A Status Report is a powerful communication tool used to create a high-level summary of your project at a specific point in time. It gives you a sneak peek of what’s happening inside a project and what’s next. Streamlining the reporting process also brings everyone on the same page about changing project needs or shifting stakeholder priorities as your project moves along.
Whether you are running behind schedule or going over budget, a status report helps you track performance and share updates with key stakeholders such as clients, sponsors, or team members. On top of being a way to share updates, a status report also helps you pinpoint areas that need greater organizational support or corrective action. This futuristic focus on what’s next is what distinguishes status reports from project reports (but more on that later!).
Thanks to our live, fully editable template, you can easily create a snapshot of the current state of your project, including key milestones, risks, changes, financials, as well as overall project health. Our spreadsheet contains customizable sections focusing on 4 project aspects – Schedule, Budget, Risk Management, Change Management, as well as overall project health. To make information more engaging, we use visual aids so you can process more information in less time.
Visual Aid Features
- Bar graph to show planned vs. actual budget
- Color-coded cells to highlight Task Status + Risk Severity & Priority
- Built-in bars to indicate the number of risks identified according to how critical they are
- Color-coded doughnut chart to show overall project health
- Executive Summary visible at the top-right of the mainsheet
Now, let’s explore our template in a bit more detail…
Project Details
Here, flesh out the most basic details about the project and report, such as:
- The name of the project
- The project’s unique ID (or version in case of periodically extended projects)
- The name of the person responsible for overseeing team progress & performance (usually, the project lead)
- When is the report being submitted (usually, to stakeholders such as investors or donors)
- Who is creating the report (usually, the manager, a technical writer or an M&E officer)
- What reporting period is being covered (weekly, monthly, biennial – as the case may be)
Project Health
Use this section to create a quick summary of the current health of your project. Compare the project’s developments & outcomes to the original project plan to see how far you have come and how far you still have to go.
In our template, you can assess the health of any project in terms of:
- Quality – Are deliverables meeting quality standards as stipulated in the project design?
- Resources – Are you short on any critical resources like funds or equipment? Do you need more staff to get work done?
- Timeline – Are there any major delays in task completion due to unforeseen factors?
- Scope – Is the project scope well-defined and stable? Are you expecting any major changes or disruptions to it?
- Risks – Are there any potential risks you are anticipating? If you are, do you have contingency plans in place to tackle them?
Depending on your answers to the above questions, make a fact-based calculation about the health of your project. We use a color-coded system to help you visualize this, where:
- Green means the project is on track, so there’s not much reason to worry.
- Amber = The project is facing some issues that are being managed for now but still need to be closely monitored by a lead team member.
- Red = Project is facing severe or critical issues with important deadlines being missed, necessitating a recovery plan to bring the project back on track.
Project Schedule
A project schedule is like a roadmap of your planned project activities. By consolidating granular-level data about each task, deliverable, or milestone in your project, a schedule ensures things are happening at the right pace, are done by the right people, and in the right order.
Project status reports like ours help you present the current status of that schedule. If you are generating reports at the end of every project phase, you can use this section to present which tasks in that phase have been completed, which ones are currently in progress, and which are still untouched.
In our template, you can present each action item as associated with a major milestone or one of the project’s key deliverables.
Follow up on deadlines
Timelines drive project success, so this section will be incomplete if it doesn’t tell you when each task started or ends.
A progress bar
Another cool feature of this section is a blue progress bar. You can use it to give a quick visual peek into how far along you are for each task or deliverable. Manually set the percentage of each task completed, and update information in real-time each time you generate & share a new status report with the project stakeholders.
Additional notes
We also added space at the end where you can jot down any other comments or remarks you may have, say, challenges faced by team members vis-a-vis timely completion, or any delays expected for the future.
Project Budget
This section helps you present an overview of the budget associated with each task and the current spending.
Planned vs. actual costs
In Column C, create a complete list of your approved expenses as found in your formal Budget Implementation Plan and approved during initial planning.
Let’s call these your planned costs. However, in practice, you might end up paying more or less. For this reason, we add a separate column to record the actual cost of each item (Column D). Based on these two values, we calculate the difference between the planned and actual budget. This is useful information for project managers, stakeholders, and external auditors who want to effectively track project resources and prevent their misuse.
In our customizable drop-down, we give you three options to track each budget item; ‘Under’, ‘Over’, and ‘On Track’.
Use this section to present the current budget status for each task.
Risk Management
A well-planned project should be prepared for the worst, from environmental hazards to cybersecurity risks. Our template helps you prepare a report on which risks your project is facing at a certain time and whether something is being done to address them.
- In Column B, identify each risk your project faced during the period being covered by the status report (say, Server downtime or shortage of raw materials).
In Column C, identify the severity of the risk as either High, Medium, or Low. This allows you to gauge the impact of each risk on overall project health & progress.
- In Column E, set your priorities by determining what response level is best suited to each risk and how soon it must be tackled (High, Medium, and Low).
- The next two columns are to briefly refer to the action plan, if there’s one in place, and the person responsible for mitigating that risk.
Change Management
Whether you are adapting to market fluctuations, budget overruns, or increased employee turnover, change is a part of every project. From small, relatively easy adjustments in a task timeline to large, complex changes in your scope or budget, you need a way to record, assess, approve, and resolve a change. This part of our report template helps you present the changes approved in the reporting period and their impact on the overall or specific area of the project.
When preparing the report, you can add the following details:
In the first three columns (B, C, and D), you identify and describe the changes your project faced during a certain reporting period. Our template lets you narrow down the impact of each change on a specific area or aspect of the project.
Use a unique ID like we have to track changes when scanning project documentation, helping you avoid confusion later on.
Once you number the change, add a short and clear description of what was altered or modified. For example, a 10-day extension in the deadline for a specific task, or a 10% decrease in the funds available for marketing.
Next, zero in on the impact on the project in terms of scope, timeline, budget, and resources. This helps project managers evaluate the risks and benefits associated with each change, allowing them to make more informed decisions and develop the right corrective plans.
Lastly, you can add info about the task owner, who approved this change, and any comments regarding the task.
Recommendations & Comments
As you can see, at the very bottom of our spreadsheet, we have a separate text box to add any special comments or thoughts you might have. Use this space to talk about any unforeseen challenges or setbacks you faced so far, or any future steps you think are necessary for a successful project closeout.
Who Is Our Template For?
- Project Managers
- Team Members
- Stakeholders & Executives
- Investors, sponsors & donors
- Quality Assurance Teams
Wrap Up
Whether you are a project lead who wants to prepare a status report for each phase or a big-shot investor looking to stay informed about the status of multiple commercial ventures, a status report can help you make more informed and rewarding decisions.
By providing a documented history of a project, a status report also gives you historical data. So the next time you plan a similar project, you can avoid potential roadblocks to ensure a smoother workflow. You might choose to generate a status report daily, weekly, monthly, or every quarter. This depends on the nature & complexity or your project as well as stakeholder needs & requirements.
Our free, editable Project Status Report template can be instantly downloaded in .xlsx, .xltx, and .ods formats and can be used online with Google Sheets.
