Project Planner

Keep every project on track without rebuilding the plan each week. List your tasks with their workdays and the task each one follows, and the Project Planner works out the dates, draws the Gantt chart, shows who is overbooked and sums it all up on a one-page status report.

What's inside

11 tabs that work together:

• Dashboard: an interactive overview of progress, the forecast finish, milestones and risks, filtered by phase or owner.
• Gantt: a timeline with a today line, progress bars and milestones. Filter it, and zoom between days and weeks.
• Tasks: your plan, with phase, owner, workdays, dependencies and % done. The dates calculate themselves.
• Workload: hours booked per person per week against their capacity, as a heatmap.
• Team: people, roles and weekly hours, with tasks and hours per person.
• Risks & Issues: a risk and issue log with scores, owners, actions and a risk matrix.
• Status Report: a one-page report with overall status, phase progress, milestones and risks.
• Data Checks: automatic checks for missing or mistyped entries, plus overdue tasks, people booked over capacity and a forecast that slips past the target date.
• Start Here, Settings and Help: a setup checklist, your project details, work week, holidays and phases, and answers to common questions.

Built to save you time

• Link each task to the one it follows and its dates fill in. Add lag days for waiting time, or a negative lag to overlap two tasks.
• Dates count workdays only. Pick a Monday to Friday, Monday to Saturday, Sunday to Thursday or seven-day week and list your holidays (US holidays for 2026 and 2027 are filled in to start).
• Give a task 0 workdays to make it a milestone: it shows as a diamond on the Gantt chart and appears in the milestone lists.
• The forecast finish moves unfinished work forward from today (or a status date you set), so you see the likely end date as well as the plan.
• Every task gets a status: Done, Overdue, Behind, In progress or Not started. Behind means its % done trails the plan by more than the threshold you set.
• The report's overall status sets itself to Green, Amber or Red, or you can choose it yourself.

Who it's for

Project managers, team leads and coordinators who need a plan they can share. It also suits freelancers, agencies and small businesses planning a launch, a new website or an office move, and anyone who reports progress to a client or a boss: the Status Report does most of that work.

What you get

• The Excel workbook (.xlsx), blank and ready for your own data
• The Google Sheets edition: open the PDF in your download and use its make-a-copy links to add it to your Google Drive
• An Example workbook filled in with sample data for a website relaunch project, so you can see how everything works before you add your own
• A Quick Start guide (PDF)
• Free updates to the edition you buy
• Instant digital download after checkout

License

Standard covers your own use, personally or in your business, including your employees. Professional adds use with unlimited clients, for example filling in copies for clients and sharing the completed files with them; neither license allows reselling or sharing the template itself. Compare licenses

Requirements

Microsoft Excel 2010 or later on Windows, Excel 2011 or later on Mac, or Microsoft 365. For the Google Sheets edition, a free Google account. Best used on a computer. No macros.