Tracking expenditure on the map

Hey there,

Apologies in advance for a fairly long post and hope this could be taken into consideration for long-run targets.

I joined Monzo relatively recently and the way it detects spending categories is incredibly fascinating.

However, I believe many people, myself included, do have their own spending-tracking apps, to which they need to input transactions manually (YOLT and equivalents do not count - too vague) for precision and better analytical outcomes.

For instance, I use Spendee and have been with it since 2015. One of the major features I do love is how they present your transactions on the map - see the screenshots below:

imageimageimage

Monzo does have an ability to do that as it automatically detects the transaction location, merchant and category in 99.99% cases. Therefore, it would be great to have a map that will represent all of the historic (or for a given period [day/week/month/year/range]) transactions, with their respective category pictures (as above).

Additionally, it would be great to have the following functions as well (disclaimer: the above-mentioned app does not have these facilities):

  • Tapping the category picture in any location to see all transactions with that merchant in that place. For example, I have 300 transactions in my local ASDA, hence would be nice to know how much exactly I have spent with the said merchant historically (or for a certain time period).

  • We all know that Monzo is aware when you go to another country and then gives you a notification on how much you have spent there. Would be nice to have a “highlight the area” feature (ever tried to draw borders on Zoopla/Rightmove to see the properties in that area? That is exactly what I meant by that!) which could tell you how much you have spent in that town/country for any period of time. Say I go to Paris every month, I want to see how much I have spent in the last 12 months, rather than having a little report every time I come back. If I could highlight the area, set the date range, then Monzo could kindly tell me what were all my transaction based on these parameters.

I am not rich on ideas but I believe this whole “Maps” aspect has more development potential, it only takes to make a start, once the prototype is in place, more people could flood their ideas on how to improve it.

Although it certainly seems to me that Monzo has all the necessary data in place to facilitate the above feature, the major difficulty would be to design, code and implement it without breaking something else (I understand it is not a process of one year given other, more vital, priorities).

But I believe it would be a unique spend-tracking facility which would automate a lot of processes (e.g. manual transaction entry) and incentivise people to have all their information in one place (being Monzo), rather than using various apps to deliver the very same outcome.

It most certainly would encourage users to stay loyal to the bank if it is able to be a pioneer in developing unique features, especially when traditional banks are decades away from it.

Thank you very much indeed for taking that into consideration.

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I’m very meh about this.

It’s a novelty without much additional use. All my transactions would be within a 15 mile radius so would be utterly pointless.

Can find how much I spent in Asda in the last year, quarter, month, week or weekend already (on iOS), and search by location. Only takes a few taps

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Fair point, indeed. But current way of doing it will not take the location into consideration, only the “ASDA” parameter itself (unless I am not aware).

And it is also fair that not all will benefit from the feature due to everyone’s different circumstances, being, as you mentioned, having most of the transaction in just one place.

But if you travel, especially frequently, it would certainly give you a much better picture of your expenditure. Whilst not being crucial in essence, having it on the “consideration list” would be quite appealing to make sure there is room for improvement when all the other necessary features are embedded. We do not want Monzo to stagnate ever, do we? :smiley:

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Although I’m not sure Monzo will develop this (it’s quite hard to pack this functionality into a mobile app, for one thing), a few developers have already done it, using Monzo’s open API :smile:

If you fancy checking it out (& you’re not afraid of a bit of tech complexity) then check out the apps here -

https://github.com/rdingwall/awesome-monzo/#apps

There’s some previews of some of those apps here :point_down: :heart_eyes:

Travel Map

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If you’re on iOS you can do location and shop. Use the search on today bar in the main feed, click on shop icon then the location icon and just choose the ones you want included.

If you’re on Android I believe that’s still not available yet

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I LOVE this idea. I’m a sucker for tracking personal data eg apps like Life Cycle, photo locations, etc. I like zooming out on my photo map to see all the places I’ve been in a year.

Like Alex linked above there are some existing apps (though not in-app!) that show your transactions, but I don’t know how feasible it is especially since Monzo is working on a lot of other highly requested features :thinking:

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