Created by Microsoft for the purpose of analyzing data, Excel has over 750 million users worldwide. Despite its lack of team collaboration features, Excel is one of the most commonly used project management tools.

With 11.4% of investment lost to poor project planning, having the right software is crucial to executing a successful project plan. That’s where project management templates come in. Here’s our pick of 5 Excel project management templates, some of which have been downloaded over 3 million times:

Gantt charts provide a visual illustration of how much work is planned and how much progress has been made towards the goal. It helps to keep track of milestones and easily view their dependencies.

The horizontal axis represents time, and the vertical axis represents different phases and milestones of a project. The Gantt chart is a helpful tool for managing time, resources, and workflows. 

This Gantt chart Excel template by Vertex42 has been downloaded over 3 million times. No learning curve is required - even novice Excel users can easily customize it.

Some of the core functionalities include the ability to add more tasks by simply copy-pasting rows. With a simple scroll, you can change the range of dates on your sheet.

If you need a template that sorts your main and sub-tasks and has advanced milestone features, consider using Spreadsheet.com’s Gantt Chart template. It’s built with team collaboration in mind with features like Row channels and Cell channels for messaging collaborators. Drag and drop task bars to change dates, create dependencies, and instantly visualize the overall status of your project.

With columns as simple as task name, priority, end date, and notes, task lists come in handy to get an overview of each project task. Task list templates are easy to customize based on your project requirements and help you keep track of your team’s progress by monitoring status updates.

This Excel Project Task List template from Vertex42 lets you easily group your tasks by priority and track key dates to keep deadlines attainable and not overwhelming. You can also highlight the priority column and add a progress bar to monitor the task's status.

In addition to this Excel template, you can help your team prioritize their tasks with Spreadsheet.com’s Team Task List Template.

This project template uses a Gantt chart to generate a timeline view of all tasks and their dependencies and keeps track of upcoming weekly and monthly milestones, all organized chronologically.

Milestones serve as a way of tracking the progress of your project. Since every successful project depends on meeting deadlines, this Excel Project Timeline template could become an indispensable tool for your team. Establish a timeframe for each task within the project, use distinct colors for different tasks, and monitor how your project progresses towards completion.

Alternatively, consider this Project Timeline with Milestones Template from Spreadsheet.com to make sure your team is hitting their deadlines. 

When you’re managing a project, accurately tracking your project budget is essential. Consider using this Project Budget template from Vertex42 to keep your project on budget.

List tasks, estimate costs, track actual costs, and relay budget updates to stakeholders as the project progresses.

With this template, you can develop a project budget that incorporates all costs, such as labor, technology, fixed costs, travel, and other expenses. It can be adapted and customized to any industry.

Despite its simple appearance, this template comes with robust features for creating categories, tasks, and sub-tasks. 

It includes areas for details like fixed costs, actual amounts, and how far your project deviates from its budget. This allows project managers to visualize the entire budget and plan accordingly. 

Another option for managing your project budget is Spreadsheet.com’s Project Budget template. 

Managers can browse and sort through the overview Budget sheet and view tasks grouped by the owner, as well as by their state of completion.

RACI stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. A RACI Template is sometimes referred to as a responsibility assignment matrix (RAM) or linear responsibility chart (LRC). 

This RACI Matrix template for Excel from Vertex42 can be used by project managers for initiatives involving different team members with various roles and responsibilities across the organization. It provides a great system to break down tasks into smaller parts and visualize them.

To create the RACI matrix, specify the tasks required to complete the project and assign them to the appropriate individual or a team. Review the matrix with all relevant parties before implementing it to keep all stakeholders on the same page. This will help to ensure there is no confusion on who is responsible for what.

For another way to get clarity into everyone’s roles and responsibilities, try Spreadsheet.com’s RACI Matrix Template with a built-in Kanban view. It provides the same intuitive interface, color-coded layout, and numerous advanced features. 

With a variety of pre-built Excel and Spreadsheet.com project management templates, you can stay on top of your deadlines and keep accurate track of budgets. These templates are simple to customize, easy to adopt, and designed for users with all different levels of Excel experience.