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How to create a project timeline in Excel (3 methods + an alternative)
Project Management 10 min read

How to create a project timeline in Excel (3 methods + an alternative)

We’ll show you three ways to build a project timeline in Excel. And, because that can be a headache, we’ll also show you an alternative to building your timeline in Excel.

Budgeting with Google Sheets: A quick guide
Project Management 7 min read

Budgeting with Google Sheets: A quick guide

Master the basics of Google Sheets for budgeting. Enjoy dynamic dashboards, time-saving templates, and real-time tracking with Wrike.

Real Estate Vendor Spreadsheets: A How-to Guide
Project Management 10 min read

Real Estate Vendor Spreadsheets: A How-to Guide

A real estate vendor spreadsheet helps property owners, agents, and managers to organize their work and assets. Learn more about using this tool with Wrike.

Can You Build a Gantt Chart Template in Excel or Google Sheets?
Project Management 10 min read

Can You Build a Gantt Chart Template in Excel or Google Sheets?

With a Gantt chart template, you can visualize project data in real time. Find out how to create your own template with this guide.

How to Make a Budget Spreadsheet for Your Small Business in 2023
Leadership 7 min read

How to Make a Budget Spreadsheet for Your Small Business in 2023

Starting a business can be an overwhelming process, with business plans, leases, financing, legal documents — and monthly budget sheets. We know you’d almost certainly rather spend time refining your product, talking with happy customers, or honing your investor pitch than hunch over spreadsheets, calculating the seemingly impossible amount of money it’s going to take to get your business off the ground. But whether you are a manager or a business owner, creating a budget is absolutely essential to your success.  This article will help you understand small business budgeting basics to help your company thrive in 2023. If you want to make your life even easier, we offer an easy-to-use monthly budget template that will help you log expenses, sort costs by category, view monthly spending, and examine budget details — all within Wrike.  Let’s start with the building blocks: monthly budget planning.  Start with a monthly expense sheet Your monthly budget planning worksheet is a roadmap for your business, helping you define priorities, understand where your business is going, and determine whether you’re on the right path. It’s a key factor when raising capital, whether you're applying for a loan or pitching to investors, and a cornerstone of your business plan. It can help you minimize risk and experiment with how to best allocate resources. That’s why it’s so important to take the time to create an accurate and realistic budget that’s specific to your business and goals.  You need to start with basic questions that will help you gauge your finances. How much money do you have? How much do you need to spend on materials, manpower, and marketing? How much revenue is required to meet your business goals? Can you afford to buy new equipment, run a new advertising campaign, or hire another team member? Do you have an emergency fund you can tap into if unexpected costs arise? These are all key questions that will help you determine your starting point for your monthly and annual budgets.  How to make a monthly budget Making a monthly budget can seem daunting, but it essentially involves writing down each and every expense you expect to have over the course of a month. It’s helpful to categorize these expenses to get a clear idea of where your budget is being spent. Costs involved in a monthly budget typically fall into two categories: monthly expenses and one-time costs. Costs such as employee salaries, lease payments, utilities, and insurance are all recurring monthly expenses, whereas line items such as purchasing equipment and consultant fees constitute one-time costs.  Here is what you need to include in your monthly expense sheet: Revenue: Estimated sales figures (err on the conservative side if you can't be exact) Fixed costs: Rent, insurance, etc. These figures don’t typically change from month to month.  Variable costs: These costs typically correlate with sales, such as the cost of raw materials to produce your product, inventory, shipping/freight, etc.  Semi-variable costs: These expenses are influenced by the volume of your business, including salaries, marketing and advertising, etc.  Profits: To determine profits, subtract your costs from your revenue. Once you have a profit estimate, you can determine how to invest in your business, whether that means upgrading equipment, moving to a larger office or better location, adding staff, or giving your employees raises.  Now that you’ve set up your monthly budget, make sure to revisit it periodically. It should not be a static document that you check once a quarter or only at the start of the year. Revisit it every month and see where you can adjust or experiment — maybe shift some funds to give your marketing budget a boost for a few months and see how it affects your sales pipeline. If you find you’re getting a good return, that’s useful information when it comes to future decisions about allocating resources. Reviewing your budget data using accounting software will also help you anticipate your future spending needs, profits, and cash flow. Wrike’s monthly budget tracker template can help Wrike has a ready-to-use monthly budget template that can help you set up a robust budget tracking system quickly, without any coding or special knowledge required. You might be tempted to use a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel, but using a more robust budgeting app will give you a more holistic and flexible view of your annual budget, allowing you to easily create reports, visualize overspend, and more.  Wrike’s monthly budget tracker template has all the features you need to take control of your company expenses. Log expenses with a custom request form  Sort costs by category using a clear folder structure View monthly spending on a shared calendar Examine budget details with a pre-built report  These powerful features will allow you to make informed financial decisions about your business’s budget, thanks to better visibility into your revenue and expenses.  In addition, Wrike integrates directly with over 400 apps, including many of the most popular budgeting and financial apps available, so you can connect your accounts and populate your Wrike system with information instantly.  Tools for tracking business expenses and budgets Along with a monthly budget spreadsheet template, the right project management software is one of the best ways to prevent out-of-control spending and overrun costs. You’ll understand exactly where your work stands, how much money and time has been spent, and be able to more accurately predict the cost and timeline for the entire project.  Wrike helps you manage your budgets and projects with ease Use Wrike to take total control of your business finances by creating budgets, managing projects, and so much more. In addition to budget management, Wrike can also help manage projects and teams with ease. You can avail of the following features with Wrike:  @mentions for easy communication with your team Gantt charts for managing timelines In-depth performance reporting Automated team reminders Kick-start your budget planning process with Wrike. Get started with a two-week free trial of Wrike —no credit card required! 

Simple Cost Comparison Template & How-to Guide
Project Management 10 min read

Simple Cost Comparison Template & How-to Guide

Need to figure out the best choices for your budget? A cost comparison template can help you weigh up your options. Discover more with Wrike.

Hot Tips for Content Calendar Creation
Marketing 10 min read

Hot Tips for Content Calendar Creation

Content marketing and project calendars are a match made in heaven. We spoke with two leading content marketers to hear their advice and editorial calendar best practices.

Export Your Filtered Task Lists to Excel
News 3 min read

Export Your Filtered Task Lists to Excel

We love getting ideas from our users on how we can improve Wrike project management software. This helps us adjust our development roadmap to your needs and deliver the most popular requested project management features first. Recently, our customers who manage big projects have asked about the ability to apply various filters when exporting their tasks from Wrike to Excel. We’ve made that happen, and starting today, you can export task lists, narrowed down by specific criteria, from anywhere within your workspace. For instance, if you have some typical tasks that sometimes repeat, you might want to create a template for them. You can find these tasks by using the appropriate search criteria (1). Then, after you click on the Export button and choose Excel (2), Wrike will ask you whether you want to export all tasks or only the filtered list. Choose the second option (3), and that’s it – you get an .xls spreadsheet with the tasks you need to use as a template in the future. Obviously, this is just one example of the feature’s implementation, and we hope it will be helpful for you and your team, too!  

How Wrike Helps Advice Local Capture Millions of Dollars in Revenue Each Year
Productivity 10 min read

How Wrike Helps Advice Local Capture Millions of Dollars in Revenue Each Year

Justin Liles of Advice Local uses Wrike to maximize output & uncover lost revenue

Using If Then Statements in Excel to Set the Conditions for Success
Project Management 3 min read

Using If Then Statements in Excel to Set the Conditions for Success

Maintaining spreadsheets is not the easiest or most effective method for managing a project. Still, should you find yourself relying on a workbook to track assigned tasks and overall team performance, it's important to learn how to do if then statements in Excel.

How the Creative Team at Safelite AutoGlass Ditched Spreadsheets and Boosted Productivity
Project Management 10 min read

How the Creative Team at Safelite AutoGlass Ditched Spreadsheets and Boosted Productivity

After toiling with spreadsheets and emails, Safelite AutoGlass chose Wrike to help them organize, optimize, and build Operational Excellence.

Understanding Absolute Cell Reference: Using Excel for Budgets and Calculations
Project Management 3 min read

Understanding Absolute Cell Reference: Using Excel for Budgets and Calculations

Tasks like planning budgets or reviewing progress for a business initiative can go far more smoothly if you have a strong grounding in the basics of putting together a spreadsheet in Excel. One concept you'll have to understand is how to use cell references, including the difference between relative and absolute cell references.

How to Create an Excel Timeline Template
Project Management 5 min read

How to Create an Excel Timeline Template

Visual timelines are essential tools for planning, tracking, and managing a project. You can map out dependencies and milestones to get an accurate overview of progress and deadlines, and create a reusable version, such as an event timeline template, to steer your future projects too. But while using these Gantt chart-style timelines for project management is fairly easy, creating one in Excel can be tricky. We'll walk you through the process of how to make a timeline in Excel and share a project schedule template you can reuse for future work. How to Create a Timeline in Excel  Step 1: Start by creating a table List each task in your project from beginning to end, including key decisions and deliverables, and set a start date, end date, and duration for each one. Next, turn your table into a bar chart. Select Insert, then click the Bar Chart icon and choose the 2-D stacked bar chart.  Step 2: Add Start Dates Right click your empty bar chart, then choose Select Data. When the Data Source window appears, click Add under Legend Entries (Series). The Edit Series window will appear. Click in the empty “Series name:“ field, then click on the Start Date cell of the table you created in step 1. Finally, click on the spreadsheet icon to the right of the “Series values:” field to open the Edit Series window. Click on the first Start Date in your table, then drag your mouse down to the last Start Date to highlight all your task start dates. Click on the spreadsheet icon at the end of the Edit Series form. The previous window will appear; select ‘Ok.” Step 3: Add Durations Follow the same process with your Durations column: click Add under Legend Entries (Series). Select the empty “Series: name” field, then click the first Duration cell in your table. Click the spreadsheet icon next to the Series values field to open the Edit Series window. Select the first duration in your table, and drag your mouse down to the last duration to select all your duration entries. Click the spreadsheet icon to the right of the Edit Series form, then select Ok to add durations to your Excel timeline. Step 4: Add Task Names Right click on any bar in your chart and choose Select Data. Click the spreadsheet icon to the right of Category (X) Axis Labels, then click and drag to highlight the names of your tasks in your table. Do not select the name of the column (Task), only the task names themselves. Then click ok, and ok again. Step 5: Format Your Gantt Chart You now have a stacked bar chart indicating the starting dates of your tasks and their durations—but your tasks are in reverse order. Right click your list of tasks and select Format Axis. Select the ‘Categories in reverse order’ checkbox. To hide the blue part of each bar, right click on the blue part of any bar and choose Format Data Series. Click Fill, then select No fill. Then click Border Color and select No line, and finally Shadow and unclick the Shadow box. Then delete the unnecessary bar chart key to create more space. To get rid of the white space at the beginning of your Gantt chart, right click on the first Start Date in your data table and choose Format Cells. Under General, write down the number listed. Hit Cancel. Back in your Gantt chart, right click on the dates above the bars and choose Format Axis. Change the Minimum bound to the number you’ve written down. Select close. If you want to get rid of the white space between the bars, right click on the top red bar and select Format Data Series. Set Separated to 100% and Gap Width to 10%. Congratulations! You’ve created a project timeline in Excel. Download a Free Excel Timeline Template Instead of creating your own project timeline template in Excel, download one that's ready made. Track deadlines and project status for all kinds of projects, from software development to online marketing campaigns, with this free timeline template download from Microsoft Office. An Easier Way to Create Project Timelines As you can see, it’s time consuming and tedious to create project timelines in Excel. Plus, whenever a deadline changes or new tasks need to be added, it’s difficult to manually update your Excel chart.  Instead of messing with spreadsheets and table formatting, use an online Gantt chart. Wrike’s Timeline feature lets you easily plan your projects, set due dates, milestones and dependencies, and adjust to changes by dragging and dropping tasks and durations. You can also share your timeline with colleagues, or take a snapshot and send the link to clients and stakeholders so they can get progress updates quickly and easily. Get a free trial of Wrike and try it out for yourself, with nothing to download or install. 

Tutorial: Quickly Create Folders/Tasks and Rename Them with Excel
Project Management 3 min read

Tutorial: Quickly Create Folders/Tasks and Rename Them with Excel

Looking for a way to quickly mass create Wrike folders and tasks and rename them easily? Here's a trick: use Microsoft Excel.

Calendar Tools for Every Project Management Need
Collaboration 7 min read

Calendar Tools for Every Project Management Need

There’s no doubt about it: when you’re managing a project, you'll need to juggle at least a few deadlines. We’re sharing a few of our favorite calendar tools for project management.

How Spreadsheets Are Costing You Time and Money
Collaboration 5 min read

How Spreadsheets Are Costing You Time and Money

Regardless of all the time you put into spreadsheets, they are inefficient and costly. Let's take a look at the three major things you sacrifice while managing a spreadsheet.

3 Work Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Tools That Should Be Extinct
Project Management 5 min read

3 Work Dinosaurs: Prehistoric Tools That Should Be Extinct

Your workplace has dinosaurs — those outdated work tools or processes that used to be able to handle the job but are no longer viable in this day and age of increased connection and collaboration. It's time to update your jurassic methods, or else get ready for extinction.

Say Goodbye to Gantt Charts in Excel With These Project Management Templates
Project Management 10 min read

Say Goodbye to Gantt Charts in Excel With These Project Management Templates

Manually building Gantt charts in Excel? Try Wrike’s project templates that give you the mobility, flexibility, and agility to adjust Gantt charts in real time.

A Complete Guide to Milestone Charts
Project Management 5 min read

A Complete Guide to Milestone Charts

Discover how to use a milestone chart to track projects, meet deadlines, and monitor progress. Start using Wrike as your milestone chart software of choice.

Get Organized in 2017 with Free Excel Calendar Templates
Productivity 5 min read

Get Organized in 2017 with Free Excel Calendar Templates

We've gathered this collection of free calendar templates for Excel to help you plan your time wisely, along with tips for effectively scheduling your day, your week, your month... and even your year.