designed around the second way, your mind is working the first way.
Neither is wrong. I do wonder if a phychologist looekd at this which is better to encourage better money management?
My 2p.
7 Likes
Indeed Monzo used to work around the concept of targets (https://monzo.com/blog/2016/10/03/targets/), which was then rebranded as budgets to, I suppose, encourage a different approach to spending.
2 Likes
Thanks all, got my head around it now!
1 Like
Summary again messed up for me because I used money from a pot to pay for my share of a sofa, and my partner paying me half.
Now it either thinks I’ve spent loads or counting my partners payment as extra money and saying I’ve got loads of money.
I don’t know why this feature has been abandoned since launch but it really needs to iron out these major problems.
@robboadam Agreed, it seems Summary has been abandoned
2 Likes
I get that Monzo need to concentrate on things that make them money - but in my opinion Summary can be (mostly) fixed just by allowing people to exclude incoming payments as well. That way people can tinker with it as they want.
Monzo - if you’re reading - just add an ‘Exclude from Summary’ button on all transactions, incoming and outgoing. Hopefully that shouldn’t be too challenging as the code is already there?
6 Likes
Yer, I’ve never bothered with it as it’s so naff, just received my Dozens card so looking forward to trying out the daily budget feature.
So I’ve been a customer for about 4-5 months now and am slowly disliking the summary screen as it doesn’t seem fit for purpose. A couple of things jump out:
Categories need diversifying or tags need to be added to budgeting tools. Even better would be custom categories.
I’ve never understood why if I set a bunch of category budgets why the monthly budget isn’t a total of these mini budgets.
There should be more flexible budgeting periods (weekly, fortnightly, last/first/2nd/3rd Nth day of the month).
Please can we have a reciept capture available for stuff that we don’t buy with monzo, like when I buy stuff with cash I’d love to capture the receipt and some other details in my timeline, currently it’s so easy and great to just scroll back through to find the details of when you bought that Xbox controller which is now faulty, the guy in game thought it was great and happily exchanged it for me, but the garden rake that I bought in homebase that snapped after 6 months and that I paid for with cash as I just happened to have £20 in my pocket, no chance is what I was told, my receipt was long gone, cos who keeps s physical receipt for a bloody rake… I know I could just take s picture and save it in my gallery but in the monzo timeline would be super epic. 
2 Likes
Random thought.
Would it be an idea for Monzo to remove the Summary tab altogether for now?
As a differentiator I can see why this is in the product, it’s a good thing to show to new customers but, as the customer base grows and the needs diversify (see this thread for all the different ways people want to see this used) the Summary Tab would need to be a fully blown budgetting app within itself to give all that functionality.
I guess it’s like getting your first car, it has all the basics, it’s great. Then after a while you start to wonder why the seat doesn’t adjust, or why the windows don’t open. Sure it’s still a car that gets you from A to B but I want a radio, and sun visors.
Bad analogy I know, and not actually suggesting that the Summary tab is removed (a toggle would be nice) as I know a lot of people use it but, for those like me who are paid weekly (as an example) it’s almost kinda pointless without a lot of manual effort.
I’m starting a campaign against toggles! I mean, one or two’s okay, but excess togglage will lead to pain and confusion 
More generally, I think that if Summary and Pulse get properly fixed then toggles won’t be necessary. Here were some of my previous ideas, but I’m sure that Monzo will be properly on it:
3 Likes
Your ideas all look good.
I’d still want to toggle off that entire ‘graph’ area though as that’s not how my brain works. I know a lot of ‘visual thinkers’ like a graph but I need to see the data! And whilst I applaud the ‘if they get fixed properly’ thinking, as this thread suggests, there is no ‘properly’ that will suit everyone.
Hmmm I think I’m gonna start a campaign for toggles instead!! #TogglesMustLive
I think this is something that is created purely out of having a forum.
What I would say is that the graph and summary tab aren’t exactly “broken” they work exactly as they are intended (I don’t personally like the graph), I think the problem is when you allow for people to have a voice, an opinion can become “this is how it should work”, “no this is”, “this is how I want it to work” and so on. Which is not to say that that is bad.
Having slight critiques and bugs that need ironing out sure but suggesting the whole way the summary tab actually works need to be changed or drastically reiterated (not that you are) is a bit of a stretch. I think if you’re looking for more powerful tools - you should look for a tool that is specifically designed to be used as a budgeting app. If that makes any sense?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I really enjoy seeing them all - but sometimes what we want we cant have or get 
Although I do think that we should #scrapthegraph 
1 Like
I’d be voicing this opinion elsewhere, but it would possibly be in a more negative way.
I use Monzo BUT… [this thing isn’t great].
And yes, if I was wanting a tool for this functionality I’d go find one, but the fact is that Monzo are providing half a tool that is sort of useful to some people if it happens to match how they think/work. Yes, that is a challenge, but it’s a common one for software.
I think this is the downside of iterative development and ‘good enough’ approach to releasing functionality, sometimes things will be released that don’t cover enough use cases/approaches for the end users. You’ll never cover them all but I don’t think the Summary tab is close enough and needs a couple more iterations before it is, by my standards, “fit for purpose” for 80% of the users (yeah I go with 80/20, I know that too has its own issues).
So. Provide me with functionality that isn’t quite ready, sure, but if I’m not using it why shouldn’t I get an option to turn it off? It’s software. This isn’t a car with physical buttons and levers.
#DevilsAdvocate #ActuallyQuiteHappyWithMonzo
1 Like
I definitely see your point, but we must also remember that the forum isn’t representative of the wider scheme of Monzo customers. For me the summary tab shows me the “summary” of my spending, I don’t use it to budget because it isn’t really geared up to do that with any real intelligence - if I need to see how much in a month I’ve spent on transport say - BOOM does it. Taking that away would hurt more customers than please IMHO.
But on the flip side and to Devil’s Advocate your Devil’s Advocate - the users have changed the way they want Summary to work - so whilst you’re right and iterative development can be a pain, if the goal posts change half way down the iteration pipe-line, it throws everything off balance.
It is ready though, that is a key distinction to be made - things that go through labs, that are half baked, sure you don’t need them if you don’t want them.
But just because you don’t use a part of functionality doesn’t automatically correlate with being able to “turn it off” - Its an important part of the ecosystem of the App where I would guess it would be fairly difficult to manage if a proportion of the user base just decided to “toggle” it off.
I’m not mad at Monzo or for users like yourself wanting something a bit different, I just think it can be hard with a forum as soon opinions within an echo chamber can become “this thing is terrible!!”.
4 Likes
All agreed.
I actually just want rid of the Pulse Graph, I have no beef with Summary as it is!
#ScrapTheGraph #ScrapTheGraph #ScrapTheGraph
3 Likes