It happens every mid-October. You stand in the driveway, squint at the porch, and try to remember whether you already own a coffin prop or just thought really hard about buying one last year. The Halloween Decoration Planner is the spreadsheet that ends that little annual mystery — and, because it’s a workbook you keep, it does it a little better every single year.
This is the rebuilt, dual-format version: one connected workbook that runs natively in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice Calc, with a one-click Google Sheets copy so there’s nothing to import. Nothing is locked or password-protected — it’s your file to change.
Seven connected tabs, not a lone checklist
- Setup — your control panel. Set your budget and this year’s Halloween date, and edit the drop-down lists (zones, categories, stores) so the whole workbook speaks your language.
- Decoration Plan — one row per decoration: where it goes, what it costs, when it’s due, and whether it’s up yet. It totals your spend against the budget and counts down the days to Halloween, with no formulas for you to write.
- Decoration Inventory — a permanent catalog of what you already own, where it’s stored, and its condition. This is the tab that answers “did I already buy that?” — and it carries over year after year.
- Shopping List — this season’s buy list, grouped by store, with running totals of what’s still to get versus already bought, so a single run covers everything.
- Countdown & Timeline — a week-by-week plan from six weeks out through takedown, with every target date calculated from this year’s Halloween.
- Dashboard — the whole season as bar meters: budget used, decorations by status, shopping progress, and days to go, all redrawing as you fill the tabs in.
- Read Me — a one-page orientation so you know exactly where to start.
Guides and printables included
Three PDF guides come in the download: a Start-Here Guide that walks the method in about ten minutes, a Halloween Setup Playbook with a six-week decorating countdown, zone-by-zone ideas, and plain-language safety for outdoor power, fog and flame, and trip hazards, and a set of Printable Checklists — blank shopping, setup-day, and takedown sheets to print and carry.
Own it, don’t rent it
A blank spreadsheet is free, but you build the budget math, the countdown, and the dropdowns from scratch — every October. A planning app is overkill for one night a year, another login and subscription you’ll forget by November. This planner sits in between: the thinking is already done, and it’s yours to keep and reuse every Halloween.
Prefer to try before you buy? There’s a free, ungated lite version — a single-tab starter with the budget and countdown built in.
A planning tool, not safety certification. Every price in the examples is illustrative. Outdoor lighting, extension cords, fog machines, open flame, and heavy props are yours to install safely, to the manufacturer’s instructions and your local codes.
