Project Management Spreadsheet
Gantt chart, resource allocation, budget tracker, and milestone tracking with automated status dashboards.
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Project Management Sheet
A spreadsheet-based project tracker with a **built-in Gantt chart, resource plan, budget
tracker, milestone log, status dashboard, and risk register** — all driven by one task
list, all in plain Google Sheets or Excel. No add-ons, no macros, no project-management
SaaS subscription.
This workbook is built around a worked example: a "Customer Portal Redesign" project,
18 tasks across five phases (Discovery → Design → Development → QA & Testing → Launch),
tracked as of a real status date (2025-03-17). Every rollup reconciles — the Gantt
bars, the per-person allocation, the budget variance, the milestone slip, and the
dashboard KPIs are all computed from the single task list, so you can trace any number
back to the row it came from. Replace the sample tasks with your own and the whole
workbook recalculates.
Who this is for
- Project managers and team leads who want one honest source of truth, not six disconnected docs
- Freelancers and agencies tracking client projects, hours, and budget in a tool the client already has
- Engineering / product leads running a delivery without a Jira admin or an MS Project license
- Anyone who has ever maintained a "status spreadsheet" by hand and wanted it to update itself
What's included
| Tab | File | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Task List | sheets/01-task-list.csv | The single source of truth: 18 tasks with owner, dates, % complete, status, health, budget |
| 2. Gantt Chart | sheets/02-gantt-chart.csv | A spreadsheet Gantt — bar offset, span, and an in-cell ####---- progress bar per task |
| 3. Resource Allocation | sheets/03-resource-allocation.csv | Per-person task count, allocated days, cost, and utilization over their active window |
| 4. Budget Tracker | sheets/04-budget-tracker.csv | Planned vs actual-to-date by phase, with variance and % spent vs % complete |
| 5. Milestone Log | sheets/05-milestone-log.csv | Baseline vs forecast dates, slip in days, and an On Track / Minor Slip / At Risk status |
| 6. Status Dashboard | sheets/06-status-dashboard.csv | One-screen KPI summary: % complete, task health, budget, milestones, open risks |
| 7. Team Roster | sheets/07-team-roster.csv | The 7-person team with roles and day rates — the rate card the budget reads from |
| 8. Risk Register | sheets/08-risk-register.csv | 8 risks scored likelihood × impact, with severity bands, mitigation, and owner |
Supporting material:
formulas/FORMULAS.md— every formula, with real cell references and both Google Sheets and Excel syntaxguides/building-a-gantt-in-sheets.md— how the bar-chart Gantt is built from scratch, and how to make it liveguides/resource-leveling.md— reading the allocation tab to spot overload and rebalance the plandocs/— getting-started, CSV import, and customization guides
The worked example at a glance
The project runs 2025-01-06 → 2025-05-01. As of the status date (2025-03-17):
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Overall % complete (duration-weighted) | 56.73% |
| Tasks complete / in progress / not started / overdue | 9 / 2 / 6 / 1 |
| Task health (Green / Amber / Red) | 16 / 1 / 1 |
| Budget planned / spent-to-date / remaining | $68,450 / $41,205 / $27,245 |
| Milestones (total / at risk) | 5 / 1 |
| Open risks scoring ≥ 10 | 4 |
The example is deliberately mid-flight and slightly troubled, because that's when a
tracker earns its keep. Three Development tasks tell the whole story:
- T10 Component library is 90% done but its end date (2025-03-12) is already in the
past — so it shows Overdue / Red. A task can be "almost done" and still be a problem.
... continues with setup instructions, usage examples, and more.
📄 Content Sample guides/building-a-gantt-in-sheets.md
Building a Gantt Chart in a Spreadsheet
A Gantt chart is just horizontal bars on a date axis: each bar starts at a task's start date and
runs for its duration. Spreadsheets can't draw a "Gantt" natively — but there are two reliable
ways to fake one perfectly, and this guide walks through both using the Gantt Chart tab
(sheets/02-gantt-chart.csv). The worked numbers match the sample data.
The data you start with
The Gantt tab gives every task four numbers the chart needs:
| Col | Header | Meaning | T11 (Page implementation) |
|---|---|---|---|
| C | Start_Date | bar's left edge | 2025-03-13 |
| D | End_Date | bar's right edge | 2025-03-28 |
| E | Offset_Days | calendar days from project start | 66 |
| F | Span_Days | calendar length of the bar | 16 |
Offset_Days = Start_Date − ProjStart and Span_Days = End_Date − Start_Date + 1. For the
sample, ProjStart is 2025-01-06, so T11 starts 66 days in and runs 16 calendar days. Those
two numbers — offset and span — are all a bar chart needs to float each bar in the right
place.
Method 1 — The stacked-bar trick (a real chart)
This is the professional approach: a stacked horizontal bar chart where the first series is made
invisible so the second series appears to float.
Step 1 — Lay out the chart source
You need three columns next to each other: the task name, the offset, and the span.
Task_Name Offset_Days Span_Days
Stakeholder interviews 0 5
Requirements gathering 7 5
...
Page implementation 66 16
(The Gantt tab already has these — columns B, E, F.)
Step 2 — Insert a stacked bar chart
... and much more in the full download.