Monarch: Budget & Track Money

Forecasting, budgeting and debt paydown functions are all nonfunctional because Monarch does not currently support inputting future changes to credit interest APR % rates. For example- introductory credit or loan offers of 0% for 21 months, that will turn into 20% on a certain date… Monarch only allows inputting the 0% introductory rate, and does not allow to input the future % increase on given date. Therefore retirement forecasting, budgeting and debt paydown functions are not accurate and are useless. This basic oversight totally ruins the app’s promises of multifunctionality and goal tracking. It is only good for tracking transactions & current balances. Monarch admits many users are complaining about this but still hasn’t fixed it. Monarch makes a false promise of a full financial picture but only delivers distorted accounting. Will update rating if they fix this promptly please!

I have loved monarch but then something works in a way that just makes it absolutely useless for me. One example is I get my card stolen so I get new card. When I sync it it doubles every transaction as they now both count as same card. There is no rule to just skip transactions from one card before or after a certain point. Another is trying to use the rollover budgets for flexible spending. When I turn it off everything is just messed up. The spending in the flexible categories is clearly over the total flexible budget and yet somehow the category is overall under budget? Where did the money go? So now the flexible category is basically useless. I can’t figure out how to do the one thing it says it does which is effectively to use it as a catch all that rolls over for certain categories of spending.

I have had this app for over a year with a great experience. But recently my main bank stopped syncing and I tried reinstalling the app, making sure the app was up to date, deleted then reconnected the bank. Nothing was working. I emailed customer service and they have been slow to respond and it’s been over a week since I reported issue and they can’t tell me when it will be fixed. Meanwhile, I have paid an annual subscription that I can’t use. Very frustrating. Financial apps need to have excellent customer service if you want to be taken seriously.

The notifications Monarch provides are useless. Yesterday I had 0 notifications. Today I have over 100. Did any person at Monarch consider what hundreds of things a user could possibly need to review in less than 24 hours? Do they even use their own product? The app feels janky and out of place on iOS, like it was built for a different operating system. Connections to external accounts regularly fail. Not Monarch’s fault for any given failure. But the lack of thoughtful design and implementation in other areas make it difficult to look past the things they don’t control.

Kept dropping transactions and I couldn’t properly keep track of spending.

The app is ok but trying to sync accounts is a full time job. A growing number of them disconnect regularly, and others appear to sync perfectly when refreshed from the settings menu, but then balances and details do not show synced anywhere else in the app (settings =“up to date”, inside app= “synced 30 days ago”). I need something that does what it promises.

You have to give them your first born and credit card just to see what this app does. Deleted.

Can’t get my partners access email to send

I was looking to find an app to replace Quicken because they require the Quicken (standalone) version on a desktop or laptop. I decided to try Monarch but that has been a waste of money because the software will not sync with my financial institution and I don’t have time to input each transaction manually. If I did I could use much cheaper versions available in the App Store. I won’t be renewing my subscription unless this issue is fixed before my annual subscription is done. If I had known about this issue before hand I would not have wasted my money.

I opened a support ticket because one of my account’s balance is showing 0. Support is unable to assist and did not respond to my most recent response. Their system keeps trying to close my ticket as inactive but the issue is still reoccurring. Very poor customer service by Monarch.

Not up front that it is a must buy AP.

I can’t believe they don’t allow you to adjust where you see what categories in your budget section. This is too expensive of a service to not allow this.

A app to help you with “debt and savings” yet charges you a ton of money to be able to use

the application is written to make you shove your transactions into their simplistic ontology. There is no sophisticated budgeting or scenario planning features, tax management, cash flow etc. not worth the money when you can use a spreadsheet for free to do the same thing.

I got the free trial period then the 100$annual program;however, the app would not let me retrieve my password and when I did get the code it said my new password could not be used. Have tried multiple ways to find Monarch customer service with no luck; sad because I enjoyed using the app while it worked.Buyer Beware!!

You can’t cancel your subscription in app, you need to go to a browser to do it, and find the option in a big menu. Seems to be industry standard unfortunately, but I despise apps that get higher retention by making cancellation difficult and hoping people will give up before they figure out how. And for a budgeting app!

Cannot remove unused categories

I canceled within the trial period and they continue to try to charge me for an entire year. No obvious recourse, no customer service, nothing. Doesn’t matter how helpful the app is, or isn’t - the whole thing is set up to take money from you, not help you manage anything.

After using Monarch for 3 years. I was no longer able to connect my Citi Credit Card after I product change Citi Double Cash to Citi Custom Cash. After two weeks of waiting for customer support I was told to track the transactions manually which is not feasible. Now I have look for an alternative and loss 3 years of data.

Too many transactions are the wrong category. Too many accounts disconnect all the time. Basically you need to check it everyday to stay on top of it.

MCP removed without warning. Removing features is not a great experience

You will pay for a product that works about a quarter of the time. This absolutely overpriced garbage system is unreliable at keeping external accounts linked. Be prepared to do tons of manual work constantly fixing things.

I’m looking for a free budgeting app, because I don’t need another subscription. I’ve closed out of the app to see if maybe I can bypass the pop up for the subscription but nope it won’t budge. And I feel like that’s not fair to anyone who is struggling and not wanting to spend money to be able to budget and see their finances.

It’s recently become very laggy, and I’ll be looking for an alternative.

For the price (double the competitors or three times the competitors) to not offer any sort of notifications or alerts when you’re near your budget or over is completely insane