Your first season
Getting Jingle Jotter set up takes about as long as the kettle takes to boil. Here's the whole run, from first sign-in to your first jotted idea.
Get through the door
Sign in with Google, Apple or Microsoft — whichever your family already uses for everything else. There's no new password to lose down the back of the sofa. Once you're in, create a household: this is the shared space everyone in your family will eventually budget within, though for now it's just you setting the scene.
Start the season
Inside your household, start a season and give it a name — "Christmas 2026" does the job nicely. Seasons keep each year separate, so this year's spending never tangles with last year's, and once the tree comes down the season archives itself automatically. Nothing is ever deleted; it just goes quiet until you want to look back.
Set your budgets
Every season starts with four categories, and you can set a budget for each one straight away:
- Gifts — everything you're buying for people
- Food — the big shop, the extra trimmings, the inevitable third box of crackers
- Festive Extras — decorations, cards, wrapping paper, anything that doesn't fit elsewhere
- City Break — if a December trip is part of your Christmas, it gets its own line
Every figure is tracked to the penny, so "roughly £300-ish" becomes an actual number you can hold yourself to.
Add people and pots
Next, add the people you're buying gifts for. Each person gets their own pot inside the Gifts budget, so you can see at a glance who's had £80 spent on them and who's still waiting on a single idea. If that person also uses Jingle Jotter, this is the step that sets up the surprise — link their pot to their own login, and everything you buy them quietly disappears from their view. More on that in the surprise-proofing guide below.
Jot, then promote
Now for the fun part. Every gift starts life as a jotted idea — no commitment, just a placeholder against a name and a rough price. From there, it moves through a short, honest lifecycle:
- Idea — you've thought of something, or added it to the idea bank
- Purchased — money's spent, it's on its way
- Arrived — it's landed, safely out of sight
- Wrapped — under the tree and ready
Your budgets update as you go, so you always know exactly how much of each pot is left — no spreadsheet required, and no elf reporting back to anyone it shouldn't.