We're working on a new look for the Monzo app

:wave:

Early access update

- iOS v2.44 has rolled out to Testflight today (Tuesday), and will very likely hit the App Store tomorrow.
- Android v2.45 is expected to hit the Beta channel Thu/Fri, with Play store rollout on Mon/Tue.
So if you’re on iOS, there’s no need to join TestFlight now. If you’re on Android you can join the Beta channel at the bottom of our Play Store listing and wait a few more days (or just wait for Monday).

We haven’t yet enabled the feature flag for anyone today. Sorry about that :pray: I’ll post something here once we enable it for you :slight_smile: Current estimate is tomorrow morning (Wednesday). Some asked how many people have requested access, as of now 739.

…cue elephant leaving the room :elephant:


Now that we got that out of the way I really want to answer some of your questions/feedback. I just finished reading every comment on this thread and feeling very grateful for all the useful comments so far. Please keep them coming!

Before we go any further please keep in mind this is a very early version of a new app navigation. Don’t take this as something that will happen for sure. We’re just discussing potential approaches and want to bring you in on that journey.

Budgeting

The love for Summary is really good to see! We’re definitely not getting rid of budgeting, it’s one of the things that makes Monzo so useful. In fact we know budgeting is so important that we want to make sure we get it right, and give more visibility to some key budgeting elements.

Here’s what we’re doing with high priority right now:

  • Add a budgeting widget (placeholder name) at the top of your transaction feed
  • Show left to spend in ££
  • Show number of days remaining until end of current pay cycle
  • Progress bar for cue on % spent against historical available to spend
  • Green/yellow/red colour feedback based on left to spend.
  • The information in the budgeting widget is the same as the Summary dial (circle)

Below is how this looks like right now. It’s a taken from Android v2.45 (fyi iOS doesn’t have this on v2.44 but should do on v2.45). I was on my way home and saw this when opened the app. I was so excited that at a glance I was able to see that my balance was £21, that I only have £7 left to spend (because of an upcoming bill), and that there’s only 3 days left before payday :moneybag: Note to self, take some cash out of a pot.

It might seem like a very simple thing, but seeing these 3 numbers coming together to tell this story without having to think was so powerful! It felt that it just worked.

But are these the right numbers? From your comments here seems like the Left to Spend is the most important one (assuming Balance at the top is a given). What about the “3 days left to go” and the progress bar? What would you replace these with to help you manage your money better at a glance?

Other things related to Budgeting in the new navigation

  • Not having a place in the nav bar for Summary is very likely going to happen
  • The budgeting widget is just an approach, we’re not sure if it’s the right one, or what info should be on it. Feedback welcome!
  • Tapping the budgeting widget right now will open the standard version of Summary. We’re doing this while we figure out what should happen when you tap that widget, and where other elements of Summary might go in the future.
  • Budgeting across multiple accounts/cards is not solved yet - more on that below.

Categories and Merchants

Another theme from your comments is viewing spending by category. We’re exploring bringing aggregate spending by category to the home screen (like we have now in Summary). And we’re also looking at doing the same for Merchants. There’s still some unanswered questions around this, for example how do you switch between different months/periods? Perhaps that can be the same mechanism that allows you to quickly navigate your feed (since we’re losing this functionality from the Pulse graph)

The screenshot below shows how these could look like, next to your Timeline (Feed). This is from a design file.

All Accounts

Right now
The screen behind “View All” looks like the standard Account screen, minus the Monzo card and related actions that have moved to the Home screen. It only shows things related to the current user scope, so if you’re on your Personal account you don’t see Joint Account items, and vice versa.

  • To change between Personal and Joint Account you need to long press the nav bar (iOS) or use the Switch Account button temporarily in the “All Accounts” screen. This is all temporary.

In the future
The way we’re thinking about this is that when you go to All Accounts you’d quickly be able to see an overview of your financial position. In my previous post I referred to a list of “all your account related objects” and this is purposefully vague because we don’t know yet what might be added to this list of things in the future, and most importantly we don’t want to be opinionated on what they mean to you.

Maybe for you the Amex card is part of your daily spending money, in which case you should be able to group it with your Monzo card and call it Daily Spending. Someone else might have a House Fund pot grouped with their mortgage, as savings set aside for remortgaging a few months later. But the same person might have a Holiday Pot grouped with their Family Presents pot.

Whatever mental model you want to use to think about your money, we want to respect that. I’d be very keen to hear everyone’s thoughts on this too.

:point_up: This also popped up a few times in the thread. For a moment let’s put aside personal preference in seeing the card behind the Timeline. There’s some extra reasoning to keep it there that we haven’t shared yet. One idea we’re playing with is that from tapping another “account object” in your “All Accounts” screen you’re taken back to the Home screen, viewing that specific account object.

Imagine you tap on a different card in All Accounts, for example your Amex. The app takes you to Home, your Amex card is now peeking behind the Timeline, and your Timeline shows your Amex history. We’re also looking at how swiping the card currently Home left-right can change the context you’re on.

Interestingly, in the spinof survey that I saw above it seems very few people cared about “seeing Pot transactions in one place”. Maybe this doesn’t work for everything that lives in your All Accounts, we’re still exploring.


Please continue sharing your feedback, it’s what makes Monzo, Monzo :hot_coral_heart:

74 Likes

Go to bed :sleeping:. In all seriousness though thanks for an update so late in the evening/early in the morning :grin:

6 Likes

Completely agree with this. A Summary bar looks much nicer.

I think advanced budgeting features which are shown when you click the Summary bar have loads of potential.

Woohoo!
Thank you Bruno and Jordan!

We’re in good hands. <3

Love it :heart_eyes:

I wonder how it would feel if you pressed the new summary bar and your timeline was updated with all of the future dated (anticipated) transactions for you to scroll upwards to see?

5 Likes

This :point_up:+1

Also the ability to add future transactions manually for known upcoming transactions that aren’t DIrect Debits/Scheduled/etc. transactions. let’s call them ‘ghost’ transactions. A ghost transaction is shown in the future and therefore affects the left-to-spend for that displayed period. And the ability to set a ghost transaction as repeating too.

The issue then is what to do when time goes by and the ghost transaction date equals today’s date;

  • Has an actual transaction occurred which equals the ghost?
  • Has an actual transaction occurred which equals the ghost merchant/payee?
  • Has an actual transaction occurred which has one or both above conditions and is within 1-3 days of the ghost?

Then what? - auto-delete the ghost because an actual matching transaction has occurred - or - alert the user that a ghost transaction needs action (deleting/confirming/approving/etc.)

Some clever thinking could produce a very powerful planning feature within the app.

6 Likes

Thanks so much for this @bruno and @JordanFish for being so open and keeping us updated.

6 Likes

Looks good so far from the pics and thanks for the information.

Id quite like to see multiple incomes included. I have my main salary which works fine with the current summary. But I have additional incomes also. So perhaps on the timeline you can see the incomes and expenditure on an ongoing basis rather than a simple month by month. So I should be able to scroll say 6 months into the future and see my expected balance with income and expenditure.

1 Like

The summary has always worked well for me, I get paid monthly and its does a really good job of removing all my committed spending so I can see how much I can spend on other things over the month. I’ve found that if I exclude big one off purchases the dial is fairly accurate at helping me not overspending near the start of the month. The biggest problem is with credit card direct debits, them having a different value each month can really mess with the committed spend value so until they come out the left to spend value can be pretty far off.

Having that information on the home screen is the single best change here for me. It was getting prettying annoying opening the app, having to change to the summary to see the left to spend value and then going back to the feed again to check that transactions are all ok. It being at the top there is really helpful.

Not too fussed about the card stuff being at the top, I don’t think its too annoying especially if it gets smaller when you start scrolling through your transactions anyway (I do have a tall screen phone though so I’m biased here).

Excited to try it out.

I may start using this quote for a lot of replies to this forum.

For everyone who gets paid a fixed monthly amount, who wants X feature, there is someone who gets paid non-fixed amounts on a 4 weekly or more random timescale, and who wants Y feature.

The fact that Monzo are trying to wrap their heads around all the permutations and make something that works for everyone (or at least the large majority, can’t please everyone!) is laudable and I can’t wait to see the results.

16 Likes

Love love love the update thank you! Really reassuring that there will be a place for budgeting and “left to spend”. Now I can’t wait to see how this develops! :smiley: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

3 Likes

Really love the look of the re design. So much so I’m going #fullmonzo - been thinking about it for a while and whilst my current bank (first direct) have been ok as a bank their app is woeful.

Looking forward to testing the new design!

6 Likes

We’ve enabled this for everyone that request access. If you’re on a supported version (see above) kill the app and reopen.

21 Likes

Not seeing iOS v2.44 in the App Store yet, so this is Android only for now, yes?

Great work @bruno and team, this looks really nice :smiley:

1 Like

This looks great!

Yeah I was going to ask when we could expect v2.44 to hit the app store for non-testflight users

iOS 2.44 is in Testflight, will go to the App Store later today.
Android 2.45 is going to Beta later this week, then Play Store next week.

9 Likes

The disposable income part of Summary definitely needs to stay…or at least a balance with all planned outgoings needs to be visible somewhere. It is basically how I manage my money!