Surprise-proofing your Christmas
Masking is the whole point of Jingle Jotter — a shared household account where gifts bought for you genuinely stay hidden from you. Here's how to set it up properly, and why it holds up even under scrutiny.
Link each person to their login
Masking only works once a person is linked to their own account, so this is the step to do first — ideally before you buy anything at all. Open their entry in the People list and connect it to their email or sign-in. From that moment on, their pot knows who they are, and anything jotted, purchased or wrapped against it is filtered out of their own view automatically. Skip this step and Jingle Jotter has no way of knowing who to hide things from — it isn't guessing based on names.
What masking actually hides
Once someone's linked, the masking is thorough rather than cosmetic. Four things change for that person, everywhere in the app:
- Rows — any purchase logged against their pot simply doesn't appear in their lists
- Totals — budget totals they can see are recalculated to exclude their own gifts, not just visually blanked
- Status counts — "3 wrapped" won't include anything wrapped for them
- Exports — printed lists and downloaded exports are redacted the same way, so a surprise can't leak through a spreadsheet left open on the kitchen table
Why a forged link can't leak
The masking is enforced against whoever is actually signed in, not against what a page happens to display — so there's no clever bit of URL-guessing, browser inspecting, or shared-laptop snooping that gets around it. If you're not logged in as that person, you simply cannot be served their hidden rows, on any screen, in any format. The surprise is safe even if someone goes looking.
The one rule
Buy your own gifts from your own login and Jingle Jotter can't hide them from you — you're the one doing the buying. If you want something to be a genuine surprise, jot it from someone else's account, or ask a co-conspirator to log it for you. It's the one habit worth drilling into the whole household, and the only way the system can be fooled is by not following it.
Get that one rule right, and the rest looks after itself — right up until the big reveal on the day.