Monzo know when I’ve been paid… they send me a notification saying so… the default could easily be ‘reset when you get paid’ rather than every month (which would work for me since my payday varies by a few days each month, although no enough to skew the predictions in summary by enough to matter).
The problem is the future predictions… ‘you have x in bills due before you get paid’ doesn’t work if the payday isn’t a fixed period… so at some level you still need monthly/weekly/whatever periods to base the calculations off.
I don’t think time matters as much as day regarding reporting for Trends. Down-to-the-day reporting would be OK, as all incoming/outgoing funds will be accounted for in the same day.
Time is a priority if you are low on funds with some bills about to be paid. But that is micro-mangememt timing to ensure you stay above water - not necessarily a reporting requirement.
But if the time trigger could be used in addition to the date as the absolute starting point of a Trends reporting cycle without too much additional development, then above-and-beyond reporting accuracy could be achieved.
I could see all the 1p and 89p and the like go in as “Savings”, which is fine, but then the withdrawals at at much lower frequency showed as “Transfers”. That caused the “Savings” figure to look off
Not speaking to actual mechanics of that, but I have put my cases “right” manually for items up to now
The way I conceptualise it working would be to have Summary-esque options so you know how long is left in your pay period - but it’s the receipt of your salary that drives the closure of the previous period and start of the next. I think that salary should be the very first transaction in that new period.
(Under that model, I’d also like salary receipt to drive other actions: pots transfers, sweeps, external funds movements, like “send £100 to my savings account when I get paid”).
This sounds nice, but I could see things getting a bit wild when you changed jobs and your pay date changed, or you received an unexpected bank transfer for a large amount that was wrongly categorised as salary.
So I’ve enabled this in labs, but the tab isn’t appearing. I’ve also got the feed item saying “Trends tab enabled in labs” but nothing happens when I click on it.
I’ve also uninstalled and reinstalled the app, but no joy.
Yeah, this would be awesome. And it’s basically what SVC was trying to get built with the IFTTT integration. It would be really great to be able to “script” your financial life in a richer, more direct, more first-class way. Honestly I think it would lead to fewer problems as with the awkward mechanisms we have at the moment (generally, in all bank accounts), it’s pretty easy for stuff to go wrong.
After waiting/wanting it, I click and then it’s very much a “So what?”
I click into July to see what I did, forget the numbers and come back to August. Am I ahead? Am I spending more/less? Am I on track to spend less? Can I set a saving goal to reach?
“At this point last month you had spent £82 more on shopping”
“You’ve had 6 fewer transactions at Starbucks compared to last month”
Those are insights, at the moment it’s just a headline figure.
Excuse my incredibly terrible image, but if the top bar is last month and then below is current month, you have an instant and obvious tracker of how you’re doing.
Most things could go horribly wrong, but I think for Trends resetting off of salary receipt would give the best outcome for most people. Perhaps with an option to keep it on calendar period (à la Summary) for those on weekly pay or irregular income.
On using salary to drive external transfers, this is (I think) on the radar of the open banking people for a new standard. Personally, I’d like Monzo to be ahead of the game and to be able to define rules (from X company for > Y, but < Z amount) that drive external transfers. Let’s not maintain the status quo out of what ifs!
as a result!
iOS 15 iPhone 12
