Frequently Asked Questions
on: choosing your planner
Still not sure which planner is right for you?
on: shipping timelines, tracking + deliveries
We are shipping out all planner orders right now!
Our entire team is working exceptionally hard during this time to pack all orders as quickly as possible.
We dispatch in the same sequence in which orders were placed. So…the earlier you order = the sooner your order will be packed!
Keep an eye out for our latest dispatch progress updates and behind-the-scenes fun over on Instagram.
[Please note: All orders containing a pre-order item will be held until all stock is available and ready-to-ship. If you would like in-stock items shipped immediately, please place a separate order]
If you would like your order to ‘jump the queue’, please select PRIORITY service when checking out. All Priority orders automatically move to the top of the pile and are dispatched SAME business day [for orders placed before midday] or NEXT business day [for orders placed after midday].
Priority orders are also automatically upgraded to Express Post.
This service is currently only available to Australian destinations.
In Australia, Express Parcels are either sent via Australia Post [Express service] or via TNT Overnight Express – whichever offers the best service to your area – and both are extremely reliable on their turnaround time.
International Express orders are sent via Australia Post International Express service, or via DHL International Priority service – whichever offers the best service to your country. These are significantly faster than Standard International Parcel Post.
Please be mindful that once an order has left our studio, we have no control whatsoever over its delivery.
Within Australia, we ship with either Couriers Please or Australia Post. Your order is sent with the provider that offers the fastest service to your area.
International orders are sent with Australia Post [which links with your local postal service upon arrival to your destination country, such as USPS, Royal Mail, New Zealand Post, etc.]
Refer to our stockist list to see if we have a stockist near to you. Not all of our stockists choose to stock our full range of planners and accessories, so it would be best to reach out to the store directly to confirm availability of your desired items before visiting.
If we don’t have a stockist in your city [or country] and you’d love to see our planners stocked in a favourite boutique local to you, we’d love to hear from you with details about the store.
We’re always looking to find beautifully aligned stockists to partner with, all over the world!
All of our parcels are booked + managed via Shippit – a third-party shipping service provider.
You will receive an email with details for how to track your order through Shippit. Shippit provides a top-line tracking summary and updates. Tracking your parcel directly through the delivery provider will often provide more detailed tracking + more accurate delivery ETAs than updates offered via Shippit.
As outlined on all of our product pages and on our Shipping and Returns Policy page, some international orders are subject to import duties/taxes upon arrival, and these fees are the sole responsibility of the importer [in this case, you, the customer].
We have absolutely nothing to do with these fees – value thresholds and duties are set and enforced by the governing body of your country/region. If you require further information, please contact your local customs or other relevant authorities directly.
on: orders + order changes
While we cannot guarantee changes, as per our Shipping and Returns Policy, with pre-order items we may be able to help you. If you wish to make a modification to a pre-order, please get in touch with us at studio@emmakateco.com with your full name, your order number and a clear description outlining the change you would like made, and we will do our best to help you.
As per our Shipping and Returns Policy, we do not allow refunds or order cancellations for change of mind.
Please consider your purchase carefully before checking out.
All orders containing a pre-order item will be held until all stock is available and ready-to-ship.
If you would like in-stock items shipped immediately, please place a separate order.
We understand that life + changes happen. Please be mindful of this when entering your shipping address at checkout. If you know that your address will be changing between now and November, we would strongly encourage you to have your order shipped to a family member or close friend’s address instead.
If you have an unexpected change of situation, and need to update your address, please get in touch with us ASAP at studio@emmakateco.com with your name and your new shipping address, with subject line: Urgent – Change of Address for Order EKCo#xxxxx [your order number].
on: stock availability + selling out
Our planners are famous for moving fast, and every year you completely WOW us with a new level of love + dedication.
Nothing breaks our hearts more than missing out. To guarantee your first choice we recommend you order sooner rather than later; especially if you have your eye on Amalfi or Limoncello, as they are selling fast.
We have always made our planners as limited edition, so once they sell out, that’s it until the next year.
Our 2025 planner collection and colour palette is complete.
We will not be introducing additional colourways or styles until our 2026 planner release.
Each year, before we set out on creating our next collection, we always invite you, our planner community, to share your colour requests and feedback via a survey we send out to our mailing list.
In early 2025 we will release our survey for 2026 planner requests! If you’re not already subscribed to our mailing list, you can join here.
on: payments
We have no plans to introduce Afterpay as a payment method.
We do not believe in encouraging anyone to spend beyond their means, and we do not market our products as impulse purchases. Everything we design and create is very considered, and we encourage taking a considered approach when shopping with us. Always!
on: planner design, features + inclusions
Yes! We change our planner colours palette every year.
Emma Kate Co. as a brand is very much a reflection of Emma’s personal style, which means, just like everyone… it is constantly evolving! At the core of our brand has always been [and always will be] soft neutrals and earthy tones. In our planner palette, we’ve always generally offered one a deeper tone, and one or two brighter pops of colour.
Every year, when we set out on creating our next collection, we send a survey out to all of our planner customers, to seek feedback and ask what you’d love to see for the next release. After that… it’s a lot of consideration + playing with swatches, to put together a palette that feels fresh, true to us and really beautiful!
Yes, absolutely! Our planners all feature lay-flat bookbinding, with no need to prop or coax them open.
We know all too well how annoying it is if your planner will not comfortably sit open on your desk without being physically held open by hand, or weights!
For our internal pages we use an uncoated, off-white 120gsm paper for weekly [signature + grande planners] and 100gsm paper for daily planners [FSC certified].
Our paper definitely is thick in feel and has an uncoated, subtle texture to the paper.
We have found that most pens we have road tested – including fine-liner, fountain and ballpoint do not bleed or feather on our planner’s internal pages. For our weekly [signature + grande] planners, most inks cannot be noticeably seen from the other side of the page – however for our daily planners, which have slightly thinner paper, some shadowing may be more noticeable. We cannot guarantee that our paper is 100% bleed or feather proof for every single pen.
We offer our own pens which aesthetically match our planners and glide beautifully on our planner pages too!
Yes! In all of our planner layouts, weekends and weekdays have the same amount of space.
This is a core and well-loved design feature of our planner collection.
In our Daily and Horizontal Weekly layouts, the space for weekdays and weekends are identical.
We are so fortunate to have a global community of planner lovers who purchase our planners from every corner of the world.
In every country and state/province, public holidays are different. In addition, people of different religious and cultural backgrounds also follow different holiday calendars. The same goes for school holidays and term dates. Not all of our planner users are impacted by school dates.
One of Emma’s greatest frustrations in existing planners on the market, and a significant reason for her deciding to create planners in the first place, was that most planners on the market were cluttered with dates that were, more often than not, irrelevant to her. Rather than add to the noise, our planners seek to strip the more ‘traditional’ planner back, and allow you full control over what is or isn’t included.
We encourage you to add only the important dates that are truly important to you. Our suggestion would be to use the ‘heading’ box, next to the date, at the top of every day to write in any important holidays in your year.
Our planners are designed as a blank canvas, able to be entirely customisable in the way that suits you best. We don’t force you to squeeze your world in between tight lines, or rigid incremental time slots. We intentionally do not ‘build in’ too many additional features, so that you can build your own.
If structure is what works for you, then you have the freedom to add that in, exactly as you would like it! Want your days split into AM/PM? Do it! Want hourly increments from 9-5, or 7-3, or 8-8? You can add them in! With our daily planner, you can divide the page into four quarters, or into halves for a this/that style.
Want to journal, or create a keepsake of all your memories? Our planner is also perfect for that!
This is one of our more frequent queries, and every year we think long and hard about whether we make any core changes like this to our signature layouts. Every time, we land on ‘no’, and keep it the same; with the months all together at the front.
Ultimately, this comes down to the fact that months don’t end perfectly at the end of each week.
If they were to be interspersed throughout, there would be two options: we could have the new month to start for a few days, then have the monthly spread, then continue with that month over the next page – OR we could have the monthly spread over two pages, then turn to the next week where you would see the last few days of the previous month.
Jumping from week, to month, and back to week broke the continuity and flow of the planner. We tried it one year, and we received lots of messages from people with birthdays at the end of the month saying their birthday wasn’t in the planner! [it was, it was just included in the week after the monthly spread of the upcoming new month].
Ultimately, to maximise flow, we feel it is clearest to keep the months grouped together. A lot of our planner community use their monthly and weekly spreads differently; the months for tracking important ‘topline’ things such as habits, due dates, appointments – and the weekly/daily spreads for the nitty gritty – to-do lists, details of appointments + tasks, etc.
We recommend you placing one of your ribbon dividers to the current month, so it is always easy and very quick to access!
We have definitely thought about it! Unfortunately, doing this would require us to reduce page space from the Sunday, and notes section of that week. While we fully embrace Slow Sundays, we do understand that there are many members of our community who have 7-day work weeks, or whose life doesn’t stop on the weekend. Rather than sacrifice this space, we devised the tab stickers which take up much less real estate of the planner pages and allow the full width of the planner to be maintained.
We do make our planners intentionally minimal. It means that you only pay for features that are important to you, and nothing more.
We intentionally make a distinct effort to not ‘build in’ too many additional features; as everyone uses our planners so differently. We don’t want to fill valuable planner pages with features that just aren’t right for everyone.
We’ve always prided ourselves on listening to our community, which is why in recent years we’ve designed some accessories to compliment our planner. Our sticky note Habit Tracker came to life in our 2021 collection, and has quickly become one of our most loved accessories.
In 2022 we also designed an Expense Tracker passport – which perfectly slots into the back pocket of any planner – to help you keep track of your top-line finances, and develop better money habits.
Patterned covers need to be printed + laminated, which, to us, just do not feel as luxe and beautiful in their final form as our linen fabric bound planners. For this reason we focus on sourcing the most beautiful coloured fabrics we can find.
We may consider re-introducing patterned covers in the future, but for now, we find our single-coloured covers more appealing as they are more elegant and timeless.
Our Garden Dweller print has definitely had her moment. Botanical prints started to appear everywhere, and, well… we have moved on!
Some of our planner community prefers numerals [2024] and some prefer words [two thousand and twenty four] so we make some of our planners with numerals, and other planners with words.
We use our gut feel on which planner colour suits which style. We can’t get this right for everyone, but we do our very best!
We have no spiral-bound products in our repertoire and have no plans to introduce spiral bound planners.
We find bookbinding so much more beautiful – and user friendly!
We do not have any plans to introduce undated planners into our offering.
We trialled offering an undated planner 5 years ago, and found they just weren’t loved nearly as much as our dated planners.
If you love bullet journalling, our bound journals and softcover notebooks might be just what you’re looking for!
Our vegan leather planner in Manhattan have been simply designed with a more traditional non-decorative font instead of our signature handwritten style featured in the rest of our planners.
on: planner upkeep!
The short answer… you can’t!
Dirty, messy and real is welcome here. We embrace the chaos, and we believe that after 12 months of love + living, your planner should tell the story of the year you have lived – who you were, and who you have become – in this passage of time. Every coffee stain, watermark, smudge of icing or whatever-that-was makes your planner uniquely yours. Real. Lived in. Authentic. You don’t expect to wear the same clothes every day for a year and have them be perfectly clean by the end of it… your planner sees as much life as you do, so why shouldn’t it show it?
For the perfectionists among us, know that you can gently wipe your fabric covers with a warm, slightly damp cloth to reduce marks. And maybe consider a compendium? We created these as a beautiful, practical way for you to keep your planner a little more protected while she’s on the move.
While our monogramming is stamped by hand with high quality foil + the utmost of care, the nature of stamped foil on fabric is that the foil will rub and wear with use.
Remember, the beauty of a physical planner is the story that it tells over time, and thus we don’t consider standard wear a fault.
on: manufacturing + ethical compliance
We work with a small, family-run manufacturer in Shenzhen, China.
All of our [thousands!] of planners are made by hand by our team there.
We totally understand! This is a big topic + something we are very passionate about.
Firstly: by shopping with us, you ARE supporting local! We’re a local brand. We live here, in Melbourne, and your purchase supports 4 local gals + their families. And, by extension, you support our lovely couriers who collect from us, and the ones who drop the parcel to you, along with the multitude of other local suppliers and stockists we have long term, thriving businesses relationships with.
Currently, we make every product that we can make locally in Australia [Adelaide], including our greeting cards [which are still hand-folded by Emma’s mum and her best friend].
Our planners, journals and notebooks are all handmade in China and we’re extremely proud to work with small, family run businesses in China that operate safe, clean, ethical factories and pay their workers with fair, liveable wages.
We believe in running a sustainable + viable business, and realistically, there is no way to make these locally while maintaining our high quality, and keeping our prices reasonable. China has the infrastructure and resources to manufacture goods [in our case, very beautiful + exquisite quality goods] at prices that Australians expect to pay. A lot of time and careful attention goes into making our planners, with real hands, and doing this in Australia would not be possible, viable or sustainable. Nor could we achieve the volumes we make now, to look after ALL of you!
For our planners, we work with a small, family-run manufacturing business, who we have now worked with closely for 7 years. We regularly run a full spectrum of social compliance reporting and they always come through with flying colours, and [pre-Covid], we made regular visits.
The notion of ‘Made in China’ equalling low quality or an unworthy product is an old story. That mindset is a few generations out of date! Supporting the Australian economy is a really good thing and your purchases DO support local. Shopping with us also supports the livelihood of a number of beautiful Chinese families. People are people and inherently have value, no matter where they live.
my question hasn’t been answered above
We’ll happily answer any other questions you might have!