August was a big month for Reports, a good one for anyone planning to retire early, and a win for anyone who likes to tidy up transactions while they're still pending. Here’s all that’s new in Monarch this month.
A new way to size up your spending (and income)
Ever heard of a treemap? We think it might become your new favorite view in Reports.
Every category becomes a block sized by the amount behind it, so the biggest ones are obvious before you read a single number. Click any block to zoom from group to category, then down to merchant and the transactions behind it.
You'll find treemap as an option on both the Spending and Income tabs. On Spending, it's the quickest way to see which categories are actually driving your month or year, and which ones deserve a closer look. The Income view is worth a look if you have more than one stream coming in, like freelance work or interest income.
Here's how to get started:
- Open Reports and look for treemap in the chart dropdown on Spending and Income, on both web and mobile
- Narrow it down by time frame or any other filter
- Click a block to drill down through categories, merchants, and transactions
- Save the report once you've got a view you like, and come back to it anytime
See your spending as a treemap
A clearer picture of early retirement
If an early retirement is in your plans, your forecast just got sharper. Forecasting now factors in early withdrawal penalties on IRAs and 401(k)s, so you can see exactly what those accounts will cover if you start drawing on them early.
For more accurate early retirement scenarios, adjust your withdrawal timing on each account. You’ll see penalties appear as their own line in your cash flow and account tables, next to withdrawals and taxes.
Explore Forecasting (on web, part of Monarch Plus)
Your transaction edits, preserved
If you've ever lost edits you made to a pending transaction, this one's for you.
In the past, some pending transactions wouldn't map to the posted version that replaced them. This has to do with how data providers send us information: some connections send a signal linking the two, and some don't. We're now able to identify when two transactions are the same underlying purchase, even when your bank doesn't tell us.
What this means for you: update the category, add tags and notes, mark a pending transaction reviewed, and it all stays put once the transaction posts.
This wasn't happening to everyone, so if your edits have always stuck, that's why. For everyone else, it adds up to more than 11,000 edits preserved every day that would previously have been lost.
Other big and small updates
- All Time is now the default in mobile Reports. If you don’t see this, check your app to make sure you’re on version 2.0.110 or later.
- Get notified when a forwarded receipt doesn't go through. If you forward receipts to Monarch, we'll now tell you when something's preventing one from being received, and how to fix it. Choose push, in-app, email, or any combination in your notification settings.
- A more accurate spending average on your dashboard. The spending widget's average now skips months you have no data for instead of counting them as zero. If you're new to Monarch or your account history is short, you'll notice the difference most.
- Full dates on your net worth slider. On mobile, moving the slider across your net worth widget now shows the complete date range, including the year, so you can tell exactly what period you're looking at.
- Settings screens got a visual refresh. Cleaner spacing and consistent styling make settings easier to scan when you're hunting for a specific option.
- Bulk delete transactions on Android. No more deleting one at a time because the button was hiding behind your phone's nav bar.
- A transaction review reminder you can count on. The reminder on your mobile dashboard shows up reliably again, instead of leaving a blank gap.
- Breadcrumb links on detail pages work again. Click "Accounts" from a detail page and it takes you back to Accounts, the way it always should have.
- Freely rearrange accounts within a group. The dragging bug on web is fixed.
- Partial transfers stay visible in goal reconciliation. Partially-used transfers now stay in the reconciliation modal so you can reconcile against their leftover capacity.
- Add transactions faster with fewer confusing errors. Manually entering a transaction shouldn't leave you second-guessing whether it actually saved.
As always, tell us what you want to see us build by voting on our product roadmap and stay tuned for more updates next month!
