A dated planner book is a whole year of printed pages held in a twin-loop wire between two covers you wrapped yourself. What makes it worth the afternoon is the arithmetic: one print run and one binding session buys you twelve months of a book no shop sells, in your size, with your dates already on the page.
These tutorials use Planify Pro, a drag-and-drop tool for designing printable planners and stationery. Building and editing is free — exporting a PDF needs a plan, from $9.99/month.
Get the template
This is the dated daily set the book in the photos was built from — 183 pages, one spread per day. Open it to change the size, the colours or the year before you export, and add a cover page in front of it.
Export and print
Export the planner as one PDF at the paper size you are printing on, with the pages arranged for ring binding so they come off the printer in the order you will punch them.
The export behind these photos was A4 landscape — 11.69 × 8.26 in — carrying two planner pages per sheet with crop marks around each one, and it ran to 184 pages. That is a lot of paper for a full year, so print both sides if your printer can; if it can't, a duplexing printer pays for itself on the first book.
Inserts print at 100%. The cover prints at 120% on glossy sticker paper. The extra 20% on the cover is the overhang you fold around the chipboard, and it is the only place in this build where scaling up is deliberate. Everywhere else, turn off "fit to page" and "shrink oversized pages" — an automatic shrink of a percent or two pulls the whole page inwards, which drags your punch margin with it and leaves the holes biting into the text.
One last check before you commit 90-odd sheets of paper: scroll to the first and the last dated page in the PDF and confirm the year runs the way you expect. A wire, once closed, does not come off again without cutting it.
What You'll Need
 Chipboard / Book Board |
 Cinch Binding Machine |
 Binding Wires |
 Glossy Sticker Paper |
 Paper for Inserts |
 Guillotine Paper Cutter |
Plus scissors for the cover corners. Eyelets and a length of elastic are optional, if you want a closure strap.
Sizes that matter. The original build used Personal Wide inserts, with the two chipboard covers cut to that insert size plus 6mm on both the width and the length — that margin is what stops the pages catching on the edge of the board every time you turn one. Wire size is set by how thick the block ends up: a slim set of inserts binds at 20mm, and a full dated year needs to go up from there. The punch itself carries the answer — the wire scale printed on the Cinch runs from ⅜ in up to 1¼ in, so hold your punched block against it before you buy.
Instructions
1. Cut the two covers from chipboard. Measure your insert size and add 6mm to the width and to the length, then cut two boards to that — front and back. Cut them before you print anything, because the board is what the printed cover sheet has to wrap around, and a board that came out 3mm oversized is much easier to fix now than after it is glued inside a sticker. |
2. Trim the printed inserts to the crop marks. Square the whole stack up and cut it in the guillotine in as few passes as the machine will take, rather than trimming a handful of sheets at a time. Every page in a year-long book meets the same fore-edge, so a sheet that ends up a millimetre short reads as a notch down the side of the finished block.  |
3. Punch the inserts a few sheets at a time. The punch will not take a whole year in one bite — feed it small batches and push each one against the same side stop before you pull the handle, so hole one sits the same distance from the top of page 1 as it does on page 183. The numbered pins along the punch bar lift out individually: pull the ones that would fall off the end of your page, and every hole you do punch will be a full one.  |
4. Mount each cover sheet onto its board. Peel the printed sticker sheet away from its backing and lay the chipboard face down in the middle of the adhesive, leaving an even margin of sticker showing on all four sides. Then cut each corner off at 45°, just outside the board rather than flush with it — leave a sliver of sticker at the corner or the folded edges will not meet.  |
5. Fold the overhang around the board. Take one edge at a time, fold the flap over onto the back of the board and press it down along its whole length before you start the next one. Those trimmed corners are what let the four flaps lie flat instead of stacking into a lump. A plain sheet of sticker paper laid over the inside face hides the folded edges and gives you a clean inner cover. Repeat the whole thing for the back board.  |
6. Punch the covers, then load the wire. Run the front and back covers through the punch against the same side stop you used for the pages — it is easy to turn one board over and end up with a mirrored set of holes. Then stand a wire in the machine's holder with the open loops facing you and hook the whole book onto it in order: back cover, the page block, front cover.  |
7. Close the wire. Move the loaded wire into the closing channel with the weight of the book hanging below it, and press down in one steady, even movement. Even pressure matters more than force here — squeeze one end home before the other and the loops close slightly oval, which you will feel as a catch every time a page goes round the spine.  |
That is the year bound. Flip it open at any date and the spine should lie flat on the desk — that flat opening is the whole reason to wire-bind a planner rather than glue it. |
Troubleshooting
The holes drift as you work down the stack. Each batch went into the punch against a slightly different edge. Set the side stop once, use the centring mark on the punch bed, and do not move either until the last page is through.
The last hole is punched half off the page. A die pin was left in beyond the edge of your paper. Pull the pins that overhang your page width before you punch — a partial hole tears out the first time the page is turned.
The wire will not close over a full year. 183 dated pages is a thick block, and a wire sized for a slim insert set will spring open again. Measure the punched block against the wire scale on the machine and step up a size rather than forcing the closer.
Text runs too close to the punched holes. The inserts were printed with a fit-to-page or shrink option on, which pulled the artwork in from the paper edge and moved the margin the holes were designed around. Reprint at exactly 100% with scaling off.
Selling these
A dated planner book is a seasonal product, and that is its advantage as much as its risk. Buyers shop for next year's planner in a narrow window from about October to January, they are already used to paying a real price for one, and a wire-bound book with wrapped board covers reads as manufactured rather than crafty — so it carries that price instead of a novelty one.
The risk is the flip side: an unsold dated book in February is dead stock. Two ways round it. Print covers on demand and keep only punched insert blocks in stock, so the same pile of pages becomes any cover design a buyer picks. Or run an undated version of the same layout alongside the dated one — identical build, identical materials, and it sells all year.
Price the year, not the object. A full dated book is 90-odd sheets of paper and an hour of assembly against a slim notebook's ten minutes, so it should sit well above your notepads. Selling the PDF as a digital download is the same design with none of the trimming, and the two listings do not cannibalise each other much — people who want to print it themselves were never going to buy the bound one.
See 20 profitable planner niches and easy templates that sell for more on pricing and positioning.
Try these next
- DIY Half-Hidden Wire Notebook — the same wire, tucked behind a folded spine
- Book Binding Methods Compared — wire, coil, PVA and signature side by side
- DIY Hardbound Month Planner — a dated planner with a glued spine and a hard case
- Booklets and Signatures — folding and sewing a book instead of punching it
- DIY Lay-Flat Sketchbook — another binding built to open flat
- Browse all DIY tutorials
