Been using Pro for about 4 months. Purchased after I saw a cut price offer for 1 year subscription. Renaming transactions is the only Pro feature I use, so I guess that’s my favourite!
I suspect I might start using custom categories but haven’t done so yet.
When I did have Pro even though the period of time was short, it was the amount of customisation, made working with finances more aesthetically pleasing
Manual accounts are the main thing for me. I can bring in unsupported saving accounts which is obviously useful. I can also add more than one manual account for the same underlying real account. I can split the balance manually to show separate saving pots within it cf Starling Bank.
eg I have added Savings account - holiday, Saving account - emergency fund, Saving account - season ticket etc. This looks much neater since the latest updates as I can drop the bank name and just put the logo on.
I think there is a possible feature here: I add a single saving account, whether manually or open banking (does anyone return savings data?). I would then create a “space/pot” (or more than one) and allocate some of the balance there. The system automatically creates an “unallocated balance” pot. If the balance increases, the extra goes to unallocated. If the balance decreases, something clever happens (not sure what!)
This essentially replicates the space creation/funding process in Starling, but that could be applied across all providers.
Another way Emma could add challenger bank features to legacy bank accounts.
Manual accounts is the main benefit. It would be really good if these were improved since there are some cons currently (they don’t keep a history, and manually updating them myself is busy-work.)
I’ve added a few more custom categories this week and I’m really liking them!
This is a cool idea! What would you then do with the money that showed as “unallocated”? Would you manually move it into each of the different manual pots (holiday/ emergency fund etc)?
What kind of history would you find useful for the manual accounts? Date & amount added/ removed?
What kind of history would you find useful for the manual accounts? Date & amount added/ removed?
Well, creating transactions would be too much work for me because there are too many transactions, and I have 5 manual accounts. It’d also not make much sense because the balance goes up and down with relation to the value of the assets and not just the transactions that go in and out (which actually could be automated based on the transaction history of my Monzo account).
But, for example, I have a Plum investment account that I manually update on a bi-weekly basis. I use the “Change balance” button which does its job. But you don’t keep a history of the balances this account has had, so the graph is just a flat line. This seems like a massive waste since I’ve been manually updating the balance of multiple accounts since the creation of manual accounts – you’d have much better data by now if you’d kept it all, and it’d result in the correct graph within the Investments pane, too.
For within-month budgeting/tracking I’m pretty happy with the default categories and don’t really feel the need for extra categories.
I think if annual budgeting and spending tracking was an option in Emma I might be more inclined to use custom categories. For example, I’m interested in how much I have spent on my car (as distinct from general transport) but not really on a within-month basis. The big expenses are unplanned expenses or irregularly spread across the year. So if I could see how I was progressing toward an annual budget I think I’d be more likely to use custom categories.
We should be able to release a feature next week that detects the transaction coming out from your current account and assigns it to the offline account of your choice - in this case Plum.