With most accounts (perhaps all non-Monzo accounts), Emma displays bank transfer references within a greyed text field at the bottom of the transaction details page (some kind of composite of payee name and transfer reference is shown). This seems to be a searched field when using Emma’s search tool.
However for Monzo accounts you only place the payee name in the grey text field and you place the transaction reference in a separate “details” field. The details field does not seem to be included as a searched field when using the search tool.
This also seems to be a problem when using transaction renaming function and smart rules with Monzo accounts. When using the renaming function on bank transfers from Monzo, the suggested “similar transactions” seems to suggest a much larger list of transactions than those with matching references (details field). I assume it just ends up looking for transactions with the same payee name, which isn’t helpful. Smart rules also doesn’t seem to use the details field so for Monzo accounts isn’t able to trigger based on transaction reference.
Can I suggest you do one of the following:
Combine the details field with what you put in the grey text field for Monzo accounts
Include the details field in searches
I actually prefer that with Monzo accounts the transaction reference is kept separate from payee name. It would be great for each bank transfer to have a separate payee name and reference fields on the transaction details page, but don’t know if you’d be able to do that with the info you get from all banks.
Yeah I only recently noticed this was what was making smart rules not work for me.
Unfortunately all my smart rules are to other accounts of mine (as they probably are for most people), so they all have the same name=Emma ‘reference’. Since I’ve found this they do actually trigger but all just end up triggering at once, even when I try to set extra rules on dates/amounts.
I assume monzo is storing/displaying transaction data in a weird way, it seems to depend on the bank whether the reference in monzo pulls through as the reference on the transaction.
Maybe it is non-standard (if indeed there is a standard). But once its established which data field the transaction reference is stored in, I assume its trivial for Emma to map it to wherever it wants it or to include it in search.
Hey, thanks for brining this up.
It is indeed because Monzo and Starling both actually output their data in a differently to most banks.
In terms of smart rules it is something we spotted and are fixing, we are adding an additional “details” option in the smart rules so you will be able to filter based on that field as well. Which should fix the problem. It’s actually been preventing me personally using the smart rules the way I want too, because I use Starling for a lot of my banking. When smart rules is fully released and out of beta it will be fixed (very soon hopefully)
The search issue was not something i was aware of, thanks for raising it, we will take a look into that and can hopefully have that fixed even sooner.
