Holiday Budget & Gift Planner

Keep every gift, every dollar and every deadline of the season in one calm workbook. List who you're buying for and what you have in mind, and the Holiday Budget & Gift Planner tracks each gift from idea to given, builds your shopping list by store, dates your deadlines from each occasion, works out what to save each payday and runs a fair gift-exchange draw. No app, no sign-up.

What's inside

13 tabs that work together:

• Dashboard: days to go, spending against your plan, gifts bought, who still needs one, your holiday fund and what's next.
• People: everyone you're buying for, with their own budget or a share of a group's, and what's planned, spent and left.
• Gifts: every gift from idea to given, with store, occasion, prices, tracking, return-by date and hiding spot.
• Shopping: your list by store, plus what's on the way, to wrap, to mail and to return. Print it for the trip.
• Budget: a plan for each category against what's spent, totals by occasion, and your holiday fund.
• Spending: food, decorations, cards and everything else that isn't a gift.
• Cards & Thanks: up to 300 households with addresses, cards sent and received, postage and thank-you notes to write.
• Checklist: 23 starter tasks dated from each occasion, with what's overdue.
• Gift Exchange: a fair, repeatable name draw for up to 40 people, with slips to print.
• Data Checks: mistakes to fix, plus people over budget, returns due within a week and overdue tasks.
• Start Here, Settings and Help: a setup checklist; your holiday, occasions, groups, stores and stamp price; and answers to common questions.

Built to save you time

• Ideas count nowhere until you change their status, so list as many as you like. A blank status counts as To buy, or Bought once you type what you paid.
• Give a group, like teachers and coaches, one budget: its people without a budget of their own share what's left after any you type.
• Each gift is needed by its occasion's date, or by its mail-by date if you mail it: 8 days earlier by default, in line with USPS's 2026 holiday dates.
• Type your target price and the best price you've seen: Deal says Buy now when it's at or under your target, and Saved shows what you saved against the regular price.
• The holiday fund counts your paydays before your save-by date, weekly, every two weeks, twice a month or monthly, and works out what to put aside each one.
• Keep it even lines up the kids' gifts: how many, planned, spent, and a tick for want, need, wear and read.
• The gift-exchange draw makes one loop through everyone, keeps households apart, can avoid last year's matches and gives the same draw every time for the same list and number.

Who it's for

Families planning the holidays, parents keeping the kids' gifts even, and anyone organizing a family or office gift exchange. Christmas is the main holiday unless you pick another, like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Diwali, with up to eight more occasions, such as Thanksgiving, parties and swaps. It's a planning tool for your own budget, not financial advice, and mailing dates are the carrier's recommendations.

What you get

• The Excel workbook (.xlsx), blank and ready for your own data
• The Google Sheets edition: open the PDF in your download and use its make-a-copy links to add it to your Google Drive
• An Example workbook filled in with sample data for a family planning Christmas, with Thanksgiving at home, Hanukkah, two swaps and a family gift exchange, so you can see how everything works before you add your own
• A Quick Start guide (PDF)
• Free updates to the edition you buy
• Instant digital download after checkout

License

The Holiday Budget & Gift Planner comes with the Standard license only, for your own use, personally or in your business, including your employees; it doesn't allow reselling or sharing the template itself. Compare licenses

Requirements

Microsoft Excel 2010 or later on Windows, Excel 2011 or later on Mac, or Microsoft 365. For the Google Sheets edition, a free Google account. Best used on a computer. No macros.