While Microsoft Excel helps you manage multiple projects, deadlines, and responsibilities, creating complex spreadsheets from scratch can eat up valuable hours of your life. This is where Excel templates come into play. Whether you want to manage cash flow, create a shift calendar, develop a social media calendar, or create a task schedule, these Excel templates can streamline your workflow, automate tedious tasks, and help you reclaim valuable time.
In this post, I have selected the ten best free, time-saving Excel templates to transform the way you work. Let's go through them.
10 Event planner and schedule
As the name suggests, Event Planner is one of the must-have templates for professional event managers. You can create an ideal workbook with relevant details like event title, venue, start time, date, agenda, event checklist, categories and important contacts for various responsibilities like flowers, lighting, decorations, food, entertainment and more.
There are also a few sheets to help you manage your expenses and budgets. Once your workbook is ready, share it with your team members and plan a seamless event for your clients.
Event planner and schedule template
9 Project tracker
While Excel doesn't replace a dedicated project manager in your workflow, you can use it to track different phases of a large project. This template allows you to record projects, categories, assignees, start and end dates, estimated hours and days, and insert notes. It could be useful in technology-based programs or for practical endeavors, providing flexibility for a variety of use cases. For example, this can serve as an excellent blueprint for contractors who are designing a client's office or home renovation project from the ground up.
8 Operations plan
A deployment plan is another powerful option for managing a team's work responsibilities. You can enter task details, start and due dates, track progress with a clear chart, and enter other details. It allows you to break large projects into smaller tasks and manage them effectively to ensure a smooth completion process. It gives a clear overview of progress and status.
7 Social media content calendar
If you are an influencer, social media head of a large company, or marketing manager, you can use this Excel template to plan your business posts and tweets in Excel. You can manage messages, links, and visuals in a specific time frame across six channels, align your posts with marketing and social media schedules, and build a loyal following on major platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X.
Calendar template for social media content
6 Gantt project planner
Prefer to manage your long-term projects with Gantt charts? Look no further and copy this project planner template into your Excel workbook. It is simple and effective as it allows you to note activities, schedule their duration, start date, completion percentage, and track live progress on the sidebar. Projects with many overlapping factors or a long time frame can really benefit from such mapping.
5 Simple personal cash flow statement
It is one of the best Excel templates for professionals to manage cash flow. This workbook contains annual, monthly, and daily cash flow worksheets. You can simply enter an estimated cash flow amount that you expect to receive daily and check the estimated monthly and annual totals. The exercise can also help you oversee spending habits over the course of a month or year.
Annual Cash Flow Spreadsheet allows you to review income and expense summary and other details to manage your money like a pro.
Simple personal cash flow statement template
4 Shift work calendar
As the name suggests, this template allows you to manage employee shifts and keep track of your employees' schedules. Whether you work in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, customer service, or somewhere where employees work unusual hours, you can use this template to streamline workforce management, streamline scheduling processes, and Improve communication throughout the company.
Shift work calendar template
3 Online sales tracker
If you run a small eCommerce business on a platform like Shopify, use the online sales tracker template to track sales and profit. You can enter item details, cost per item, markup percentage, total products sold, revenue, shipping costs, shipping costs, profit per item, and even returns.
There are also some charts shown above to help you check product profit per item and sales percentage per product. Such valuable information about your overall margins can help you manage manufacturing, logistics and future product planning. You can focus on the most profitable projects and plan accordingly for demand during the holiday season.
Online sales tracker template
2 Loan repayment plan
As an entrepreneur or business owner, you may have taken out a loan from your local bank. Whether you want to manage and track your home, vehicle, personal, education or business loans, this template is the perfect choice for you. You can enter the loan amount, annual interest rate, loan duration in years, number of payments per year, start date, scheduled payments and more.
You can monitor total payments, principal, interest, ending balance and other details with expertise, ensuring the bank doesn't incur any hidden fees. You can also theoretically adjust your future payment amount in the spreadsheet to see how far you can get (and how much money you can save) if you plan to pay it off faster than necessary.
Loan repayment plan template
1 Service invoice
Our Excel template list for professionals would simply be incomplete without an invoice or sales receipt template. Although there are several invoice apps out there, you don't want to sign up for another software just to create a few invoices every month. This is where the service bill comes into play.
You can enter a seller's name, job, service date, due date, description, quantity, unit price, sales tax, payment method and other details to send your customer a professional-quality invoice.
Optimize your work in no time
Although Excel is a powerful tool, you shouldn't let it become a time waster. Instead of starting with a blank workbook, download relevant templates from the list above, customize them to your liking, and achieve maximum productivity without breaking a sweat.
Besides these templates, you should also explore Excel plugins to integrate your favorite third-party tools like Jira, Acrobat, Lucidchart, etc. into your workbook. Check out our dedicated post to find the best Excel plugins.