Free Stag Do Budget Spreadsheet Template (Excel & Google Sheets)

A spreadsheet is the best man’s first real tool and his first real trap. Built well, it’s the difference between knowing exactly where you stand and guessing. Built badly — or not at all — it’s how deposits go missing, how the per-head price turns out to be a fantasy, and how you end up personally absorbing the gap. You don’t need to be an Excel wizard. You need the right columns and rows. Here’s exactly what a stag budget sheet should contain.

The two tabs every stag budget needs

Keep it to two simple sheets. One answers “what does this all cost and what’s the per-head price?” The other answers “who has actually paid?” Most best men build the first and forget the second, which is precisely backwards — the payment tracker is the one that saves your friendships.

Tab 1: The cost breakdown

This is your list of every expense, with per-item and total columns. The rows you actually need:

• Accommodation — total cost of the house/hotel/apartments, and nights.
• Travel — flights or train fares (note if booked individually), and any group booking.
• Headline activity — the karting, the brewery tour, the main event.
• Secondary activities — the smaller bookings.
• Food — any pre-booked meals or the group dinner.
• Transport on the ground — transfers, minibus, taxis.
• The night — entry fees, reserved tables, the kitty top-up.
• Kit and extras — t-shirts, costumes, props, the emergency kit.
• The groom’s share — his covered costs, listed explicitly so the split is visible.
• Contingency — a deliberate buffer (more on this below).

Columns: item, total cost, who’s booking it, booked yet (yes/no), and notes. That last “booked yet” column quietly doubles as your to-do list.

Tab 1, continued: the per-head calculation

At the bottom, the maths that matters. Sum every cost line including the groom’s share and the contingency. Then divide by the number of paying guests — that’s everyone except the groom. The result is your true, honest per-person figure, and it’s the number that goes on the invitation. Not a hopeful round-down; the real one. Lowballing here is the original sin of stag budgeting — people commit to your figure and resent every pound over it.

Tab 2: The payment tracker

This is the tab that earns its keep. One row per guest, and these columns:

• Name
• Total owed (their per-head figure)
• Deposit paid (amount + date)
• Balance paid (amount + date)
• Status — a simple Paid / Part-paid / Unpaid, ideally colour-coded so a glance tells the story.
• Notes — “paying balance after payday,” “dropped out, deposit forfeit,” etc.

The moment this tab exists and is kept current, you stop relying on memory and start relying on a record. You can see at a glance who’s outstanding, chase precisely, and never again wonder whether Baz actually paid or just said he did.

A high-visibility warning that a spreadsheet alone can’t solve: tracking the money is only half the battle — holding it is the risky half. When a dozen deposits land in your personal current account and then large payments go out to venues, that pattern can trip your bank’s fraud and anti-money-laundering systems and get the account frozen while you’re holding the group’s cash. Keep the float separate from your own spending money, keep the spreadsheet’s record itemised and matched to the bank statement, and make sure the figures are transparent to the group. Based on internal 2026 transaction data across thousands of group trips, the worst outcomes come from money that was tracked loosely or not at all, then disputed weeks later with no clear record to settle it. The spreadsheet is your evidence; keep it honest.

The contingency line nobody includes (and everyone needs)

Add a deliberate 10–15% buffer to your total. It feels pessimistic; it is realism. Stag dos leak money in a hundred small, forgettable ways — the unexpected booking fee, the taxi that cost double, the venue minimum you didn’t clock, the lad who needs covering. Build the buffer in and one of two good things happens: you absorb the surprises without a panicked top-up ask, or you come in under and hand everyone a small, beloved refund. Both beat a shortfall you have to chase.

Sharing it without breaking it

Last rule: let the group see the sheet, but keep editing to yourself. Share a read-only link to the cost breakdown so everyone can see the figures are fair and where their money’s going — transparency kills suspicion. But the second you give fifteen lads edit access, someone overwrites a formula, someone fat-fingers a number, and your tracker becomes fiction. View for the group, edit for you.

The honest limitation of any spreadsheet

A spreadsheet records the money beautifully and does absolutely nothing else. It can’t send a reminder to the three lads who haven’t paid. It can’t update itself when money lands. It can’t stop two people opening it at once on their phones and saving over each other. You are still the engine — manually reconciling the bank app against the cells every night, and manually chasing.

So build the two tabs, get the per-head figure honest, track every payment, buffer your total, and share it read-only. That’s a genuinely good stag budget. Just know that the spreadsheet tells you who hasn’t paid — it’s still on you to do something about it.