This month I set up a bills pot with Monzo. I’ve attached a couple direct debits, standing orders and my Monzo Flex bill.
Some came out today, and it appears that what Monzo’s done is take the money out of the pot, put it into the main balance, then may it from there. Why does it do this? Starling keeps all the bills paid from ‘spaces’ kept separate to other transactions.
I do have the new layout on so maybe that’s got something to do with it. I just found this very odd.
Nope. It’s the way Monzo works.
All goes through the main account feed.
That’s very weird. What’s the point of paying bills from pots if they’re still going to be bundled in with the rest of the transactions? I thought it was to separate everything
The money is kept aside and moved when it’s paid so it’s still essentially paid by pot.
Let’s hope you didn’t close your Starling as you can’t return for 12 months if so 
What annoyed me about Starling is you don’t receive the notifications the day before, or on the day (if I remember correctly) for bills paid from Spaces.
They do however from the additional account.
I also think it’s a mess; would much prefer these to be kept separate throughout the app.
No, still got it. RIP my Chase account though.
Is that new? Maybe I’ve never paid enough attention.
I was on android where outbound debits were visible but muted, and then stacked so quite likely not seen.
Also didn’t have many from personal, they got grouped with all the joint account ones so… yeah I’m wrong
Oops 
That’s where I pay my direct debits from.
Through their savings account.
No double transactions in my main current account feed then. In fact not even a single one 
RIP ever getting that back if you ever change your mind.
They’re looking at paying directly from Pot over in the US currently. Hopefully that will make it over here one day because when I used to pay bills From Monzo this used to really bug me.
Readers Note - surprisingly there are no open threads that have this before. I did look but I think this is actually a novel request.
No, it’s always been the case.
To demonstrate the point: All my ‘first of the month’ Direct Debits went out this morning (Monday 03/07) but they’ve been showing greyed–out in the feed since Friday (30/06), and yesterday (Sunday 02/07) I got a notification about each one coming up.
Thanks, as mentioned, I don’t have many personal ones going through so easily missed them. I’ve just moved a bunch to my additional account though so everything bar salary (for now) goes through Starling for simplicity.
I don’t like how the money for direct debits is moved from your pot to your main account when the payment is made but I don’t hate it - there’s kind of a logic there.
The thing that really bothers me is how it’s inconsistent with the way virtual card payments work - where payments come directly from the pot without going through your main account.
I would think it’s so much work involved to do direct debits direct from pots from a backend view.
Neither do I. Starling is much more elegant in the way it handles these.
I think I prefer it to come from one main account… otherwise, how does it handle statements for a remortgage etc.?
Your affordability is what’s important, not whether something is paid directly from a pot. It will all be on a statement regardless.
There has been talk of it changing so it’s more streamlined but nothing has happened yet.
The point is, in Starling, Pots really are subdivisions of the main account, and on your statement, every transaction is shown in order, just when it clears out of Starling Bank, no matter which part of your account it comes from. It’s also how the balance in Pots offsets your main overdraft. You can click into the account details and literally see a balance figure which is a total of main balance and Pots.
Monzo has invented this weird system where Pots are described as subdivisions in some senses, but completely separate in practice (eg. your overdraft doesn’t know you’ve got £1000s in a Pot) and instead of paying bills from a Pot, it does the annoying switcheroo of money to compensate it coming from the main balance.
As I said, Starling is way more elegant.
100%
Yeah, I’ve never paid directly from a pot, so didn’t understand how it would work.
They clearly didn’t redesign the way pots are handled when they introduced ‘paying from pots’.
Maybe they’ve got it in the roadmap to do it properly, as it feels like a quick but not proper fix with what they have.
