Plan Your Holiday Gift Budget in Google Sheets (Per-Person Limits, Running Total, and a Leftover Alert)

The holidays are about nine weeks away, and gift spending is the line item that quietly blows up most December budgets. A simple Google Sheets gift tracker fixes that: you set one total, give each person a limit, log what you actually spend, and the sheet tells you how much is left before you check out. Setup takes about ten minutes.

Step 1: Set your total

Make a tab called Gifts. In A1 type Total gift budget and in B1 put your number, for example 600. Everything else works off this one cell, so if you need to cut back later you only change B1.

Step 2: The gift list

Starting in row 3, add these headers:

A: Person	B: Limit	C: Gift idea	D: Spent	E: Bought?	F: Left for this person
Mom	100	Cookbook + apron	72	☑
Dad	100	Headphones	0	☐
Sam	50	Board game	45	☑
Coworker swap	25	Mug + coffee	0	☐

Select column E and choose Insert > Checkbox so you can tick gifts off as you buy them.

In F4, type:

=IF(A4="", "", B4-D4)

Drag it down your list. A negative number means you went over that person's limit.

Step 3: The running totals

Back at the top, add these in D1 through D2 with labels in C1 and C2:

C1: Planned, D1:

=SUM(B4:B50)

C2: Spent so far, D2:

=SUM(D4:D50)

Then in A2 type Left to spend and in B2:

=B1-D2

If Planned (D1) is bigger than your total in B1, you've promised more gifts than you can afford. Fix that now, in October, instead of at the register.

Step 4: Color alerts

Select F4:F50, then Format > Conditional formatting:

• Less than 0: red fill (over this person's limit)
• Is equal to 0: green fill (right on budget)

Select B2 and add one more rule with Custom formula is:

=B2<B1*0.1

Give it an orange fill. Now the cell lights up when you're down to your last 10% of the gift budget.

Step 5: How many gifts are still unbought

Put Still to buy in E1 and this formula in F1:

=COUNTIFS(A4:A50, "<>", E4:E50, FALSE)

That counts every person on the list whose box isn't ticked yet, so you can see at a glance how much shopping is left and how much money is left to do it with.

Bonus: Save for it monthly

If you start now, divide the gift budget by the paychecks left before the holidays. With two paychecks a month and about nine weeks to go, that's roughly four or five paychecks, so a $600 budget is about $120 to $150 per check. Put that in a separate savings line and December stops being a credit card month.

Want the template instead of building it?

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Questions about any of the formulas? Ask in the comments and I'll help.