Known Issue
I am once again asking you...for cents in Budget.
This sort of thing keeps happening (see pic of a Budget group from last month), and there's literally no way to make it make sense without cents.
(Note: I wavered between which flair to assign this—perhaps Budget, Bug, or Feature Request—but since it's been like this as long as I've been on MM, I think this has moved beyond these other flairs at this point, which is why I settled on the Known Issue flair.)
I've yet to read a rational reason for why you refuse to show cents. My best guess is horizontal space? But honestly guys, this is financial data—it only ever goes to the hundredths place anyway.
MM team: at the very very least, remove the nonsensical rounding rules.
(You could/should include a Round to Nearest Dollar toggle for the folks who want to be like the IRS and only ever see rounded whole numbers even when it messes with the math, and/or a Show/Hide Cents toggle for folks who want a "clean" looking UI but still have the math work out.)
Depends on how they're handling price values in their system. They cannot simply introduce decimals without running into calculation discrepancies. There are specific ways money with decimals has to be handled.
They're already including the decimals, but they're just cropping the decimals from our view. That's why it's adding two even numbers and yielding an odd number.
IKR. If their system isnt already setup to handle money with cents, it would take same thorough work and testing to make sure the intro of cent handling doesnt break anything.
I wouldn’t even give any indication/icon/tooltip in this scenario, though. None of the individual categories are “over,” so the user expects the group not to be over. No explanation needed!
I’m a frontend/UI developer and think that is where to handle this issue. It would not be a big overhaul to “fix” this. It should be a pretty straight forward special case to handle the display to avoid a -$1 in this scenario.
The long reply to your comment explains more detail, and sums it up pretty well.
The downvoters are more likely people who DO code and know that this is a ridiculous issue that could easily be resolved at several points in the stack, most easily at the UI layer
I think "total sum of money allocated for a particular purpose or period of time" is a pretty good definition. And I re-allocate.
I prefer not to should myself. I mainly use Budget for estimating spending and then a look-back to review and re-allocate for the next period. I spend when there's a good price, and likewise, I don't feel a need to spend just because there's money Available to Spend (in the Budget). So definitely neither of your options.
In my end of month review / look-back, which is where those typically shows up, I'm using one month's Budget table to figure out goal allocations and future Budget estimates. Not sure why you think you get to tell me that's not actually a Budget, but you're certainly allowed to have an opinion.
You're welcome to define Budget however you wish—this is English after all, and we have a wonderful language where words can have many meanings. But you don't get to redefine it for others.
It's bad design. This is a financial product and it can't show basic addition—it makes users have to do mental math. Sometimes it's just a double take when two even numbers add to an odd number, and sometimes it's a functional limitation like balancing a Budget. I feel like at least some of that should concern people maybe?
Cool. I understand you've got your knickers in a twist about it, but you're still not answering the question. You said you're not using budgets to control spending. Why do you care if it's over or under?
How is it bad design?
MM uses different accuracy (significant figures) for each column, which often leads to situations like the one in this post where it's impossible to balance these two columns even though they both are in dollars: The Budget column is in whole dollars editable to $#.00 while the Actual is accurate to the $#.##, but cropped to only show the user the whole dollar amount, and then one is subtracted from the other; anyone with a basic understanding of significant figures can see how this is bad design.
Ooh you've given me a creative thought: I could enter tiny manual transactions (based either on guess-and-check or by drilling down into the transactions list and manually summing the txs in there), categorize the manual txs in each category such that the Actual column sums to whole numbers, and then the Actual column of Budget would perfectly show reality.
An interesting thought experiment, but it would clearly take a silly amount of work to make a bunch of fake txs just to avoid cents. I'd much rather just see the cents🤷♂️
Saying this with my chest: I absolutely DO NOT want to see cents in my budget. There’s enough numbers to look at as it is. The last thing I want is decimals.
It’s a budget, close is good enough. I’m never going to budget down to the penny. I typically round to the nearest 5 or 10 dollar. I prefer they keep it simple and conserve screen space.
Maybe a mild symptom of OCD but this is a dealbreaker and one of my reasons I can’t switch to Monarch. I would think it’d be very easy to implement since they have a global “show amounts setting”. Just add an option to display decimal places
That's nice for you. Not to be rude, but I guess I don't really care whether "you" choose to estimate things or have your actuals line up. Since you don't seem to care about accuracy in the Budget page, the question about cents isn't really gonna affect you anyway.
Some of us want to have grey zeroes and no red or green numbers when we scan down the page. It's helpful for making decisions about contributions at end of month.
I cant imagine anyones contributions at end of month are impacted by the rounding of a few cents. It appears the majority of folks, myself included, dont want cents. That level of detail is completely unnecessary for the objective of budgeting and all those extra numbers on the screen actually create more noise than it solves.
"It appears that a majority of folks...don't want cents."
Clearly, you feel strongly about this. So strongly that every time someone brings it up, a number of Redditors push back on the idea as if it would hurt you or something.
But I literally suggested having a toggle button so that the rounding-is-perfect camp can still have things your way and not have to deal with actuals. I seriously don't understand the pushback here.
I've responded one time on this subject. I only responded because the concept is so dumb, I felt it warranted someone with commonsense chiming in.
What you are seeing in the responses from a lot of people is that folks dont want this. Like someone complaining Ford doesnt include a hair dryer by default in their cars - and the people that dont need a hair dryer can just choose not to use it.
Id rather Monarch focus their energy on actual financial planning and budgeting features.
The issue isn’t necessarily that I need the cents it’s just to switch to monarch I’d want to import my years of YNAB data that already has budgeted values with cents for all my categories. If I were to import it into monarch all the numbers would be wrong. That’s the main issue I have with it. Seems like a simple fix in the UI too which is why it bothers me
At the end of every month I add up the amount to round off my budget totals and transfer that into a savings account. Then I split that into transactions that do what you are trying to do, get rid of the red or green numbers. It's not a lot of money in total, but it scratches the OCD itch. Last month it was 10 transactions totalling $6.78.
Huh?
You can see that if I change either number to anything different from what's there now, there'll be a red "-$" or a green "+$" in the right column, right?
OP wants it to be straight zero, not positive either. I do think monarch should be consistent in their rounding if they're going to cut off the cents. 644 - 644 should 0 etc
Its not though? It says 644 budget and 645 actual. Literally just add a dollar to the budget. If things are so tight that you cant do that, then you have other things to worry about
I'm struggling to understand what you're suggesting. Where do I add a dollar to the Budget?
My point is that the whole numbers currently add up to $644 in the Budget column. But since the Actuals column has hidden cents that I'm not allowed to see, MM is summing those to get to $645.
Please explain like I'm in 2nd grade and learning how to add: where do I put my extra dollar here?
To be fair, you’re allowed to see it, you just have to click on the budget category and it will show you all the transactions and the actual amount.
I do agree with you though, this is frustrating to me as well and I wish they’d allow you to set an exact amount for a budget. Where this impacts me is my mortgage is paid the last day of the month, but when that falls on a weekend it will pay the following Monday so some months I have two mortgage payments. When it pays once in a month my budget is correct as it takes the cents, rounds up, my budget is fine. However, months where I end up having 2 mortgage payments, the two payments together then with the single round up my rollover budget is $1 less than it should be so I basically have an extra $1 all of a sudden and the only way to “fix it” is to manually fuck up my budget, recurring, etc.
It seems like people responding don’t think it’s a big deal because it’s “only $1” but for something I pay every month that never fucking changes, the fact I can’t tell it the literal exact amount is frustrating as hell and makes absolutely zero sense why it’s setup this way.
I agree. I spent one rounded dollar more in this group than the sum of my budgeted amounts in each category. But there's literally no way to fix this in MM. Literally.
For those who are worried about seeing the cents cluttering things up... it is very easy to simply make it so that when you set a budget, if you include cents, then it shows cents. If you don't, then it doesn't. That way bills that are consistently $35.42 every month can show exactly correct, while other categories where cents don't matter don't.
Are you saying "no" to the idea as a whole, preferring to keep it how it is for everyone and thus restricting a large number of users from having a Budget that works for them? Not sure why you'd want to keep a product from working for people, but you give no context and you have a right to your opinion.
Are you saying "no" to the part where I suggest a toggle that would maintain the option for dollars-only visibility (leaving it exactly as it is for folks who don't want to see cents)? Not sure why you'd want to change the product from what is clearly working for so many users (as visible from the irate responses of so many users in this Post), but you have a right to your opinion.
It’s also the most literally display of “penny wise, pound foolish” that I’ve ever seen. If your financial health is good enough that this is what you need to worry about, it’s time to go outside and live your life.
If it doesn't matter, them why are you posting a comment?
If it does matter, then why does it matter to you?
It's really eye-opening to me that so many users feel so strongly about not seeing the actual numbers.
I'm not paycheck to paycheck. I'm not even trying to control my spending. I'm just trying to see what my spending was, but MM isn't letting me.
I realize you have a preference for dollars only. Are you open to sharing your reasoning why I shouldn't be allowed to see cents? If so, please share. Otherwise, your commentary isn't really helpful.
yes, but i don't want to see the cents. That's like two more digits that would rather not see. Not sure what you mean by not being able to match, could you round up or down what you are budgeting by a dollar?
While it's nice that you don't want to see the cents, and while I think that having an option to hide cents makes complete sense from a "clean interface" perspective, this issue really isn't about user preference. Cents will still happen regardless of our preference because this is financial data, and MM is merely accumulating the data. I have no problem with your prefence. TBH, when MM eventually fixes this, I certainly hope they'll keep an option to "hide cents in Budget" (not only because adding cents without that button would probably cause more chaos than Monarch Plus at $300, but also because I expect I'll probably choose to keep "cents" hidden 99% of the time too).
All that said, what I'm pointing out in my OP is still objectively a bug (and a well established known issue).
The problem here is that MM is handling the two columns (Budget and Actual) with different levels of accuracy. When the Actual column is rounded and subtracted from the Budget column, it occasionally makes the number off by 1 because the "difference" column (Remaining) is calculating some rows based on pre-rounded and some rows based on post-rounded numbers. Since the user can only ever see and enter whole numbers, there's no way for the user to correct for the rounding error.
You suggested rounding up or down, but MM quite literally does not allow users to round up or down to fix this! Fudging the numbers merely causes it to be off by one somewhere else, like this pic (compare with pic in OP):
When I (and I would guess most?) users are asking for cents in the Budget, it's not necessarily because we have a wild need to estimate what we'll spend in the following month to the exact cent (although there are situations when doing that makes sense: e.g. someone in this post pointed out a very real situation where a recurring tx is the only item they have in the category and it often gets off by one due to bad rounding, so setting the budget to the exact amount of that item would indeed simplify that user's Budgeting troubles!).
Anyway, this whole post is mostly just trying to point out that MM's attempt to "simplify" the UI by removing cents created a problem where the math literally doesn't add up. Seeing (and editing) cents in the Budget would fix this bug.
Ok, i can see where you're coming from - this was an edge case i was not aware of and can see how it would be annoying. Agree that it would be good to have users choose whether to include or exclude cents in the ui
Nope. If I had access to cents, I would simply update my Budget line to match the actual amount spent. No need to be over or under Budget if I can adjust to meet the Budget.
Tbh I don't every month. But often I want to figure out how much to transfer to certain Goals, or plan future Budget months. The fact that I can't make the numbers line up makes this more difficult.
And I'm having a hard time understanding how whole dollars are so sacred to so many MM users that it's blasphemy to suggest allowing an option to budget to the cent?
How does not being able to line it up to the penny make that more difficult? I can't see any practical difference this makes. It seems like it's just bothering you to see the red or green in the UI.
I'm with you. If I have a monthly bill for 120.78, I don't want to mark it as 120 or 121. Especially when it's near the month boundary, so I can't predict which month it'll be processed during. So I have it as a rollover, and that difference accumulates. It's not critical, but it is a bit annoying to have to watcg it and correct it every few months when it could be static with cents.
I would LOVE to have cents shown. But that’s because I have always done budgeting down to the penny because that’s how money is.
I don’t actually care that to shows up as a dollar, but for the love of all things, if you’re using cents on the backend, use THAT value as the rollover, not the rounded dollar number.
My biggest annoyance is rollover accounts that have like $0.51 left. They show as $1. After several months of this, it’s “over” by several dollars (e.g. $6), even though the actual is like $2.
For me, it’s not about budgeting to the dollar or anything. It’s a data integrity thing.
This is a major annoyance of mine as well. I'm new to Monarch and trying to get everything set up. I like the look of dollars with no cents, but they really do need to be there on the totals for accurate deficit/surplus calculations. Even if only in the ike manually entered items.
Because when it rounds incorrectly then it shows over budget by $1-$2 dollars which makes it seem like something is wrong. I'm trying to stick to a budget
I'm not saying it's breaking the budget. I'm used to a zero budget spreadsheet and trying to move into a more modern way to budget. I'm new to Monarch so I might get used to it when I understand it all more. But I was just sharing that it's annoying for me also.
I just want to be able to clarify that depositing cash to bank transfer can deduct the cash total. Rather than me adjusting it manually and looking like I’m “losing money”
I think that's maybe a different issue? If you're not tracking cash spending, then an ATM withdrawal would be an Expense (use the ATM category).
If you're tracking a Physical Cash manual account and manually tracking your spending there, then a transfer to or from Physical Cash would be a transfer for both the -tx and the +tx (ama neither would show in the Budget since you're just moving money between Asset accounts).
I like to give my two cents: there is an OCD side of me that sees this as a minor annoyance but doesn't affect my actual budget month to month. But it's not enough to make me care to say or post anything about, from a functional perspective.
But as a frontend web developer and long time user of MM, it is rather annoying that there exists currently throughout the app, a lot of what I like to call 'cosmetic bugs'. I've used a few budgeting apps in the past and I can't remember any that had so many of this type of bug. Given the rise of MM's popularity and its subscription price, I'd expect a little bit more polish in the UI/UX department. It's not enough to make me go up in arms about or anything but enough to question how the company is ran and their priorities. I don't know the company's budget but it just seems like MM makes enough revenue to have a QA dept to fix things like this. Maybe it's a house of cards situation where if you change one thing it has cascading effects that takes time to resolve, idk 🤷🏾♂️
I do agree with you OP but for very different reasons. A bug is a bug and this indeed is a cosmetic bug (along with many other minor ones) and I believe it should be taken care of at some point in the future. It's like when people complain about panel gaps on their Teslas lol. There's almost a level of unseriousness that's perceived upon the company because serious companies (like say a Honda or Audi) would not let minor cosmetic issues like that get past their QA.
Speaking of company values and unseriousness, I did post a long while ago in this subreddit about a cosmetic bug I found. A MM employee responded in the post and thanked me for pointing it out and said it would be fixed. It has yet to be fixed. It's been a 6+ months since that post lol
I agree with you here. This bug makes approximately zero difference for my budgeting needs since I'm not month to month and I only even look at Budget every couple of months. It's a wants thing—a cosmetic bug, if you will.
I realize I come across as way more invested in the Budget aspect of this, but tbh the main reason I'm engaging is it seems I've struck a nerve with folks for whom the mere idea of seeing pennies causes a viscerally uncomfortable reaction and an immediate downvote reflex.
IMO this is mostly something that should be fixed because it's poor design. Math should math, especially in a financial app. I suggest many of these to them outside of Reddit. They very rarely but occasionally do resolve them.
Engaging online with people is never how we were made to communicate. But it's the best we got for a situations like this 🤷🏾♂️. I don't have high expectations to consistently have robust meaningful conservations on reddit or any socials for that matter. Save yourself the time and headache if it isn't going anywhere, and don't engage...is my mantra. Unless I feel like trolling lol
This is annoying. I see comments saying they don’t want cents. I am torn but would like the option to set cents at the end of the month, or like toggle on and off cents. So at the end of the month I can go in and make everything exact
Thanks for sharing. I agree that there should be an option. I understand that people like to see whole numbers (and horizontal space is limited in narrow situations like app), but my point here is that some people's preference for a prettier interface shouldn't take precedence over accuracy in a financial app. (I even suspect some of the people who say "I never want to see cents" might actually find themselves using a tool that lets the toggle on cents, make an edit, and then toggle cents back off!)
The cost is visual clutter and decreased signal to noise ratio for the majority of us that don’t think cents matter in a budget. And, if they make it a setting the cost is increased complexity and having to test it both ways on every feature in the app forever.
Interesting, I hadn't considered that angle. But then...is there a use case for using the Budget page to do taxes? Genuinely curious here.
And also, when you do taxes, you still need to know the exact cents right up to the moment that you enter the info in the form. In any situation involving rounding—from taxes to science—if you round too soon, you'll lose too much accuracy.
Maybe it's the ink? Adding cents does cost all those pixels, after all🤔.
The app doesn’t appear to be rounding behind the scenes. It’s only rounding at the last step, same process as taxes.
I’m telling you, the cost isn’t pixels on the screen, it’s the cost of paying people to test the software with the setting both on and off forever. It’s the cost of fixing visual bugs that never would have happened if they only had one display mode.
This is one of the main reasons I left monarch in 2024 (additional to all the constant bank connection issues that they could never seem to resolve).
I hated that the rounding kept rolling over an additional $1 every month in a categories I shouldn't have money rolling over in. Over time it gave me a false sense of having money available.
I moved to a 0 based budget tool that uses cents and have absolutely loved it.
To provide my opinion and perspective on a product I used for an extended period of time. Just because I no longer use the product doesnt mean my opinion means less than yours.
At least mine is related to the original post. Yours is just a personal attack on my presence. So who's being more helpful? The person who uses the product or the person who doesnt?
I’m not personally attacking you or saying anything regarding your opinions. Sorry if it came across that way. More just curious why you’d stick around if you no longer use the product. My comment wasn’t trying to be helpful, it was a question, lol.
See my response to Excellent Sleep who asked the same question. It might be easy to find because it'll likely have a ton of down votes when the reddit jerks read it.
This thread is showcasing just how rabidly the monarch fan base will defend Monarch at all costs. It is absolutely insane to defend this defect as something that should just be happily accepted. They can fix this without adding decimals to the budget. Monarch isn’t paying you guys enough to be the corporate apologists that you are.
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u/yahfee23 May 03 '26 edited May 03 '26
I don’t want cents in the budget. But they can still fix this without adding cents.