Goals: Track any linked account

It's really important that you're able to fund your goals with any account - not just investments opened through 22seven. So we've been hard at work in the background and think we've finally made some good progress on a tough topic.

We've put together a prototype we'd like you to check out. Keep in mind this prototype isn't fully functional, so if you try to break it, you'll most likely be successful. It's only intended to illustrate a few ideas we think may be workable with some more elbow grease and love.

Feel free to let us know what you think about the changes we've made to the flow of creating a goal. We're particularly interested in gathering your feedback on the account tracking process to make sure nothing is so confusing it prevents you from completing it.

We're experimenting with tools to make it as easy and fun as possible for you to provide us with feedback. So please let us know if you had any issues with this latest method of testing prototypes with you, or if you know of any tools you think would be better!

You can check out the prototype here.

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Comments

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  • This is awesome!

    I'm excited about being able to:

    1. Link an existing account to a goal

    2. Allocate a portion of the funds in the account to the goal

     

    Something that I missed (and it might be because I went through the prototype quite quickly):

    1. Will I be able to link a single account to multiple goals?

    2. Can I allocate transactions to goals?

     

    Thanks for the hard work your putting in. I'm super-excited about this! 

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  • Hey Johan & Cindy,

    You will absolutely be able to track a single account on multiple goals, provided that you have not over allocated that account's value. We treat tracking like earmarking, so as you track goals on an account its "available to track" balance would be reduced. 

    At this point transactions are not tracked by goals, but this is definitely something we're keen on including. We have always wanted goals to be part of your budget experience for affordability checks and also for transaction tracking.  

    This would likely take the form of categorising that transaction against a special custom category we create for you that shares the name of your goal. These transactions would then accumulate to your goal progress until you recategorise them away or delete the goal. 

    Thank you for continuing to give us great feedback!

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  • awesome, exciting times

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  • Hi,

    This looks great!  I agree with Johan & Cindy that the ability to link existing accounts is a great feature.

    Thanks for and awesome product,

    Phillip

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  • This is perfect. Great addition

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  • Awesome !!! Been waiting for this feature ,thanks guys

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  • My access bond is by far the best place to "park" money at the moment whether its for emergency fund, saving for a holiday and of course reducing debt. The fantastic thing about this new goals update will be that I can allocate portions from the same account to these various goals. I guess the trick becomes can you track interest on that portion and so allow me to see compound interest work its magic without me having to do anything more? Or put another way - would the goals dynamically update progress or would I need to manually update the portions every month after transactions are updated ie bond installment , interest , fees etc?

     

     

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  • Hi Svens,

    Goal tracking would be awesome, similar but different to Johan & Cindy's question, will we be able to track/link multiple accounts to a single goal as well?

    And then probably a little bit more difficult will you be able to identify a shortfall or forecast whether the goal is on track? Let's say the goal is to save R36000 in 24 months and have R8000 in account A and R4000 in account B, so need another R24000 but lets say I save R400 and R200 per month to account A and B so it means I need to save at least another R400 per month (if my maths add up :P ) to achieve the goal... are you planning to show that somehow?

     

     

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  • Nice!

    I save for multiple goals in one account by way of a debit order, and split the debit order by way of pre-determined percentages to each goal i want to achieve.

    Wondering how/if I could assign this split in the app? Currently doing it in Excel...

     

    Thanks

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  • Great addition, I look forward to using this!

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  • Tracking an existing saving was something i was going to ask about. Looks good

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  • Thanks guys - looking really good so far, especially the comparative investment chart - can see myself using this a lot.

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  • Looks great. Would love to play a bit more maybe with a Beta version.

    I like the idea of using the same account for different goals but would it possible to link different accounts to one goal. 

    Lets say my goal is saving for retirement. I know I need X amount for retirement and I have a Provident Fund, RA and a Investment that are all going towards achieving the retirement goal. Being able to link all to one account would be great as I would not need to add them  together manually to see my progress. I can simply look my goal to determine the progress.

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  • Thanks for all your comments! It's great to interact with you.

    Gerrie, this feature would allow you to track multiple accounts towards the same goal, or the same account towards multiple goals; provided of course that the account value is not over allocated on other goals. 

    Hugo, no need for splitting, your goals would keep track of different money in the same account for you. Over time we would like to introduce the ability to categorise individual transactions towards your goal as well.

    Rian, we would love to provide "on/off track" messaging, but we have to be careful this is not construed as financial advice. We were planning this for beta release but pulled back until we could get the wording just right. 

    In the interim, you are able to "recalculate" your goal contribution value at any time. This will allow you to easily see whether you need to update contribution values. Right now we don't support "corrective" once off amounts though.

    Ron, the idea is to track a percentage of an account value, so your interest and contributions would be dynamically factored into progress. We will definitely support access bond available balances as trackable value towards goals! 

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  • Hi, 

     

    Not sure if this has been addressed already.

     

    I would like to set a goal for paying off my bond within the next 2 years. Is there a way that I can link my bond account to a goal which will tell me how much I need to pay extra per month as well as indicate if I am still on track with paying off the bond at the set date?

     

    Kind Regards

     

     

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  • Awesome stuff, faster please.

    Great use cases in the commentary, can't wait for the final release.

    Best
    Kwama

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  • Hey WD, at this point Goals only supports a basic calculator, but we are implementing unique ones for each goal type. We definitely do have a home loan calculator coming, so you'll be able to determine what the best payback plan is.

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  • Pretty intuitive and flowing experience. I would like to link multiple existing accounts to a goal though, didn't see an option for that.

    Also can't wait for the Paying off debt goal

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  • Where are you on this?

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  • Possible ETA for this feature?

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  • Hi Sandra,

    Thanks for checking in!

    Unfortunately, we don't have an ETA on this. We've been tweaking Goals since it launched and we have some other improvements planned to get the feature working optimally, following which we might revisit introducing the ability to link your goal to any linked account :)

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