Targets - Custom Timeframes 1

Hey!

Firstly the spending targets option on the app is awesome!

I’m just wondering if it’s possible to set up a way of changing the time length… as a student I would prefer to have my targets weekly, Monday to Sunday.

Also, I’m sure some people would want a way that would allow them to budget from when there wages are paid in (personally the 25th of each month)

Hopefully that’s something that could be set up in a further update!! :smile:

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Hey Mathew, welcome to the community!

That feature is being worked on

Screenshot from this post.

Since it wasn’t included in the launch release, it’s a fairly safe bet that this is one of the extra features from this card on the :mondo: roadmap.

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I hope it will be possible to set the Custom period as the default one.
I get paid on the 10th and received the salary yesterday, but now my targets view is more confusing than helpfull and does not provide any insight or the numbers I’m expecting :s

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Another issue with not supporting Custom timeframes is that currently Alerts like “You are spending too quickly” don’t mean anything (or at least are inaccurate).
They are based on an estimation of spend until the end of the month but (as often stated) many of us a paid before the end of the month and therefore are calculating spend until e.g the 25th of the month (5 or 6 days sooner).

Currently not finding Targets very useful tbh :frowning:

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Something I’ve only just considered (clueless as to why I didn’t think of it until now) that although many people don’t get paid monthly, their bills often do get debited monthly. If a user were to set their targets to weekly for instance, they would still be over their target for the weeks when their higher bills (rent / mortgage and council tax as common examples) get paid. This problem could be minimised by requesting to your various recipients that your bills be paid on various days throughout the month, but that doesn’t solve the problem of the more expensive bills.

Something worth thinking about when designing this.

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This should be solvable by enabling users to set different timeframes for each of their categories targets (rather than for all targets - as Hugo’s screenshot suggests). That is something that has already been built into the feature, judging by the settings that you see when you retrieve targets via the API -

Having said that, some bills might need to be paid more regularly & as a result, more granular categories will be needed when they’re reviewed in a couple of months.

Edit to strikeout text was made after Ben’s later comment

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The interval_type property is not included in the array of returned targets objects. To me, this suggests that the target timeframe will be a blanket setting across all categories.

Good that it’s already got some support in place for it though, just needs a interval_type per targets object. Making that change may be understandably more difficult in practice than explained.

UPDATE
Also, @tristan has recently agreed custom timeframes for holidays is a good idea…

… so the same feature could be applied to all categories.

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Hey all, is there any official update on the custom time frames for Targets? Have been using my Monzo for everything bar DD’s for months now. Targets is exactly what I need and signed up for in the first place, but the lack of flexibility in the time frames is making things more confusing than useful.

In my case I’m paid on the last working day of the month. So by Day 1 of this month, the fridge was stocked and :red_car: full… my targets are nearly £200 out :frowning:

3-6 months feels like a it’s a looooong way off!

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Hey David, no official date set to add custom timeframes to the Target feature. We are looking into it and will keep you updated. It’s a commonly requested feature which will make Targets much more accurate as a budgeting tool, so we definitely want to make it happen at some point! :+1:

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Thanks for the reply Naji, I know software design doesn’t quite work in the following way (and I’m sure building a bank is on a whole different level)…but I wondered if you’d consider listing the upcoming features / feature requests in the format of a poll to see what your members would like and in what order?

For me personally; releasing a feature to accept payments through a portal is a ‘nice to have’ but drops much much lower down the wish list when compared to making Targets usable to the masses, accessing your account from more than one device and offering joint accounts (however you chose to implement them).

Just interested to see what the general consensus is!

David

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You can vote for the upcoming features on the roadmap & hopefully Monzo takes into account the amount of interest that there is in the community (here), for the different features that’re requested.

I suppose most additional features that Monzo’s considering need to be built on top of the foundation that those developments are creating.

Obviously votes on the roadmap are only one of the factors that Monzo will need to consider, as they know their long, long term roadmap, how users are using the app currently etc.

So just to pick up on these two points. At the moment, there is one way to stay logged in on two devices; have the app installed on two different types of device, one iOS and one Android.

We’ve no plans to launch conventional joint accounts, but we will be working on smart ways to send money, save communally and split bills (all the things which are sometimes more convenient with a shared account). :slightly_smiling_face:

[quote="Naji, post:12, topic:6242]We’ve no plans to launch conventional joint accounts, but we will be working on smart ways to send money, save communally and split bills (all the things which are sometimes more convenient with a shared account). :slightly_smiling_face:
[/quote]

That’s disappointing to hear, this surely can’t be that uncommon a scenario? Will there be a way of transparently replicating a traditional joint account behaviour from 2 “linked” (for want of a better word) Monzo accounts. Something like a shared pot which contains all of the money from both accounts which is then used for all transactions? And will both accounts see any transactions made to/from the shared pot?

Hey Andrew, Joint accounts are a common request service from Monzo users! The idea of having two accounts linked, which both users can access isn’t something we have any plans for, but lots of the features we’re working on look to replicate the most convenient aspects of shared accounts. Things like communal saving pots will be part of this in the longer term.

Ultimately, we want to do one thing (current accounts) really really well, rather than offer a long list of financial products with complicated terms and hidden costs :slightly_smiling_face: Hope this makes sense?

It makes sense certainly, do one thing and do it well. I’m struggling at the moment to work out how (if) I can use Monzo to manage a family budget (where by definition the money is “ours”) with the requirement that both parties will need separate accounts.

Bill splitting doesn’t really work in this scenario as it is based on the notion that some proportion of the money belongs to each party (and relies on the full upfront cost of the transaction to be in the individual’s account). (This is mostly thinking out loud)

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Oh yep, I definitely appreciate that family budgeting would be a little confused if split between two separate Monzo accounts! Once we launch current accounts, it may be something we revisit in more detail. It would be awesome to build an smart and simple solution within the existing framework for this exact purpose.

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This is such a common request, and easily mistaken for or thought to be included with the upcoming bill splitting feature. I made that mistake and Hugo helped adjust my understanding.

It’s a common financial problem that I really don’t think the current banks have worked out how to solve, so if Monzo aren’t going to work on it directly I expect a partnership integration will pop up. Possibly something like splitwise or splittable.

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Yes, I was saying that bill splitting isn’t a solution to this problem. Shared pots gets closer, but still seems like you would need to withdraw from the pot to your own account and then perform a transaction.

For the record I think the problem that shared pots aim to solve is entirely separate from joint accounts. Shared pots seem to solve the issue of transient relationships between account holders with some common outgoings (essentially an electronic kitty). This acts like n+1 current accounts. The joint account problem is a much simpler one (in terms of its non-transience), all transactions for all account holders occur from the same account.

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Couldn’t agree more Uncle fungus. This could be as simple as allowing 2 cards for one account and access from more than one device.

As mentioned above, you can work around the multi device limitation already, so all I need is a second card linked to my account. So close but I’m guessing so very far. :confused:

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Your description sounds similar to this

It’s essentially a shared account supporting variable spending and bill payments from numerous people. And your aversion to having to move money between accounts manually to make the type of payment (shared/personal) is something I share.

Perhaps the discussion may be better moved over that topic as I’m struggling to see the big relevance to custom timeframes.

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