Track it and excel

Watch Video – How to Track Changes in Excel

If you work with an Excel file that needs to be updated or reviewed by other people, the option to track changes can come in handy.

You can also use it when you’re updating a file and need to keep a track of all the changes you do yourself. This can be helpful when you revisit it sometime later.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to track changes in Excel.

Enabling the Track Changes in Excel Feature

By default, this feature is disabled in Excel.

Here are the steps to enable track changes in Excel:

The above steps would enable ‘Track Changes’ in Excel and now it will highlight any change done to the workbook.

Note: For this option to work, you need to have the workbook saved on your system or a network drive. If the file has not been saved, it will first ask you to save it before enabling the ‘Track Changes’ option. If the file is already saved, it will still save it before enabling the tracking.

How do ‘Track Changes’ work in Excel?

Once you have enabled the tracking, whenever you or anybody who accesses the workbook makes any changes to it, it will get highlighted with a blue border and get a small blue triangle in the top left of the cell. This is similar to the red triangle you see when you insert a comment in a cell.

For example, below I have a dummy project plan and I have made changes in column B (cell B4 and B6).

When you hover the cursor over the cell that has a change, it will show a message that specifies what the change is, who made the change, and when it was done.

Note that when ‘track changes’ option is enabled in Excel, the workbook is shared and some of the features are automatically disabled. For example, you will not be able to protect a sheet when ‘track changes’ are ON. You will notice that some of the options in the ribbon are grayed out.

Getting a List of All the Changes

If you have a workbook that has a lot of changes made to it, you may want to get a list of all the changes separately as a list.

Here are the steps to get a list of all the changes in a new worksheet:

This will instantly create a new worksheet that will list all the changes that you have made.

Accepting/Rejecting Changes

When the changes are made, these are not final until you review these changes. This can be useful when you have the reviewed file from your colleague/boss/client, and you have to decide on what changes are to be kept and which ones are to be rejected.

Here are the steps to accept/reject changes in Excel:

If you reject a change, it will revert back to the original value.

Note that when you accept a change, you can not undo it.

Disabling Track Changes in Excel

Once your work is finalized, you can disable the track changes feature in Excel. That will remove any existing blue box in the cells and will stop tracking any further changes.

Here are the steps to disable ‘track changes’ in Excel:

Difference Between Comments and Track Changes

A lot of people prefer adding comments while reviewing other people’s work in Excel.

Here are the major differences in ‘comments’ and the ‘track changes’ functionality:

• You don’t need to edit a cell’s content in order to leave a comment. Track changes, on the other hand, would insert a note whenever there is any change in the cell.
• Adding comment is a manual process, while track changes, when enabled, would automatically record everything that happens in the worksheet.
• You can not get a list of all the comments separately in a worksheet (unless you use VBA as shown here) while you can get it with the tracking functionality with a simple click.
• When you enable track changes in Excel, some of the functionalities are disabled. This is not the case with comments.

You May Also Like the Following Tutorials:

• How to Use Spell Check in Excel.
• Using Input Message in Excel to Display Message when a Cell is Selected.

Most companies need some time tracking method to record and verify how long each employee has worked daily, weekly or monthly on specific projects.

This could be to make regular payments and also to monitor productivity and efficiency of workers.

Timesheets come in various forms. While, traditionally, a timesheet was a ‘sheet’ of paper where you manually wrote and calculated hours worked, it has now evolved into either an online shared document in excel or word format that everyone fills out each day, or an automated online software that runs in the background and tracks what your employees are working on.

Benefits of time tracking

Employee time tracking is used by large and small companies, agencies, remote teams, and growing startups, as it provides a quick and easy way to improve the productivity of your business operations.

Timesheets are a way to log what employees were working on for every hour they’re in the office. This way you know what everyone is up to, and where people are spending their time.

How does it help?

You can not only spot your most productive workers but can also analyze which projects or processes are wasting time and which are more profitable for your business.

Once you have this knowledge, you can be a better manager and take insightful decisions for the growth of your business.

In this post, we’ll cover the following:

Excel time tracking templates

We will provide you with templates of the following timesheets:

1. Weekly timesheet
2. Bi-Weekly Timesheet
3. Monthly Timesheet
4. Project Tracking Timesheet

Pros and cons of Excel time tracking

Discuss Excel time tracking sheets which although manual and time-consuming, have certain benefits.

Automated time tracking – The alternative to Excel

Finally, we will show you how to make time far easier, accurate, prevent timesheet fudging and make your team immensely more productive with Time Doctor – an automated time tracking tool.

Why Excel timesheets?

These timesheets are simple to use because employees only need to log-in the start and end time for work hours and the manager can use automated excel formulas to compute the total pay based on hourly rates and overtime pay.

Moreover, many managers and workers in traditional, non-technical companies, are used to working with Excel rather than SaaS time tracking tools.

Here are 4 free Excel time tracking templates that you can modify to track your employee work hours effectively:

1. Weekly timesheet

A weekly timesheet is necessary if you calculate your employee work hours, paid-time-off and wages on a weekly basis.

Download Your Free Weekly Timesheet

2. Bi-weekly timesheet

Some companies pay their employees once every two weeks. This bi-weekly timesheet can come in handy to compute your employee work hours, paid-time-off and wages for every 14 day period.

Download Your Free Bi-Weekly Timesheet

3. Monthly timesheet

Use this monthly timesheet if you calculate your employee work hours, paid-time-off and salaries once a month.

Download Your Free Monthly Timesheet

4. Project timesheet

Use this template if you work with different clients and need to calculate hours worked on specific projects. It can also be used in companies where billable hours need to be tracked to invoice customers correctly or where an employee’s time is tracked against projects.

Download Your Free Project Timesheet

How to use these free Excel time tracking sheets

Download the appropriate excel time tracking sheet and modify or add any columns like employee location, employee number, job code or anything else that is necessary to record any specific aspect of your business.

These excel sheets will handle all calculations for you based on formulas included within the spreadsheet cells.

Total Hours are calculated automatically. You only need to enter your Time In and Time Out data.

Total Pay is also calculated automatically based on the Rate Per Hour that you set.

In our free excel templates, the cells containing formulas used to calculate total hours and total pay is locked. This is to prevent any accidental changes being made to them. If you create your timesheets from scratch, specify which cells the users can edit and lock the cells that contain payment calculations before you save your Excel sheet.

You can also incorporate a Vacation/Sick Hours column. The employee can input this time, and it can reflect in the Total Pay depending on your company’s policy of paying for breaks due to illness, vacation, or time off.

Quick Tip: Receiving and storing excel timesheets as printouts or as separate emails from each employee can be cumbersome. To make it streamlined, use Microsoft Sharepoint, to create a document library and enable incoming email. Your employees can then send their time sheets to a central email address.

You can use these excel time tracking sheets to log and monitor employee hours, breaks, overtime, sick time, and vacation time or time away from the computer.

You can also get an overview of how an employee is working – whether they have logged in more overtime hours or taken frequent vacations and sick days – by glancing at his timesheet. Although once more than a few months of data gets accumulated in Excel timesheets, it gets increasingly complicated to get an overview or analyze that data.

Benefits of Excel time tracking sheets

Here are 3 benefits of excel time tracking sheets:

1. Excel is free as it comes bundled with Microsoft Office packages. You can download our templates or create your timesheets on excel from scratch. You don’t have to pay an extra dime to buy any new software or app.

2. It is safe and straightforward to use. All employees need to do is log-in their in-time and out-time. They don’t have to worry about anything else. You as a manager also do not have to compute payments since excel formulas do that for you. It is certainly simpler than using a paper timesheet. Moreover, all data is saved locally on your corporate network drive.

3. No training needed. As a manager or employee, you do not need any additional training to start using Excel timesheets.

Drawbacks of Excel time tracking sheets

But all is not rosy in the Excel world.

Here are 7 reasons why using Excel time tracking sheets may be bad for your business:

1. It is susceptible to human error. If formulas are incorrect, or sum calculations leave out key figures, or you forget to input data in the correct format, it could all lead to gross miscalculations and payroll errors.

Moreover, the most common human error that is faced by excel sheets is mistakenly deleted timesheets. Often, it is challenging to recover data or entire timesheets deleted by accident. This could have disastrous results if there are no backups or systems to recover deleted data.

2. Cannot track actual work hours versus reported work hours. You have to depend on your employees’ ability to clock ‘in’ and ‘out’ times. When reporting time spent on a project, a discrepancy of 5-10 minutes may not be excessive, however, but if these variations are more significant, it can cost your business a lot of money. There is no way to monitor how long a worker is actually working on a task.

3. Difficult to modify or update data. Adding new data or making corrections to spreadsheets is time-consuming. Moreover, corrections may not even be seen until it’s too late for the pay period and the worker may get inadequate wages.

4. Analysis of a workers productivity is also cumbersome with excel timesheets. As a manager, you can look at a workers weekly timesheet to see how long he has worked on various days or specific projects. However, the volume of data presented in a single sheet can make it difficult to see patterns or make any useful insights. It can also lead to wrong interpretation of data and wrong decisions being taken based on those misinterpretations.

5. Historical data is not safe. Excel timesheets are not designed to store historical data. Very often, these files are “updated” to keep their size manageable, and in the process companies lose historical data.

Without historical data, it is difficult to spot long-term trends or strategize how to build productivity systems for the company and its workers.

6. Not designed for ‘real time’ work. When you have a large team, it is very cumbersome to track which employees have submitted their timesheets.

Often, the timesheet that is shared is not in real-time, so managers get delayed information on actual hours worked or inadequate information on changed circumstances. If an employee is on break for medical or emergency reasons, it may not reflect in the timesheet.

Time tracking sheets are, at best, emailed once a week. This can pose the problem of the data getting lost in the managers inbox, duplication of data or even getting the wrong version of the file.

7. Excel tends to crash. The more you update and share a particular excel sheet, the higher the chance of the file getting corrupted and the data being lost.

Automatic, non-intrusive time tracking

Using a cloud based-time tracking app can make it easier and effective to monitor employee work hours, not only for the manager but also for the employee.

A good time tracking app will have multiple features to help you improve employee productivity, prevent misuse of company time for personal reasons, help in workforce planning and allocation, track project progress, manage client billing and so on.

Moreover, they are stored in a single database which makes it easier to generate reports for individuals, small groups of employees, departments or the entire company. Another benefit is the ease of identifying when changes were made to time sheets and by which users. Also, corrections made on time tracking apps are instant which means fewer payroll errors.

Why Time Doctor?

Time Doctor is an automated, cloud-based time tracking app used by companies running remote teams, digital agencies, and more.

The tool monitors work hours in real-time and right down to the second, so they don’t have to remember if they spent 5.30 hours on the APPLE project yesterday or 5.39 hours.

You can track time spent by each employee on specific tasks and projects. The app not only tracks the total time worked by every member on your team but also provides a breakdown on how much time is spent which projects (or clients) and tasks.

However, the tool does not monitor employees’ activity during their free time or after office hours.

Total time worked on each task can be manually modified, and the manager can see whether any manual addition or deletion has been done.

You can use Time Doctor on a desktop as well as mobile. Detailed reports are available on your web-based account.

Here are the key time tracking features of Time Doctor:

Tracking in real time

Once you have finished working, it can get difficult to remember accurately how much time you spent on which tasks. Moreover, if you don’t fill your manual timesheets regularly, it can lead to an inaccurate accounting of start and end times. When using Time Doctor, you don’t need to remember anything, because time is tracked automatically as you’re working.

Time Doctor automatically generates timesheets, and no manual data entry is required.

Reminder to track time

The tool reminds you to start tracking time and also to stop tracking time when employees visit websites that may not be work-related (like Facebook).

Doesn’t track coffee breaks

The moment you leave your computer, Time Doctor automatically stops tracking time. Often, when manually tracking time employees forget to count the numerous coffee breaks and bathroom visits causing inaccurate tracking of work hours.

The moment there is no keyboard or mouse activity for a while, Time Doctor stops tracking. It also gives users the option to show afterward whether or not they were working during that time.

Multiple methods to verify accuracy of time tracked

The tool utilizes various methods to confirm if the time tracked was real work. These include screenshots taken at regular intervals, levels of keyboard and mouse activity, and which websites or applications are used.

You also can’t “double book” your time. For instance, if you allocate time for activity A to 3-5pm, you can’t assign a second activity to that same time slot.

Other features of Time Doctor worth exploring:

Website and application monitoring

Time Doctor keeps track of all the applications and websites employees visit during work hours. Managers and individuals receive a weekly report outlining which websites and applications were used, and for how long.

This report helps identify productivity issues. For example, if you’re a content writer and you’re only spending 20% of your time on writing, you can see what’s occupying the rest of your time and make adjustments to get back on track.

This is also an extremely useful feature if you work with remote employees or freelancers. This feature can help ensure that they are actually working and not doing personal work on company time. If you use excel for time tracking, this would have been impossible to verify.

Privacy Controls

The tool allows you to take screenshots of employees’ screens but only if you choose to enable this feature and with employees’ consent. Employees can also delete screenshots if they were accidentally running Time Doctor when doing personal tasks like commenting on Facebook.

Time tracking with screenshots is useful for monitoring remote employees, and for some types of companies such as design shops which can use them to review work processes and improve productivity.

Billing

You can use Time Doctor to make payments to your employees and freelancers directly by integrating it with PayPal, Payoneer, Wise, formerly TransferWise and several other payment apps. Payments can be made based on hours worked.

Managing distractions

If you open a social media or any entertainment site while working on a task, Time Doctor will generate a pop-up to ask you if you are still on your current task. It’s a great way to avoid getting distracted.

The tool also sends a weekly poor time use report to team managers with a list of distracting websites and applications viewed and the duration they were used, during work hours.

Advanced reporting

Time Doctor has the capability of creating several types of reports such as Timesheets, Time Spent on Each Project/ Task and several others. These reports can be customized for different parameters – for a particular employee, a group of employees, a particular project, date ranges, etc.

You can use this information to analyze which project or clients are more profitable and where you may be losing money.

Conclusion

If you are a solopreneur, have a really small team or only just starting out tracking employee time, it may be simple and effective to go with our free excel time tracking sheets.

However, once your business grows, and you are ready to spend on a really cool and efficient time tracking tool that is completely automated and takes the entire burden of tracking employee work hours out of your hands, give Time Doctor a shot.

   

Focus on your business

goals while we take care of your data!

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​​​​​Project management templates are an essential ingredient in replicating successful projects. With Microsoft Excel’s free templates, you can turn your simple spreadsheets into powerful project management tools.

In this article, you’ll find some of the most useful and free Microsoft Excel project management and project tracking templates you’ll want to use for your next project.

Microsoft Excel Project Timeline Templates

Let’s have a look at the best Microsoft Excel project management templates.

Note: We cover both native and third-party templates here. To find the pre-installed Excel spreadsheet templates, open Excel and search for the respective keyword from the New document screen.

If you’re already in Excel, go to File > New to bring up the template search. Check the Managing Microsoft Excel Templates section below for more details. Excel comes with several timelines and Gantt chart templates provided by Microsoft, but it also integrates templates from Vertex42, one of the most popular third-party resources for spreadsheets.

1. Work Plan Timeline

The Work Plan Timeline template is suitable for a basic project with multiple phases. When you enter your data into the worksheet, the roadmap will update automatically. This template comes pre-installed with Microsoft Excel 2016 and up.

2. Date Tracking Gantt Chart

Gantt charts are a staple in every project manager’s toolset. They help you visualize the flow of your tasks and track progress.

With this template, you can create a comprehensive Gantt chart with minimal effort. Just enter each task, complete with a description, who it’s assigned to, a percentage to indicate progress, a start date, and allocated days until completion. This template is a Microsoft Excel default.

3. Milestone and Task Project Timeline

If you want to integrate milestones into a basic timeline, this template provided by Vertex42 is ideal. It combines the best elements of a Gantt chart, i.e. the visualization of the task flow, with milestones hovering above the timeline.

Just fill in the respective tables to populate the visual. You can find this template by searching in Excel.

Excel Project Plan Templates

A project plan is a document that may require Excel charts, but is otherwise composed in Microsoft Word. For basic projects, however, you may get away with only a Microsoft Excel document.

4. Simple Gantt Chart

When you search Excel’s template repository for project plan templates, you’ll mainly find different Gantt chart variations, including this Simple Gantt Chart from Vertex42. What sets it apart from the Gantt chart above is the inclusion of project phases. This template is included in Microsoft Excel.

5. Event Planner Template

A project plan really isn’t something you typically put together in Excel. However, if you are planning a small project, like a party, you just need a one-page template that lists the essential tasks and lets you define a schedule and a budget. This template from Office Templates Online is a great start.

Excel Project Tracker Template

A search for a tracker will bring up a wild mix of personal and business-related Excel spreadsheet templates for tracking. However, you can narrow down your search by selecting the categories that relate to the project management task you’re dealing with.

6. Activity-Based Cost Tracker

This tracking template can help you get an overview of direct, indirect, and general and administrative product costs.

7. Project Tracking Template

This Vertex42 template is essential if you are handling multiple different clients, projects, and/or deliverables. It combines project details, expenses, task statuses, and due dates.

Business Plan Templates

Microsoft Excel 2016 had its own category for business plans. You could search for business and select the Business Plans category on the right. In Excel 2019 and onwards, you can perform either query, but the latter misses some templates, while the former might be overwhelming. We recommend looking into the following.

Business Plan Checklist

Creating a business plan can be a complex project in and of itself. This checklist will help you cover all your bases by guiding you through the process using a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. Note that you’ll find two similar templates in Excel, but they’re both identical SWOT analyses checklists, differing only in their formatting.

Startup Expenses

This template is a great starting point for a budding business owner who needs some help with projecting the costs of their endeavor. The template will guide you through the most common assets and services your new business might require.

Once you’ve filled in all the potential expenses, you’ll have a much better idea of how much funding you’ll need to raise to get your business up and running. For more business plan templates, have a look at our dedicated article.

Search for Online Templates

Couldn’t find the exact project management template you need inside Excel? Turn to a third-party online resource for a wider selection of Excel spreadsheet templates. We recommend the following sites.

Vertex42

This website has a few great project management templates for Microsoft Office 2003 and up. The site notes that its templates are mostly related to project scheduling. Anything more complicated might require Microsoft Project or other project management software.

On the page dedicated to project management, you’ll find a list of useful material, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Timeline
• Project Budgeting
• Critical Path Method

Each page contains a quick rundown of what the template does, one or more templates, and further tips and tricks for the respective project management tool. It’s a great resource for budding project managers.

TidyForm

TidyForm has a respectable selection of Microsoft Excel project management templates. The most popular categories are listed on the homepage. If you can’t immediately spot what you need, switch to the Business section or try the search feature.

When you scroll to the bottom of a section, you’ll see a list of popular categories and related categories. This can be helpful when trying to find just the right template.

We recommend the following pages:

• Project Budget
• Project Proposal
• Work Breakdown Structure

Still looking for the perfect template? You might have to create custom Excel templates to get exactly what you want.

Managing Microsoft Excel Templates

First, let’s see what templates you already have installed in Microsoft Excel. For the purpose of this demonstration, we’ve used Excel 2019, but the procedure is similar in Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 2016.

Defaults

When you start up Microsoft Excel, the first window you see will contain a search field for online templates. When you’re starting from an existing workbook, go to File > New to arrive at the same view.

Microsoft Excel comes with a selection of pre-installed templates. They are listed underneath the search field. You can pin favorite ones by clicking the respective symbol in the bottom right of the listing.

Search Online for More Project Templates (Excel 2016)

Searching for the type of template you need is the fastest way to locate it. For example, if you search for the term «project,» you may also see template categories listed next to the templates that match your search. The category feature no longer appears in Excel 2019.

Narrow Down Your Search (Excel 2016)

A neat feature is that you can narrow down your search by selecting multiple categories. This helps you exclude templates that may match your keyword, but not your desired category. On the downside, you may find that the perfect template is not available in Microsoft Excel.

Preview & Create Your Template

When you click a template, you’ll see a preview with a brief description of what the template provides. You can also pin the template from its preview; the symbol sits in the top right.

To download and use a template, click the Create button, which will open a new Microsoft Excel workbook with the template pre-filled.

Template Ready, Set, Go

Now that you have all the project management templates you could ever need, maybe you’re interested in additional tools, tips, and tricks. For example, did you know that you could integrate OneNote with Outlook for project management? The possibilities are endless.