Decide the total before the first purchase
A gift budget works best when it exists before you start shopping rather than after the fifth parcel. The number does not have to be exact. It has to be one you have actually decided on, so that what you spend afterwards is measured against something.
Start with what you are comfortable spending on the whole occasion. Christmas for eight people and one birthday are different problems, but both are easier as a single total you divide up than as a run of separate decisions that only add up in January.
Share it out between the people you are buying for
Overspending rarely happens in one go. It happens ten pounds at a time, across several people, where no single decision looks unreasonable.
In GiftTracker you set a budget on the Event, then use Recipient budgets to split it between the people on it. Fifteen pounds over does not stand out next to a Christmas total. It is obvious next to what you had put beside one person.
Recipient budgets are optional, and you do not need one for everybody. Set them where the spending tends to drift and leave the rest.
Prices are what make it work
A budget can only count gifts that have a price on them. Add the price when you add the gift, or paste the link and fill the price in when you order. If you buy something in a shop, type the price in afterwards and the total catches up.
GiftTracker tells you how many gifts it could not count, so a total that looks too comfortable is easy to check.
Know what counts as spent
A gift counts as spent once it reaches Bought. Anything before that is money you still expect to spend, and the app keeps the two apart: what has gone, and what is coming.
If you have added your own gift statuses, where each one sits relative to Bought decides which of those totals it lands in. An Ordered status placed before Bought keeps its gifts in what you still expect to spend. Placed after it, they count as money already gone.
When you go over
Nothing stops you. The Event shows that you are over your budget and by how much, and carries on counting.
That is deliberate. A budget you cannot exceed is one you stop updating, and a number you have stopped updating tells you less than an honest number you have gone past.
Going over is also information for next time. If it happens with the same person every year, the amount beside their name was wrong rather than your spending.
A worked example
You set £300 for Christmas across six people, then put £50 beside each of them. Two gifts go in at £28 and £45, both still To Buy, so nothing counts as spent and the app shows £73 you still expect to spend.
You order the £45 one and mark it Bought. Now £45 has gone and £28 is still coming. Your brother turns out to be harder to buy for than you thought, so you take £15 off a name you have already finished and move it across. The total is the same as it was, and only the plan behind it has changed.
A routine that survives December
Look at the budget when you add a gift, and again when you buy one. That is enough. Checking every day turns a useful number into a worry, and twice per gift keeps it honest without adding a job to your week.
Once the occasion is over, archive the Event. What you spent stays in the Event archive, which is the most useful thing to have in front of you when you set next year’s number.
For the seasonal version of the same plan, read How to choose a Christmas gift list app.
