Separate the parts of your budget
A single total hides the one number you actually need: how much of the figure is confirmed. Splitting item cost, known fees, delivery and open questions into four buckets lets you see exactly how much of your plan rests on a guess.
Four buckets, not one total
Buckets keep unlike things apart. Money you have seen quoted behaves differently from money you have estimated, and both behave differently from money you have not yet found out about. Four columns cover almost every case:
- Item cost. Price × quantity, in the currency shown, with the seller's own figure copied rather than remembered.
- Known fees. Anything the seller states as a fixed service or handling charge. If it is not stated on the page you read, it is not known.
- Delivery estimate. A figure with a source: a shipping calculator result, a published rate table, or a written quote. Never a feeling about what postage usually costs.
- Unconfirmed. Import charges, optional services, restocking fees, anything conditional. Leave the amount blank and write the question instead.
Keep the original currency
If a listing is priced in another currency, record the original amount, the currency code, the conversion rate you used, the source of that rate and the date. Six fields for one number sounds excessive until the rate moves and you need to know whether your earlier total was optimistic.
Then put the GBP figure in a separate column and never edit the original. A budget that has lost its source amounts cannot be audited, only believed.
An example budget
Every figure below is invented to show structure. This is not a quote from any retailer, and the delivery figure is explicitly an assumption.
| Line | GBP | Status | Source and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bag, 1 × £120.00 | 120.00 | Confirmed | Product page, 20 Oct 2026 |
| Scarf, 1 × £38.00 | 38.00 | Confirmed | Product page, 12 Oct 2026 |
| Handling fee | 4.50 | Confirmed | Basket summary, 20 Oct 2026 |
| Delivery, up to 2 kg | 18.00 | Estimate | Rate table, 20 Oct 2026 |
| Import charges | — | Unconfirmed | Ask carrier before ordering |
| Provisional total | 180.50 | Provisional | Excludes unconfirmed line |
Note what the table does not do: it does not round to a tidy number, and it does not quietly assume import charges are zero. A provisional total that says "excludes unconfirmed line" is far more trustworthy than a neat one that pretends otherwise.
Confirmed versus provisional
Use a status word on every row and keep a running count. If more than a third of your total is provisional, the budget is a sketch, and a sketch is fine — as long as you know that is what it is. Before you actually spend, each provisional row needs one of three outcomes: confirmed with a source and date, replaced by a range you are willing to accept, or removed from the plan.
Discounts belong in the budget only once their conditions are recorded. A code you cannot substantiate is not money off; it is an unresolved question. The coupon conditions record shows which fields to capture, and comparing the final cost of offers shows how to test a threshold against a cap.
When to lock the figure, and how
Lock a total when the item prices, the fee lines and the delivery figure all have a source no older than your own refresh window, and when you have decided what to do about each open question. Write the locked figure and its date in a new row rather than overwriting the working columns — the difference between the two totals over time is genuinely useful information.
Delivery is the field that most often needs re-checking, because it depends on weight, destination and service. Work through estimating shipping from a quote before you lock anything, and use the weight comparison if a parcel is bulky rather than heavy.
When the numbers are ready, go back to the hipobuy spreadsheet home page and enter them into the budget tool. It applies your own threshold and cap, shows the whole breakdown, and lets you export the row as CSV so the reasoning travels with the numbers.
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