Festive Season Planner: Christmas Gift List, Budget and Secret Santa

One working spreadsheet for the festive season. Set a spending cap for each person, track every gift from idea to posted, see your whole festive budget in one place, keep your card list and Secret Santa draw straight, and get a Christmas Day cooking timetable that works backwards from the time you want to eat. Built for a hot Christmas (braai, cold lunch, pavlova) and a cold one (roast and pudding), in any currency.

WHAT IT DOES

• Recipients: up to 60 people or households, each with a spending cap. Planned, spent and left against the cap fill in, with an OVER CAP flag, a "2 of 3 given or posted" progress note and, for gifts you post, a countdown to the last posting date you type in.
• Gift List: up to 200 gifts. Pick who it is for, type the idea, where from and cost, and choose a status: Idea, Bought, Wrapped, Given or Posted. Planned counts every gift including ideas; spent counts Bought onwards. A check column catches a name not on your list, a missing status or a cost typed as text.
• Totals: your total festive budget against gifts, cards and postage, your Secret Santa gift and the food shopping estimate, with what is left, the percentage used and an over-budget flag. Gift progress by status, the number of people over their cap, and a spent-against-cap table with a simple bar for every person.
• Cards and Secret Santa: a 100-name card list with sent and received columns and card and postage cost. Secret Santa group details and a 30-person draw check that flags anyone drawn twice, buying for themselves, not in the group or without a name, and confirms when everyone gives and receives once. You draw the names; the sheet checks the result.
• Christmas Day: list up to 25 dishes or tasks with prep, cook and rest or chill minutes. It gives the start time, the time it goes in or on and the time it comes out, flags anything that has to start the day before, and sorts everything into a running order ending at your serving time.
• Menu and Shopping: a summer menu (braai and cold lunch) and a winter menu (roast) side by side, plus a 100-item shopping list with shop, estimated cost and a "Got it?" column. The estimate feeds the budget.

WHAT'S INSIDE

• 1 .xlsx spreadsheet with 8 tabs: Start Here, Settings, Recipients, Gift List, Totals, Cards and Secret Santa, Christmas Day, Menu and Shopping
• Settings for currency symbol (R, £, $ or any other), total budget, year and serving time
• Clearly labelled fictional SAMPLE data so you can see how it works, and a list of what to clear to start your own
• Cream cells for your input, white cells that calculate. No macros, no add-ons.

HOW TO OPEN IT

• An .xlsx spreadsheet with no macros. Tested in LibreOffice Calc; not yet opened in Excel or Google Sheets.
• Start with the Start Here tab, then fill in Settings.

GOOD TO KNOW

• Digital download, nothing is posted.
• Checked by recalculation.
• A planning tool, not financial advice.
• Posting dates are yours to look up: they change every year and differ by country and postal service. The sheet counts down to the date you type.
• Cooking times are the minutes you type in. Always check food is cooked through and follow your recipe or the packaging.
• Not affiliated with Google or Microsoft.
• Different from our household budget planner: this one tracks gifts per person, cards, Secret Santa and Christmas Day timing, not monthly household money.