Start with the real calendar
List the recurring notices the audience actually needs. Include scheduled announcements, plausible change notices and any permitted welcome or follow-up messages that your implementation would charge. Do not add a weekly send merely to fill the calendar. Each message should have a purpose that is useful to the recipient, an owner and a reason that the chosen channel is appropriate.
Keep routine and exceptional work apart
A normal month and a busy month can have different volumes. Write both scenarios rather than presenting the busier month as a forecast. A contingency allowance is a planning choice, not a prediction of cancellations or attendance. Emergency communication is outside this worksheet: an ordinary commercial messaging plan is not a substitute for a suitable safety notification system.
Track changes, not just totals
If a schedule changes after an announcement, identify the original message, the affected audience and the correction owner. A revised calendar does not retract a delivered text. Do not automatically resend to every contact because one group changed. Keep the audience and reason narrow, and consider whether the maintained reference page needs to be updated before another notice points to it.
Try the fictional month
Suppose 120 eligible members receive four one-unit notices, and 40 of them need one additional two-unit update. The planned outbound units are 120 × 4 + 40 × 2 = 560. Do not add the subgroup again to the audience total as though it represented new people. Then check any other chargeable activity and the actual plan allowance. The arithmetic describes the scenario, not expected engagement.
Separate a calendar edit from a new send
Give each planned campaign a purpose label and a draft status. Removing an item from a spreadsheet does not cancel anything already scheduled elsewhere. Before revising the month’s budget, identify whether the corresponding activity is merely proposed, scheduled or already charged. This prevents an attractive revised estimate from silently omitting costs that have already occurred.
Sources used for this page
These records support the facts and comparisons above. Merchant-controlled records are labelled so you can separate product claims from independent evidence.
- TXT180 pricing — Merchant documentation · txt180.com · Merchant-controlled · checked 2026-10-02