Getting Started with Monarch


Check out this guide for getting started with Monarch. Click on a topic to jump to that section below:


Accept your Invite and Set Up your Account

When you first log in to your new Monarch account, you will be prompted to connect an account to begin exploring Monarch. Once you have connected your first account, you'll see a checklist of tasks to help you get started.


Connect Accounts

Monarch uses third-party data providers to securely connect with your banking institutions. Read more about these connections and how they work here: Understanding Data Providers and Connections.


We recommend you connect as many accounts as you can before you start getting into the weeds of categorizing transactions, setting up rules or budgets. If you have a lot of accounts, start with your most-used banking and credit card accounts. For more in-depth reading on connecting your accounts, click here.


Add your accounts

  • The Institutions Settings page lets you add accounts, refresh all accounts, edit the account names/type/subtype, hide accounts, hide balances or transactions, and delete or close accounts.

Choose your data provider

  • If you are experiencing issues with the connection to your financial institution and want to try a connection with a different data provider, or if you have a preference between Plaid, MX, or Finicity, you can attempt to connect with a different data provider.
  • Go to Profile > Settings > Institutions > Click "Add account" and search for your financial institution's name or website. If an alternate data provider is available, you'll see a clickable icon to the right of the institution's name

What if I can’t connect to my account?

  • Monarch is monitoring connections and is always working to improving users’ account experiences. If you are having trouble connecting or syncing your data, check out their troubleshooting steps. You can also try a different data provider, include an account as a manual account, or see if there's a known issue. 

Delete history

  • The Data Settings page lets you delete all transactions or account balances across all accounts in Monarch before a date you specify. The most common reason to do this is to have a 'clean' start date, after which you know all your history is consistent across different accounts going forward.
  • Note: Deleting transaction history or balance history permanently deletes this information and is not retrievable.

Refresh accounts

  • If you are seeing missing transactions or an account hasn’t recently synced, it is recommended you navigate to your Institutions Settings page to force refresh your accounts. At the very top, you will be able to Refresh All.
  • In each account, you can select the "..." to Update login settings if you need to update your login credentials with this institution.

Add transactions or merchants and deleting transactions

  • If you visit the account page of any account you can find the Add Transaction option. This is located across from Transactions on web and under the three dots “…” at the top of the screen on mobile.
  • When you select any transaction, you will see the delete transaction button.
  • To add a custom merchant, you will need to first create a custom transaction. While creating this transaction you can then enter in your custom merchant name that will be usable for all future transactions.

Upload account balance history

  • On your Accounts page, you can select the account to which you want to upload your account balance history. This is found under the account's "Edit" menu. This allows you to have a complete historical set of your data. 


Customize Categories

After categorizing your income, it's a good idea to review the default system categories and determine which ones to keep and which ones to disable - for example, the mortgage category might not be relevant to you if you rent, so you can turn that category off.


Customize your categories

  • The Categories Settings page lets you create new groups, new categories, and organize the order of these groups and categories. Drag the group or category name to your desired location and this will be reflected in both web and mobile version.
  • Note: If you are using flex budgeting, the order here will only affect your fixed and non-monthly buckets. The order of the flex bucket is based on the actual amount spent.

Organize your transactions with tags

    • The Tags Settings page shows you all of the default and custom tags created in your household.
    • Transactions can have multiple tags, but only one category. Tags can even span different transaction types, such as income vs. expenses vs. transfers.



Create a Goal

Set up your first goal

  • Goals allow you create a prioritized list of future plans and use your account balances to track transactions and contributions.
  • From your Goals page, select +Add Goals in the top right.
  • Select as many items as you would like.

Note: You can only select one Retirement goal per household.


Create your Budget

To set up a budget, the first step is to ensure that all your financial accounts are connected to Monarch and that transactions are accurately categorized. In particular, you should ensure that your income transactions are correctly categorized as paychecks, interest, bonuses, business income, etc. Since the budget is based on income, it's crucial to make sure these transactions are categorized correctly.


Monarch offers two types of budgeting: category budgeting (the traditional method) and flex budgeting (which allows you to focus on just one high-level flex number). To learn more about each type and determine which is best for you, check out this blog post on Monarch: Flex vs. Category Budgeting: How to Choose What's Right for You.


To get started with a new budget - or to restart the process - you can go through Monarch's budget walkthrough. You can change your budgeting setup from flex to category or vice versa (as often as you'd like) in the settings on the budget page.


Regardless of which method you select, your total budget for each month is based on how much income you expect to receive that month. Expenses and savings are subtracted from the income to create a balanced budget. Monarch budgets by rounding to the nearest dollar, and does not show exact cents.


Rollovers

  • The default settings has your budget resetting each month.  However, at times, you may wish for balances (both surpluses and negatives) to carry into the next month. You can enable rollovers by clicking on the gear icon that appears next to a category name when you hover over it. 

Further Customization

Allow edits to pending transactions

  • The Allow edits to pending transactions toggle in your settings will let you choose whether you want the ability to edit pending transactions or not. Note that if you edit a pending transaction, it's possible your edits will be lost once the final version of the transaction from your bank is posted.

Add members to your household

  • It's free to add people to your household. You'll each get your own login, but have the same level of visibility and access to manage accounts, transactions, and budgets. Each household has the same budget.
  • You can invite a new household member to Monarch by clicking on the arrow next to your name on Monarch’s web version. Then go to "Members" and click "Add Member."
  • Note: Each member you add will be able to see all of the connected accounts. There is no option to hide accounts or transactions. You will also still only have one Budget page - but you get creative with custom categories to distinguish each member’s budget!

Merge history to another account

  • If for whatever reason you end up with duplicate accounts listed in Monarch that all point to the same account at your financial institution, you can merge the history of the accounts together to avoid duplication.

Customize your dashboard

  • The dashboard has widgets that show a summary of your financial information from across all of Monarch.
  • You can remove or change the order of any of these cards by tapping the "Customize" button at the top right of the web app, or at the bottom of the dashboard on the mobile app.

Tip: The order of the cards and which ones are disabled are independent between the web and mobile app so you can have a different order on web vs mobile.