Practical guide / Project Planner Kit 2.3

What can move next, and who has time to do it?

Use the fictional example to add one working day to a task. Follow both predecessors into the later schedule, then check owner load before accepting dates.

Illustration of a project board with linked tasks, a timer and a pencil

Your first useful result: Move one duration. Follow the dependent work. Follow the first task

Actual Workday load for the optional schedule, with ALEX and SAM capacity records. — Actual locally recalculated worksheet; fictional example. Workday load uses only scheduled tasks and your entered hours per working day. Remaining effort is spread evenly over scheduled working days. It flags overload; it does not move work to level resources. Follow the before-and-after records

Turn the project into actual tasks

Write tasks with a unique ID, owner, priority, planned dates, estimated hours and milestone.

The workbook checks the records and uses the planned hours to weight project progress.

Review: Give each piece of work a person, a time window and an estimate.

Choose which dependency path you maintain

For the original manual plan, select one earlier Task ID in Tasks. For optional automatic dates, enter valid existing Task IDs, durations and up to two earlier predecessors in Schedule.

Original Tasks checks whether its predecessor is Done without moving dates. Auto Schedule calculates working-day dates from both earlier schedule predecessors, gaps, explicit weekends and holidays.

Review: Use the matching views: Gantt and Owners for original manual dates; Plan Gantt and Workday load for Schedule. Do not expect the two plans to sync.

Check dates and workload together

Set the review date, record each owner's capacity for a seven-day period and keep task dates current.

The Gantt sheet shows task dates across 12 weeks. The Owners sheet spreads estimated remaining task hours evenly across each task's calendar days, then compares the portion in the next seven days with capacity.

Review: Review whether the dates and the people available tell the same story.

Update the plan after doing the work

Record status, percentage complete and logged hours in Tasks. Maintain original manual dates yourself, or review the separate optional Schedule after changing a duration or predecessor.

Original overdue, dependency, milestone and Dashboard views follow Tasks. Optional automatic planned dates propagate through Schedule; Workday load flags overload without moving work to resolve it.

Review: Finish the weekly review with a clear list of delays, next actions and decisions about the plan.

Choose the optional automatic schedule

Enter valid existing Task IDs, duration and up to two earlier schedule predecessors.

Working-day start and finish dates exclude selected weekends and explicit holidays; valid dependency edits propagate forward.

Review: Review Plan Gantt and Workday load before committing. Original manual dates remain unchanged.

Check the assumptions.

One project per workbook. Save a separate working copy for another project.
Original Tasks uses one earlier predecessor and manual dates. The separate optional Schedule supports two earlier schedule predecessors and working-day rescheduling. No critical-path calculation or automatic resource levelling.
Both timelines show twelve weeks. The original Gantt reads Tasks dates; Plan Gantt reads optional Schedule dates. Status, progress, hours and actual work remain manual.
Original Owners estimates seven calendar days. New Workday load uses the selected working calendar and only scheduled tasks, evenly spreading remaining hours over their working days. Unscheduled tasks are outside the report.
No live collaboration service, calendar sync, notifications or external integrations.
Resolve every input warning before relying on calculated views.
Weekend choices: Sat/Sun, Fri/Sat or Sunday only; up to 50 holiday dates. Schedule dependencies must be valid earlier rows. Manual mode clears optional inputs and reads original dates exactly; it does not shift weekend dates.

Keep a copy you can return to.

Keep the supplied clean and example files unchanged. Save your own working file with a useful name, such as project-planner-2027-home.xlsx, and keep a dated backup before a large edit. A purchased ZIP is the blank source, not a backup of your entries.

If an input or formula is replaced

Undo the edit while it is still available, or return to a known good backup. If you need a fresh clean file, transfer only your records into its marked input cells and follow the setup guide again. Do not paste whole sheets over the supplied formulas, validations or reference lists. Check IDs, units, dates and linked results against the example before relying on the copy.

When the supplied rows are full

100 tasks · 20 milestones · 20 owners · 100 optional task schedules · 50 explicit holiday dates · 20 workday owner capacities. Calculation ranges and validations have fixed capacities. A new row below a table does not prove that every linked result includes it.

For a separate period, project or volume, preserve the old workbook and start a named clean copy. If records must carry forward, record exactly which inputs you transfer, preserve their references and compare the opening and closing figures. Avoid copying historical activity as both an opening amount and a new movement. There is no automatic migration between files.

Inspect the workbook before you choose.

View its real sheets and a fictional calculation example.

Explore Project Planner Kit

Written for version 2.3. Examples describe the supplied workflow; they are not customer results.