Budgeting and Analytics

Surely just tapping exclude from analytics on the initial movement would resolve this?

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@Carl_1460 Thanks, could you be more specific where the option to exclude from analytics comes in? Would that be when initially linking an external account? In which case there are many other useful transactions as well as overall spend that I’d like to have.

Otherwise I don’t see any option to exclude specific transactions from analytics

Thanks!

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You tap on a transaction, then select “Exclude from Analytics”.

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@Skrb Split transactions in different categories would also be helpful.

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I did reflect it before, but the issue still in place :expressionless:

Internal cryptocurrency investments are not counted towards my total budget :bar_chart: (yes, category is marked as Investments)
Sample⬇️

So, to see all my recent Investments, I need to use Monzo bank app :confused:

Sad really, that Revolut doesn’t want to improve :expressionless:

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Hi all, late to the party - but hope I can add some feedback to the Budgeting feature.

I use Pockets - alot for all my bills, so my ‘balance’ is what I know I have left as spare money and I like the idea of setting a budget month to month using the budgeting feature - however the ‘left of budget’ calculation is factoring in all the scheduled payments which are assigned to pockets - which already have money in them…

So for me the budgeting feature doesn’t work as its looking at my main account balance and adding up all the scheduled payments (even ones in pockets) and saying I’m over budget - which I’m not…

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How would you see this being resolved?

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Revolut should rethink budgeting.

Currently, there are these budget related features:

  • Cards can have a budget that effectively limits spending over budget
  • Categories can have a budget, but that’s just informative, one can overspend. A combined budget can be broken down into categories. This can be defined by the user on a granular level.
  • Pockets were introduced as another option for envelope budgeting. Like card budgets, pockets can limit spending. When a pocket doesn’t have funds available, a payment fails.

I’d argue that the introduction of pockets messed this up. There’s a functionality overlap with budgets in analytics, and with card budgets as well. But they’re limited to very specific recurring payments. I’d scrap card budgets, and rethink pockets. Allow pockets to be more flexible, allow to link specific cards to specific pockets – and handle category based card budgets that way. Allow to manually allocate past payments to pockets to manage envelope budgeting. Allow to set up category based rules to manage daily spending.

That might still result in some confusing analytics, when budgets are used there as well. But maybe pockets can be shown there as their own individual category, or folded into the category they’re related to. That’s something a UX designer should be able to figure out.

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Within each scheduled payment there is already an option to mark which pocket it comes from and additionally with all past ‘paid’ payments there is an option to ‘Hide from Analytics’ - so why not add that option to scheduled payments also?

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You need to (annoyingly) have your budget of x + your pockets amounts of y as the total.

Scheduled/pockets payments should be automaticallt excluded by default.

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Yeah agreed - this would be easiest option and cleanest.

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I have one huge issue with analytics which makes it completely unusable for me. I have linked external bank account to be able to see all my finances in one place, but now when I top up my Revolut card from that account it adds this transfer as a Cost to analytics. So it becomes useless because it displayed doubled costs.

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It’s technically correct, but Revolut isn’t advanced in this area to say the payment and the credit are to balance eachother out.

If you categorise them, head to analytics, category, and then be sure both payments are there or link the two by pressing add transaction at the top, it should balance?

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The question I would ask students in a workshop is: should Revolut follow bookkeeping rules or is there a different approach to look at this that has different benefits, like being more useful in daily life.

It should be really simple for Revolut to link the two related transactions, they themself show up as the merchant, and Revolut itself is the payment processor.

I understand why Revolut displays card top ups like they do in analytics. But not treating them as effectively balance neutral transfers is a missed opportunity and should have come up during prototyping.

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I see what is being said but in the end, is :r: a banking app or an accounting package?
Should there perhaps be an opportunity for a third party player to develop an after market API or similar which exploits the underlying data as seamlessly as is possible to provide better analytics and double entry protocols?

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Convenience, using banking services on the go, mobile, these are the corner stones of why Revolut is a viable alternative to traditional banks.

Accounting services for businesses and consumers are widely available since the 90s. And you’re right, transfers between internal accounts and how that affects business reports is a standard feature there.

The question for me would be: where can Revolut improve one’s financial everyday life with better insights into spending habits and what’s actually going on.

Envelope budgeting is a proven method, often recommended, that helps people tremendously that struggle with money. Not just when you’re “bad” with money, also when you don’t have much and budgeting is just your planing tool.

Sure you can do that on an Excel sheet. It’s not difficult. But here’s the thing: the Revolut app already has the data available. They have analytics, they have “envelops” (pockets) for budgeting. It’s all there. So why not use all the data that’s available and provide the best insight.

It gets more complicated with Open Banking: Revolut decided to integrate external accounts into analytics and what they call “Net worth”. The card top up is a good example: without taking into account that it’s an internal transfer, analytics and budgets are just wrong. It’s a sloppy integration, and a missed opportunity, to make Open Banking useful. I for myself decided not to use analytics at all with Open Banking. It feels like a half assed approach.

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Thanks so much

Basically, I have never been able to manage my salary.

I have a current account with a different bank for my salary and use Revolut on my phone.

Monzo bank offers a scheme, where you pay in a set amount on a set date and you can’t access it until a pre set date.

I am looking for something similar for example:

if I were paid on day 1 week 1 January and pay to ‘vault’ £100 then on days 8, 15, 22 and 29 the ‘vault’ allows access to £25 per week

I should add I am neurodivergent and find this really difficult to explain. I want to stop relying on my family to have to do this for me, they are fed up with it. If I can’t access it I won’t waste it all and then borrow the rest of the month.

Is Revolut able to help? I did ask on twitter but couldn’t explain it

thanks for reading

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HI @Jesus2022 I’ve moved your post to this topic.
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Hi @Jesus2022

Revolut don’t offer locked Vaults/Pockets unfortunately.

You could set a repeating payment from your monzo account on the day your pots unlock, to your Revolut account on a weekly basis though.

I’m hoping revolut does allow similar. Or even scheduled withdrawals from Vaults would be handy as you can remove the vaults from your home screen, out of sight out of mind, and not be concerned with them until next payday when you need to top the vault up again.

It’s only monzo that does what you’re asking really well from my experience.

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Hi, interface is so good.

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