Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-36643067-20180926115449/@comment-36014035-20180930122955

I just tried to reply to this, but it didn’t post. If for some reason both my replies post, mea culpa.

I have a terrible memory and too many friends to keep track of without help (# of manageable friends is another discussion!). So, I use google sheets and its “attendance” template to keep track of gifts. I don’t use it to track TY gifts or visits, and I don’t pay much attention to opened event rooms. The purpose is to see who isn’t giving me any gifts (TY gifts don’t count) over an extended period of time.

It does suck up a fair amount of time, and it makes emptying my GB more cumbersome. To make things a little easier, I don’t track prolific TTers. Those friends are patently active, and I can quickly move their gifts out of my GB. I wouldn’t bother doing this unless you have the time and motivation to make multiple daily entries - if you miss days or often let your GB max out, then your tracking isn’t going to be as useful.

For the attendance template, “P” which means present stands for “gift” (or present! Haha see what I did there?), “E” which means excused absence is for multiple gifts and stands for “Excellent”, and I do not mark folks who don’t send gifts. So, after a period of time, it becomes very easy to spot nongifters because they are just an empty line in the middle of an otherwise filled up space. I’ll try to post a redacted screen shot, but I’m not so tech savvy.

As far as keeping track of single v. multiple gifts, please don’t misinterpret my “excellent” designation. I started tracking the difference because I was seeing if any of my nonWiki friends were TTers, the attendance template only has a couple of default entries, and I had to come up with an association that stood for “E.” I don’t use it to discriminate against nonTTers - in fact, the reason it is still handy is because it gives me an idea of who might truly “need” an energy CI set when I have them. Sorry, TTers lol. ;)