Just some general summary feedback re: committed spends.
I’d love to see a slightly smarter system for variable committed spends.
I have a DD that goes out every Monday. The amount varies between £20 something and £40 something, occasionally £50 something.
Now I’m not expecting Monzo to predict which of these it will be this week, as there is no pattern to this.
However, sometimes when the amount changes, Monzo will change my committed spend amount, but then when a different amount comes out the following week it won’t register as a committed spend. I’ll then have several days of the app waiting for the payment to go out, while my left to spend is lower than it should be.
I feel like a DD payment on the same day of the week, to the same company, which goes out every week (and has been for almost a year now) - I feel like Monzo should be smart enough to figure out that that’s the same payment. It doesn’t happen all the time, so I guess just tweaking the threshold for how different amounts should be to trigger it to consider it a new payment would resolve the issue for me. I’m sure some thought went into where they were set, and maybe making them larger this would cause issues for others? I’d love to hear more about what the threshold is, whether it’s on a sliding scale based on the overall payment amount, and how it was decided.
For now I can of course go and remove the first payment from committed spend and add the second one to reset it, but I don’t usually notice this has happened until my available suddenly jumps up, then I realise it’s been waiting for a payment that’s already happened, just a few pounds less than it expected.
I’ve had a similar issue with a Patreon subscription. As it’s billed in US dollars, the amount changes slightly month to month. Most of the time it shows correctly in committed spending, but sometimes a payment doesn’t. Same company, same date each month.
I have a direct debit that comes out on the last working day of the month and it messes up my summary all the time, it’s now always out by the amount of that direct debit.
Here is why
Since the date of that DD changes and it’s the last working day of the month summary assume it’ll come out the same day next month and it won’t.
I also get paid on the last working day of the month so in theory my summary will reset before this payment comes out my account.
Here is an example last month that payment came out on the 29th this month that payment will come out on the 30th but summary is predicting it will come out on the 29th so it’s telling me I won’t have any money left when in fact I’ll get paid on the 30th and the DD will come out on the 30th.
@MichaelC Have you set your Summary pay cycle to run from the last working day of the month though? If so, the DD coming out on the last working day should always fall in the new cycle. I also get paid on the last working day of the month.
e.g. my summary period this month ran from March 29 to April 29, and will start the new cycle on April 30th when I get paid, I have a standing order which leave my account on the last day of the month, and so is always included in the new cycle. Summary has never gotten the cycle wrong for it.
With a DD, if the last day of the month is a weekend, it would come out on the Monday.
I’m not sure if I’m totally missing it, but I’m not sure how it’s predicting the payment on the wrong cycle for you?
Last month the last working day was the 29th this month its the 30th. Summary is predicting the DD will come out on the 29th (the last day of the current cycle) but it won’t it’ll come on the 30th (the first day of the next cycle).
Then next month the last working day is the 31st (first day of cycle) but summary will predict the payment will come out on the 30th. (Last day of previous cycle)
Does that make more sense? Summary predicts the next payment will fall on the same date the following month which would be correct for the majority of DDs but this one changes and because it coincides with the change over on summery I’m also out by the amount of the DD.
I think I actually end up with the payment being counted twice in the same month until it actually comes out. So I get the actual payment for 29th March in this case plus summary thinks I’ll pay the next one 29 April as outlined above until it misses the date and it rolls over.
Ah got you! My brain just wasn’t working there
Man that sounds annoying yeah it sounds like that’s a good example of where Summary needs to be made smarter.
Usually a direct debit would be taken on the next working day e.g. if DD date is usually 30th, but 30th falls on the weekend, then it would come out on the Monday whatever date that is (e.g. 1st of the month).
I’m on the same pay cycle as you (last working day), but the only payment I have at the end of the month is a standing order which goes out on the last day of the month, never before, so it doesn’t fool Summary like your direct debit. Then all my direct debits come out around the 1st/2nd. Is it a direct debit that you’d be able to set to e.g. 1st of the month instead, just after pay day, or does it have to stay as it is?
Hey I just wanted to weigh in on this feature as its probably the one feature I’d like Monzo to be great at but it just doesn’t get right.
For me it seems that the algo to calculate left to spend is just too simplistic – I might have 4 days left until payday with £500 in balance, but based on my early month direct debits/bills etc “It looks like I could run out of money” – there’s nothing scheduled to leave my account, and there’s no way I will run out of money in that time. Is there any way to fix this?
The summary is awful, and being forced to have it on the main account screen is bad news, I dont need to be told how to budget and I keep my money in pots, constantly having to see a red line telling me im going to run out of money is nonsense, when I have pots with cash in. I have tried to update my budgets to make it work and it doesn’t matter what i do it always says I’m going to run out, please make it optional, as having it directly below the balance is also off putting
I do not use ANY of the budgeting or spending aspects of Monzo and never will. I wish I could totally disable this and hide it from my app. Having the “you have xxx left to spend” in the month at the top of the new navigation is really annoying if you never use it - due to this the new navigation is really a step backwards for the way I use the app. Again it would be great to hide this.
Curious as to why you don’t use the features. Is it because your pay cycle isn’t compatible? I’m lucky because I get paid monthly on the last working day of the month so summary works for me and has transformed my finances because I have a clear budget of what I can spend.
I imagine it being pretty unhelpful if you live in or regularly use your overdraft, or if your pay comes at weird times (e.g. you get paid in big, infrequent lump sums for large project work, sale of property, etc). I suspect it also breaks down if you have several, independent sources of income.
For me, I find the left to spend figure is almost always wrong. It seems to me that it doesn’t factor in committed spending. So, when my rent and car finance goes out at the beginning of the month, my average daily spend is massive. Summary, therefore, thinks I’m going to run out of money until about half way through the month, when my average daily spend has come down to a more sensible level. It’s only really the last few days of the month when Summary gets anywhere close to predicting my end of month balance accurately. @simonb are you able to confirm this behaviour? Is it worth logging as a bug or is this intended?
Do you have regular income? I have all my committed spend marked accordingly and my left to spend figure is spot on. The progress widget isn’t accurate but I don’t use that anyway. All I look at is left to spend
This is exactly what I do, if the salary sorter is what some people think it might be (dividing salary into pots) then this would mean that my left to spend would be perfect as on pay day I have four instances of money going into pots that cannot currently be excluded from committed spending!
For these situations I think putting them all into a pot and then paying yourself once a month from the pot would be the best fix. Getting to point where you can do this though would be the biggest barrier if you’re living to pay cheque to pay cheque. (Not you specifically)
Nearly all of my monthly spending is via an Amex card to get point. Some months my bill is low and some months much higher, but I track it separately outside of Monzo with my own budgeting formula I use. The way I budget the actual amount in my account doesn’t have any impact on how much I can spend as I move money into pots and other savings accounts at various times and also due to the Amex bill. I feel the Monzo solution is fantastic for most people, but for some who will budget in their own way outside of the app it’s actually quite annoying a lot of the time.
Argh, once again a (large) incoming payment has been counted towards my left to spend - meaning I can spend my entire month’s budget and it’ll still say I haven’t spent anything.
And no way to ‘exclude’ it from Summary. God, this thing is so frustrating.
Summary seems unable to cope if you have multiple DDs to the same company.
A company takes 3 direct debits per month from my account. When it resets on payday it only predicts one of those DDs for the next cycle. Annoyingly it seems to choose the lowest value one, so next month I am told my DD is more than it was last month. It puts “left to spend” out by the total of the 2 DDs it’s not predicting. Once all 3 go out it shows in committed spending in Summary, but then loses 2 of them on the next pay day.
yeah it sounds like that’s a good example of where Summary needs to be made smarter.