With bill syncing, Monarch can now provide statement balances and due dates for your credit cards and loans. This is done in partnership with Spinwheel, who receives this information from the credit bureau Equifax.
Once you’ve mapped each of the liability accounts detected by Spinwheel to one of your currently connected accounts in Monarch, your credit card and loan bills will appear in the new “Accounts” section on the Recurring page.
Initial bill syncing will need to be done via the web app using a desktop browser. Once you have everything connected, you can use either a browser or the mobile app to view and manage your bills.
This feature is currently not available for Canadian customers, as it depends on US credit bureau data.
Other types of bills like utility payments and subscriptions cannot be synced automatically. Learn more about tracking other types of expenses here: Recurring transactions.
Getting Started
To set up bill syncing, go to the Recurring page > click “Manage recurring” at the top right corner > choose “Manage your liability accounts”.
You will be prompted to connect your credit report via Spinwheel and will then be shown a list of the liability bills (credit cards and loans) in your name. To learn more about Spinwheel, the data they provide, and the safety and security of your information, see this page.
Note: Some cards are reported to the bureau with blinded/anonymized account numbers, which affect the last four digits displayed for mapping. These include cards from Apple, American Express, Barclays, Chime and Navy Federal. The account can still be mapped (you may need to use the account balance to determine the right account).
Account Mapping
After you've successfully connected to Spinwheel, you’ll map the accounts as detected from Spinwheel to your current connected accounts in Monarch.
If you don’t already have an existing account in Monarch for a Spinwheel-detected account, select the “Add Account” option from the dropdown in the Monarch Account column to add it. Upon successful connection, the account mapping screen will refresh and the newly added account will be available to map.
You can return to the account mapping flow at any time by going to Recurring page > Manage recurring > Manage liability accounts.
Note: It's not possible to map multiple Spinwheel accounts to the same Monarch account.
Set payment due date
The due date shown in Monarch is what the financial institution is reporting to the credit bureau. This may not match the due date you see when you log in directly to your financial institution.
If Spinwheel did not return a due date for an account, you will need to manually select one. In order for an account to be successfully mapped and have a recurring bill associated with it, you must have a due date selected.
You can also update the default due day of the month if it pulls into Monarch incorrectly. Note, if you set a custom due date, that will be the due date reflected each month until you choose to change it.
Households with multiple members
Each person must connect to Spinwheel through their own Monarch account in order to pull information from their credit report into Monarch.
If the same credit card or loan account appears on multiple household members’ credit reports, you only need to map it to the correct account once in Monarch, the first time it’s pulled in. You will see an error if you attempt to map the same Spinwheel-detected liability account multiple times to the same Monarch-connected account.
Note: If you have invited a financial advisor to your household, they will be able to view any accounts you have connected through Spinwheel — but will not be able to connect to Spinwheel on your behalf.
Using Bill Syncing
Once connected, you can see all recurring accounts and merchants in a single view on the Recurring page, as a list or on a calendar. Visit this page at any time to plan ahead for your expenses, manage your cash flow, and be sure you never miss a payment.
We’ll send you notifications when we receive a new statement balance for bills connected via bill syncing, and a reminder when those payments are coming up in a few days. You can manage these notifications in Settings > Notifications.
Managing synced bill details
Your statement balance will appear in the "Amount" column. To view the minimum payment due and more detail on recent payments, hover over the number shown in the "Amount" column for each synced bill. On mobile, tap on the number.
If something looks incorrect about your credit card and loan bills, click the three-dot menu to the right of the account in the list view on the Recurring page to change it. Choose “Edit account details” to update the upcoming due date, default payment account, and default payment category.
If the statement balance amount received from Spinwheel looks inaccurate, choose “Edit statement amount” in the three-dot menu to edit the amount shown. Note: we only receive full dollar amounts from Spinwheel. The amount is not rounded. After editing a balance, you will see the option to “Revert back to original balance” if you’d like to undo the change.
Tracking payments
Every month you’ll see upcoming due dates for recurring account bills, and these will show as unpaid until a payment is detected.
The bill will automatically be marked as Paid and move to the Completed section of the Recurring page when a transaction for the bill amount is detected in the mapped account in Monarch before the bill due date. A bill can be Paid or Partially Paid. This depends on both the type of the account and the amount of the payment.
For loans, if the amount of the payment is equal to or greater than the bill amount, then it's marked as paid. If it's less than the bill amount, then it's marked as partially paid.
For credit cards, if the amount of the payment is equal to or more than the bill amount, then it's marked as paid. If it's less than the bill amount, but more than the minimum amount due, then it's marked as partially paid. If you make payments for less than the minimum amount due, the bill will become partially paid once the sum of those payments is equal to or greater than the minimum amount due.
If a transaction is not automatically detected, you can manually mark the bill as Paid. You can choose a default payment account to track this for yourself.
Once you’ve made the payment, choose “Mark as paid” in the three-dot menu for the account in the list view on the Recurring page. This will move the recurring bill from the “Upcoming” section to the “Complete” section.
Deciding whether or not to use recurring transactions or a bill sync
If you’ve been tracking your recurring credit card bills and loan payments as recurring transactions, then you’ll most likely want to switch to using the automated bill syncing feature to keep track of those bills moving forward. To ensure you don’t lose any history, you can go into each recurring merchant in the list and click on “Edit merchant details,” then switch the Recurring status from Active to Canceled.