Use Collabio to Prepare for Holidays

Hey there!

It’s only October, but soon we’ll be rushing from shop to shop in search of perfect holiday presents for our relatives, friends and colleagues. Be it Halloween, Christmas or New Year, Collabio Spaces will come in handy to keep notes about your holiday plans, budgets and scenarios for these special days. We’ll reveal how and share ideas on choosing truly memorable presents!

1. Plan an Awesome Event

Let’s start with creating a plan for your holiday! Make sure to find some inspiration and start with a good mood and anticipation of a wonderful time. ;)

In the Collabio app, open the ‘Planning Templates’ folder from the ‘Files’ menu (it’s to the right of the purple plus button).

Use ‘Daily Planner’ if you want to create a detailed agenda of the event. Give the holiday a name so as not to confuse the document with others. Who knows, perhaps you’d like to host several holidays. :)

Though you can miss the section about goals, pay attention to the checklist and agenda. First, you may specify the most important elements of your party and then list all the minor things.

For example, our checklist might include something like this:

• Send invitation cards to all the participants.
• Prepare a surprise for every guest.
• Conduct a photo shoot and have dinner at a restaurant.
• Send everyone a warm follow-up with the link to photos.

In the ‘Schedule’ section, you have a table with the time slots from 7 AM to 8 PM, however, you may add as many rows as you wish. The times are easy to edit too — you can make it fit to your perfect holiday plan.

If you need only the last part, use ‘To-do list’ from the ‘Personal Templates’ folder. It is a spreadsheet where you can specify the day and time and omit the irrelevant columns.

2. Choose Breath-taking Gifts

Sure, guests will be happy when they receive a small present but if you’d like to really impress, personalise your gifts or prepare something extraordinary.

For example, some of the Collabio team members create short quest games for party guests to find their gifts. You just make brief 4-row poems that contain a riddle, the answer to which leads people to another hint, and after 3–4 such steps they find the gift itself!

Consider guests’ interests. Get something with the print of their favourite movie, TV series or music band. Choose the design of your gift pack in the style of best-loved artworks.

Keep in mind: the present itself is always important yet the emotions surrounding it ensures the party’s good mood.

After deciding the right presents for the party participants, open Collabio Spaces’ folder ‘Personal Templates’. Find and open ‘Gift Planner’.

Here you will find a unified document to help with all upcoming events!

• First, specify the holiday for which you’re preparing gifts.
• Next, you can start listing either recipient or gift ideas.
• If you know where to order this gift, insert the link to this item or omit this column if you’ll buy it offline.
• Note the cost to calculate your personal budget.
• If you have some deadline for which the gift should arrive, specify it.
• To keep track of gift arrivals, create a ‘Done’ or ‘Ready’ column.

3. Keep Track of Your Personal Budget

Even if it’s not you who hosts the party, it’s a good idea to calculate costs to better plan your own budget and understand how much you need to save for future holidays.

If you use the template from Collabio Spaces called ‘Personal Budget’ from the ‘Personal Templates’ folder:

• Add an extra row for specifying future costs of holidays
• Or include them in ‘Other expenses’.
• In the ‘Comments’ column, you may write for which holiday you will spend this money. This is great if you want to compare spending with past events or future plans.

4. Collaborate!

Multiple your ideas by working together! Use Collabio co-authoring to brainstorm and harvest ideas, both offline and online.

To learn or remind yourself about how P2P collaboration works, just launch the app and find ‘Collaboration Guide’ — everything is quick and simple. Enjoy the fun of preparing together!

Conclusions

In any case, remember that the main goal of each holiday is happiness and to have a great time with your family, friends and people you love. We hope every meeting or party comes with the warmest memories and we’ll do everything for you to achieve this. If you need more templates added to the app, drop us a line in the ‘Responses’ section! ;)