Updated: June 29, 2026 
Do you use Excel to manage projects? If so, these project management Excel templates are for you!
Don’t worry about learning how Excel works or starting from scratch every time. Below are 17 ready-to-go templates for all your project management needs, including Gantt chart templates, budget tracker templates, work breakdown structures, issue trackers, and more.
NOTE: Please make sure to read the instructions provided in this guide for every template you download. Some of the more complex ones contain further instructions for use and customization in a separate tab within the template.
#1 Gantt chart template in Excel
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This Gantt chart template shows you:
- Task start and end dates
- Progress bar
- Number of work days the task requires
- Assignees and their departments
- A colored line that indicates task duration
The Gantt chart template also lets you track your project phases and milestones, making it particularly useful for Waterfall project management.
Simply select “P” (phase), “T” (task), or “M” (milestone) next to the item name, and the changes will automatically reflect in the formatting and in the Gantt chart.
Like with all the other templates on this list, you can add as many rows as you wish without breaking the formulas, as well as filter the data in the table and Gantt chart. But in case this template doesn’t fit your specific workflow, you can learn how to make a Gantt chart in Excel yourself using our simple guide.cularly well suited to Waterfall project management. If you decide to forgo this functionality, it can be equally useful for other project management methodologies as well.
#2 Project timeline template in Excel
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This project timeline template gives you a visual representation of your planned project timeline and budget, compared to their actual state.
All you need to do is fill out the details of your project plan in the table and then regularly update the actual progress and spending over the course of the project. When you want to see a visual comparison of the two, simply switch the timeline view from planned to actual in the dropdown.
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Learn how project management templates can help transform the way you work and improve your project’s performance:
#3 Project budget template in Excel
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With this free Excel project budget template, you can track your allocated budget and expenditure for each individual task. It enables you to categorize each task according to 4 fully customizable criteria for easier filtering and even track the budget for multiple projects at once.
The template contains 3 major sections: 2 for tracking estimated and actual expenses — according to the previously mentioned 4 criteria and the cost variance between them — and 1 for tracking your contingency costs and expenses. The top of each section shows the totals.
At the very end of the table, there’s a section that shows your allocated budget, estimated costs, and actual costs for each individual task side-by-side for a quick budget overview.
The majority of this template is automated — it automatically calculates the total estimated costs, actual costs, variances, and totals. The template is also customizable to fit your specific project’s needs.
You’ll find further instructions on the use and customization of this template inside the template itself.
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Want to improve your budgeting skills? Try these 6 different budgeting methods and learn how to create your own ideal project budget:
#4 Project dashboard template in Excel — single project
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This single project dashboard template lets you track:
- Tasks
- Subtasks
- Priority
- Status
- Assignee
- Department
- Managers
- Progress
- Start/end dates
- Duration
- Planned and actual budget
- The number of days until the deadline
The first thing you’ll see when you open the template is the dashboard that showcases all the data. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t change any of the data directly in the dashboard. The dashboard will update based on the data you input in the actual project tracking table located in the second sheet within the file you download.
At the top of the dashboard, you’ll find charts showing:
- Breakdown of all your tasks based on their status
- Overall project progress and budget status in percentages
- Comparison of the planned and spent budget
The table underneath shows the same data as your actual project tracking table but with a breakdown of your progress, budget, and actual costs per task, as well as a Gantt chart reflecting the project timeline.
You can filter all the data in the table using the dropdown menu within each column or the buttons to the left of the table. When you do this, both the Gantt chart and the bars and charts at the top of the page will reflect the filtered data.
#5 Project dashboard template in Excel — multiple projects
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The Excel dashboard template for managing multiple projects is the same as the dashboard template above, but instead of tracking tasks and subtasks, you can track multiple projects and the tasks that belong to them.
#6 Kanban Excel template
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Use the Kanban Excel template to visualize your tasks on a Kanban board. The template contains a table for tracking tasks and their status, assignee, due date, and priority.
As you change task status in the table, you will see the changes reflected in the Kanban board automatically.
#7 Issue tracker template in Excel
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The issue tracker Excel template helps you keep track of all project issues/bugs and their:
- Severity
- Priority
- Status
- Classification
- Frequency
- Date of reporting
- Due date
- Assignee
- Reproduction steps, etc.
Above the template, you’ll find a table that shows all your risks, their number, and category.
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For more issue-tracking templates for Google Docs, Sheets, and Microsoft Word, as well as some recommendations for great issue-tracking templates different software have to offer, check out this blog post:
#8 Simple issue tracker template in Excel
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For those of you who don’t require too much detail in your issue tracking, here’s a simple issue tracker template with all the essential information and none of the fluff.
This free Excel project management template lets you:
- Prioritize issues
- Assign them to team members
- Track their progress from the moment they appear until the moment they are closed
As it’s a very useful feature to have, this template also contains a table showing the breakdown of all your project issues according to their status and priority.
#9 Project task list template in Excel
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Our simple project task list template is formatted as a table that lets you track individual tasks within one project.
This template has columns for:
- Progress tracking
- Assignees
- Start and due dates
- Color-coded priority
- Status dropdown lists
The template also tracks whether the project is at risk and how many days are left until the due date (or how many days the task is behind schedule).
#10 Advanced project task tracker template in Excel
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The advanced project task tracking template lets you track the individual subtasks as well as the estimated and actual cost for each subtask in addition to the basic metrics tracked in the simple project task list template.
#11 Multiple project tracker template in Excel
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The multiple project tracking template lets you track the planned and actual budget, but instead of tasks and subtasks, you can track multiple projects and the tasks within those projects.
All of these free Excel project management templates support an unlimited number of tasks/rows in the table and contain a filter option for each column. With this, you can easily get a preview of the data for a specific task, project, team, person, date, or a range of dates, extract charts, and much more.
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Before you start tracking your project tasks, you first have to create a project charter, define your scope, and set major milestones. We have templates for that too!
#12 Work breakdown structure (WBS) template in Excel (list format)
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This work breakdown structure (WBS) template is a simple WBS in list format. All you need to do is select the WBS level of the entry (a number between 1 and 5). Once you do this, the WBS code, as well as the indentations in the “Name” column, will automatically update to match it.
You may use the WBS code for each entry to link to a corresponding entry in a separate WBS Dictionary.
In case you want a more interactive WBS that you can share with your colleagues, and get notified about updates, Excel won’t give you what you need. Instead, create your WBS in Plaky.
Use Items, Subitems, and Item groups to create a simple WBS with just a few clicks. Create Item templates to standardize information structure, convert Subitems to Items (or the other way around) in case you make a mistake, leave Comments, attach Files, links, and fully customize your board to your liking.
#13 Work breakdown structure (WBS) template in Excel (table format)
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In addition to the automatic indentations and WBS code numbering based on the designated WBS level, this work breakdown structure template contains further information about each entry and includes:
- Description
- Predecessors
- Start/end dates
- Work days
- Resources
- Cost columns (in case you prefer to add more information to your WBS)
#14 Risk management template in Excel
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The most prominent feature of our risk management template is that it allows you to select the risk probability and severity from a dropdown list. When you do this, the table will automatically show you the overall project risk rate based on the predetermined risk assessment matrix.
Additionally, the template will automatically count the number of risks in each of the 25 categories in the risk matrix.
Besides this, the table contains 18 columns in total that track all kinds of factors to help you stay on top of all your negative project risks, including:
- Risk name, ID, and category
- Dates when the risk was discovered and when it’s expected to appear
- Risk owner
- Status
- Expected monetary losses
- Mitigation strategies
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Risk management or RAID log? Do you know the difference? Do you need both? Find out what experts have to say in this guide, and get a free RAID log template!
#15 SWOT analysis template in Excel
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The SWOT analysis template is a simple, non-automated template that lets you see your project’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats laid out in a clean and organized way.
The template also contains an action plan table where you can create a quick list of the most important tasks that require your immediate attention based on your SWOT analysis.
#16 Competitor SWOT analysis template in Excel
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In case you’d like to see how you compare to your competitors, you can download our competitor SWOT analysis template.
This template is also a simple, non-automated list, but it will give you a side-by-side, high-level overview of your current status compared to your top competitors.
#17 Project status report template in Excel
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The project status report template gives you a one-page overview of your current project status that you can send to your stakeholders for their weekly or monthly updates.
According to Michelle M. Campbell, project management professional, project status reports should be as concise and comprehensive as possible.
“While aesthetics is helpful on a status report, it is more important to have the informative essentials that will guide the reader to arrive at a comprehensive, but concise understanding of the state of the project.”
Following her advice, I did my best to make this status report template as short and informative as possible, but couldn’t help adding some extra flair.
The template contains:
- A field for a brief project summary
- A table where you can provide a rundown of your project deliverables — along with their RAG status and a short explanation
- A field for describing your most prominent project risk or issue at the moment
The charts and fields on the right show your overall project progress in percentages, along with your top 3 recent achievements and plans for the future.
The template currently has fields for future plans by quarter, but you can easily rename the fields if you prefer to provide shorter-term plans.
Since this particular template is only a status report and doesn’t contain a project tracking table from which charts can pull information, you’ll have to manually update the progress donut chart.
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If you’d like to know what else Michelle M. Campbell had to say about project status reports and learn how not to make them boring, check out this guide:
How can you use Excel for project management?
Excel’s versatility lets it adapt to most project management methodologies and workflows. With some effort, you can create sheets (or use one of our templates) to guide you through the stages of project delivery:
- Planning — Excel is particularly useful for planning since it specializes in lists. You can use it to plan your budget with our project budget template, use the WBS template to divide scope into smaller tasks, create task lists, and much more.
- Tracking — With slightly more advanced sheets you can effectively track the progress of your project(s), keep an eye on risks and timelines, and even manage multiple projects at once.
- Reporting — Excel is very good at extrapolating data from your tables and presenting it in neat charts and graphs for easy monitoring or reporting.
Excel formulas for project management
If you want to learn how to create effective project management workflows, these are the most common formulas you need to learn:
- IF — checks if a value is true and returns a specified result
- AND/OR — checks if multiple values (AND) or at least one of the values (OR) are true and returns a specified result
- SUMIF and SUMIFS — adds up the value of the cells that meet a condition
- COUNTIF and COUNTIFS — counts the number of cells that meet a condition
- XLOOKUP — searches for a value in a list and returns a value from the same row from a different column
- INDEX — returns the value of a cell at the intersection of your specified column/row coordinates
- MATCH — locates the value in a range and returns its position
- TODAY — gives you today’s date
- WORKDAY, WORKDAY.INTL — calculates the date by adding a specific number of days to a date, while skipping weekends and specified holidays (the WORKDAY.INTL function also lets you choose which days are considered weekend)
- IFERROR, IFBLANK, IFNA — “clean up” formulas to display a message of your choice instead of errors or blank cells
- COUNTA — counts the number of rows in a range that are not empty
Once you have mastered these formulas, you’ll have all you need to create an Excel workflow for tracking and managing simple projects. But if this sounds too complex, check out popular Excel alternatives that will get you up and running in minutes.
Should you use Excel for project management?
Whether you should use Excel vs. a PM tool for project management depends on a number of factors such as whether you:
- Lead a small or large team
- Are proficient in Excel or not
- Consistently work on multiple projects at once
- Need multiple people contributing to the same sheets
- Need high-level data security
Something to keep in mind is that Excel is not a tool meant for project management. While it is very flexible and can work for smaller projects and teams, everyday users will struggle as work complexity grows.
Where PM software is ready-to-use out of the box, Excel is a blank slate that requires significant time and effort to build and maintain workflows. It doesn’t support smooth collaboration, nor does it offer the security and data protection PM tools take very seriously.
Ultimately, Excel may work for smaller projects, but larger ones that include more moving parts will benefit from a dedicated project management tool.
Related project management templates
Browse our collection of free project management templates for Excel, Word, Google Sheets, and Google Docs. Here you’ll find templates tailored to different project needs and industries, from construction templates, to sales, inventory management, onboarding, and much more.
| Name | Who/what they are useful for |
|---|---|
| Construction project management templates | Construction project management |
| Capacity planning templates | Larger projects with finite resources and strict deadlines |
| RACI Chart templates | Large, complex projects with strict regulations and cross-functional teams |
| Onboarding templates | HR, sales, and client-focused businesses |
| Sales plan templates | Sales teams |
| Daily report templates | Those who need to keep a detailed log of their daily activities |
| Content calendar templates | Marketing teams, small businesses, and solopreneurs who want to stay on top of their marketing efforts |
| Social media calendar templates | Marketing teams, small businesses, and solopreneurs who want to stay on top of their social media posting schedules |
| Action item templates | Those who need to keep track of multiple ad-hoc tasks that pop up daily |
| Resource planning templates | Industries such as engineering, construction, R&D, and teams that require complex coordination of people, time, and equipment |
| Objectives and key results (OKR) templates | Businesses that want to stay aligned and transparent about their goals across teams |
| Project timeline templates | For event planning, construction, manufacturing, and other businesses that have hard deadlines and rely on meticulous organization |
| Performance review templates | HR, business owners, and performance-driven businesses such as consulting, sales, pharmaceuticals, etc. |
| Standard operating procedure (SOP) templates | Manufacturing, logistics, hospitality franchises, and other industries that rely on consistently executing recurring tasks in the exact same manner |
| Strategic planning templates | Highly competitive businesses that need to have a clear long-term development plan for the future |
| Inventory templates | Retail, restaurants, manufacturing, healthcare, and other industries that need to keep a strict tab on their inventory items and/or expiration dates |
| Event planning templates | Event planning management |
| To-do list templates | Individuals who like to stay organized on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis |
| 15 Google Sheets project management templates | For businesses, managers, and solopreneurs who prefer to use Google Sheets for organization and project management |
Excel is powerful but complicated — try Plaky by CAKE.com instead
Microsoft Excel is undoubtedly a powerful project management tool but only if you know how to use it. It also has one fatal flaw — it’s a static tool that makes project communication and cross-functional collaboration needlessly difficult.
As Excel files don’t update in real time, working on a shared file with more people is a hectic experience and one of the main reasons why you shouldn’t use it for project management.
On the other hand, Plaky is an intuitive and user-friendly project management tool that lets you organize and customize your project management to fit your unique workflow.
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Additionally, Excel is prone to human error — you can inadvertently hide a column or change a formula, and you may never find out what exactly happened due to the lack of an activity log.
Plaky, on the other hand, makes making such mistakes a bit more difficult. Anytime you change something, people who are subscribed to the card get a notification, so nothing goes unnoticed. Moreover, there is an Activity log, so you can see when and where the problem occurred. This way, Plaky helps reduce human errors.
On top of this, Plaky has a library of free project management templates you can use to manage your projects if you don’t want to build your own project workflow from scratch. All the templates are customizable and editable. You can tweak them to fit your needs or use them as is — your choice.
So, with Plaky by CAKE.com, all your teams are connected to one central management platform with unlimited users, Spaces, Boards, and Items — all that on the free plan! Or, you can check out Plaky’s pricing plans to unlock more robust administrative options.
It’s high time you ditched Excel and elevated your project management game. Try Plaky today!
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