So I’ve tried these Open Banking apps and find they seem to create a mess of transactions and contain 95% crap I don’t need.
Emma
Yolt
Money Dashboard
Cleo
I’m looking for something like Monzos budgeting that can include my Amex transactions into it.
The closest app I can find is Money Manager which is beautifully simple, no adverts. But you need to enter by hand and it doesn’t give budgeting targets just running tally and percentage breakdown.
Anyone have any suggestions? 
If we’re lucky, this is the kind of thing we might see in Monzo Plus… 
Oh no, I was just contemplating moving from MDB to YOLT. 
R-
Have you tried Moneyhub?
It’s by far my favourite, I went through and tried all of the various aggregators at one point and this is the only one that did everything I wanted. It’s not the prettiest but has custom categories, splitting transactions and the widest range of integrations I found! I have had a current account with pretty much all high street banks (for switching bonuses), various workplace pensions, and even have my student loan in there. The only thing I’ve found they don’t work with is Skipton BS but they do allow manual/cash accounts so you can add anything else manually anyway. It also allows more than one connection to a bank so I can manage both mine and my partners accounts without needing two Moneyhub subscriptions!
It is paid but only £9.99/year after a 7(?) day trial (or it was when I signed up) 
To be honest I didn’t find MDB too bad. The primary concern was that Tescobank/Yodlee require a OTP every so often via mobile phone. I rarely get a signal at home [I’m retired] and when I do the code comes through with a 90 second window for input. I know every aggregator will have this issue but Yolt tell me they are testing the TB API, which should be ready soon, whereas MDB have said nothing despite me asking for info. R-
Thanks I’ll give a trial a go.
It’s a shame monzo can’t hurry up and add Amex open banking with the option of including payments in the budgeting. Knowing the total spent doesn’t help work out how it’s being spent and how much left to spend.
Very tempted to just build an app that does that Monzo+Amex stats just as simple as that screenshot above but automatic feed.
Yeah, if you just want to budget/track spending a lot of the aggregators seem to be overkill, but adding everything manually is so much more work!
I don’t know how moneyhub will be to just track your day to day spending as I use it for all accounts to monitor them without having to log in to all of the websites, so you might find it is overkill too!
Let me know how you get on and fingers crossed there’s a proper monzo/amex integration on the way
I agree with this. The aggregators I tried required a bit of effort to tame and train them to my needs.
I found that the best solution for me was a spreadsheet for keeping track of income and bills (which only needs info added a few times a month), and a separate account (Monzo) for keeping an oversight of day to day spending.
I transfer a sum from the accounts tracked by the spreadsheet once a month to Monzo, and track that sum in the Monzo app.
Yeah I do similar, but mine is super in depth and definitely overkill, but I love having all the details!
I don’t use monzo’s budgeting at all (other than how far through my balance I am compared to the month) becasue I need custom categories and to be able to split transactions. I use a spreadsheet as my main tracking but I update this daily with anything I spend and update account balances. I use moneyhub mostly to verify all the transactions (that I haven’t forgotten any, the amount is as expected etc) and it’s a simple way of checking all my account balances without needing to log in to each account. I also find an aggregator super useful to track accounts that I am using for switching bonuses, to see when the switch has gone through and when the incentive has been paid! One day I will probably simplify it down and move all money to one place (perhaps Monzo) and stop doing so much account switching, then moneyhub will probably be redundant and I’d be able to manage it all in a spreadsheet.
Everyone wants to manage it so differently that it’s impossible for one aggregator/spreadsheet/system to work for everyone!
Absolutely!
Just had a reply from Moneyhub to say that although Tesco Bank is supported it is currently through an indirect connection [Yodlee - my input not theirs] but they hope to get it up and running on Open Banking shortly. Same as YOLT. R-
I have Tesco connected with Moneyhub, it is indirect still but I dont get the OTP issue you mentioned with Yolt. I definitely used to have the issue but haven’t recently, I seem to remember it stopped needing the OTP a couple of months ago, have you tried Yolt with Tesco since then, perhaps Tesco have fixed that issue?
I’ve been using Monzo + Amex with YNAB for budgeting.
IT does have a charge, about £60/year, but I’ve found it so much more flexible than the apps you referenced above.
It should sync AMEX through its integrated system, and with a few steps you can integrate Monzo via its API.
Interesting @ellyb. Can I check?
You don’t get the OTP requirement from Tesco at all?
OR
You get sent the OTP > have good mobile signal > input it in time > and therefore no issue?
I have not done anything with YOLT yet as I hoping that MDB get their act together and adopt the Tesco Open Banking option as soon as it is available.
The other thing that happened with MDB is when FD moved from indirect to API a lot of transactions doubled up. They didn’t reflect in the balance - fair enough - but it was very confusing to look at.
R-
I’ve just looked, the last OTP I received from Tesco was 5th Sept, which I think would link up with them making changes for the 14th Sept deadline for Open Banking.
Before that I was pretty much getting them daily as Moneyhub tried to connect, but since then I’ve receieved nothing and the connection updates automatically!
I haven’t seen the doubling up issue when moving from screen-scraping to API (I have done this with FD too) so think that is just a MDB issue
Definitely - I should have said that.
MDB admitted that the new system and their system didn’t speak to each other in a completely helpful way!
R-
Ah I see!
Well, either way, may be worth giving Tesco another go even before they launch their API!
Funny you should say that - I just tried. Apparently the TB site is “under maintenance” - so I cannot cannot connect to it, I’ll try again a little later and we"ll see what transpires. R-
Check out Moneyhub to see if it has the connections you need. The app is a bit clunky. It costs £9.99 a year.
Hi,
I just came here accidentally.
I tried many apps in the past but never stayed longer than a few weeks.
I like that I can see many investments and pension accounts too, so I will give a try.
I use Bluecoins for my net worth summary. It is not an automatic connection to the accounts. So I add manually my accounts details once every month.
I like this app because it gives me a lot of details, graphs, filter, whatever I want.
Plus I am a bit worried about security if I would connect all my accounts into one place.
So, I don’t mind to add the numbers manually once a month.
As I mentioned I use this app mainly for net worth.
