Free Tools for the Hardest Week

Which one you need, and when

These are ordered roughly by when funeral week actually needs them. In the first day or two, while the family is still deciding what kind of service this will be, the order builder and the cost estimator are the ones that answer the arguments — what the shape of the day is, and what it will cost before anyone has committed to it.

Midweek the writing begins, and it is the part families dread most. The obituary writer exists because a blank page at eleven at night is unanswerable, and nine small questions are not. The verse finder narrows several hundred readings down to the six that actually suit the person and the service, which is a more useful thing than a long list. The eulogy timer is there because almost every first draft is twice as long as the slot: people speak more slowly at a funeral than they think they will, and a eulogy that reads as eight minutes at your kitchen table takes twelve at the lectern.

Then the print run. The copies calculator does the arithmetic families get wrong in the same direction every time — one programme often serves a couple, but the graveside draws people who were never in the church, so the buffer matters more than the seating plan does. Afterwards, when the thank-you cards have to go out and nobody can face writing sixty of them, the thank-you wording tool builds the paragraph.