Excel for Project Tracking: Where It Falls Short (And What Actually Works)

You’ve built a Gantt chart in Excel. It’s got coloured bars, task names down the left side, dates across the top, and maybe even some conditional formatting that changes colour when things are overdue. It took a while to set up, but it looks great on a projector in the Monday morning meeting.

The problem isn’t how it looks. The problem is what it can’t do. And you won’t notice those gaps until a project slips, a resource is double-booked, or a dependency chain collapses — and your beautiful spreadsheet has no way to warn you.

Where Excel Project Tracking Works

Let’s be fair. Excel handles project tracking fine when:

• You’re tracking one project at a time — a single list of tasks with start dates and end dates
• One person manages the schedule — they own the spreadsheet, they update it, nobody else touches it
• Tasks are mostly independent — there aren’t complex chains where Task C can’t start until Tasks A and B are both done
• The project is short — weeks, not months. The shorter the project, the less drift matters
• Status updates are informal — you chat with people and update the sheet yourself

If that describes your situation, Excel is genuinely fine. Use a structured table, add conditional formatting for overdue items, and get on with it. You don’t need project management software for a 15-task fit-out.

The Dependency Problem

This is where Excel project tracking breaks first and hardest.

In a real project, tasks depend on each other. The electrician can’t wire the building until the walls are framed. You can’t order materials until the scope is confirmed. Testing can’t start until development is done. These aren’t suggestions — they’re hard constraints.

In Excel, a dependency is just something you know in your head. The spreadsheet has no concept of “Task 7 can’t start until Task 3 finishes.” You can draw them next to each other on a Gantt chart and add an arrow with a shape tool, but that arrow is decoration. It doesn’t do anything.

When Task 3 slips by a week, Task 7’s bar stays exactly where it was. Every downstream task stays where it was. Your Gantt chart now shows a plan that’s physically impossible — Task 7 starting before Task 3 is done — and there’s no warning, no red flag, nothing. Just a chart that looks fine until you compare it to reality.

The Resource Allocation Gap

Who’s working on what? Can Sarah take on this new task, or is she fully committed for the next three weeks? Is your subcontractor available the week you need them?

In Excel, resource allocation is usually a name typed in a column next to a task. You can filter by name to see everything assigned to one person. What you can’t see is whether those assignments overlap, whether they add up to more than 40 hours in a week, or whether moving one task creates a conflict somewhere else.

Project management tools show you a resource view — a timeline of each person’s commitments across all projects. You can see at a glance that Dave is over-allocated next week, and drag a task to a different week to fix it. In Excel, you’d need to manually cross-reference dates and durations across multiple rows, probably across multiple sheets, and do the maths in your head.

This becomes critical when you’re running multiple projects simultaneously. A single project in Excel is manageable. Three or four projects sharing the same team, tracked in separate spreadsheets? That’s where people get double-booked, deadlines get missed, and nobody finds out until it’s too late.

The Status Update Problem

How do you know if a task is on track? In most Excel-based project tracking, the answer is: someone told you. In a meeting, on a call, via a text message, in an email. You then update the spreadsheet to reflect what they said.

This creates three problems:

• Status is always stale. The spreadsheet reflects what someone said yesterday, not what’s true right now. Between updates, anything could have changed.
• Status depends on honesty and communication. If someone doesn’t mention a delay, the spreadsheet shows green when reality is red. There’s no mechanism to verify progress — only self-reporting.
• The update process is tedious. Chasing people for status updates, then manually entering them into the spreadsheet, is time-consuming enough that it often slips. The busier the project gets (i.e., the more you need accurate status), the less likely updates actually happen.

What Excel Project Tracking Actually Costs You

The costs aren’t dramatic. Nobody loses $50,000 because of a Gantt chart. Instead, it’s a slow drip:

• Projects run late because dependency slips weren’t caught early. A two-day delay on one task becomes a two-week delay by the time it cascades through the chain.
• People are double-booked because nobody had visibility across projects. That means rework, overtime, or missed deadlines — all expensive.
• Status meetings take twice as long because half the time is spent establishing what’s actually happening, rather than deciding what to do about it.
• The project manager becomes a bottleneck because they’re the only one who knows how to interpret the spreadsheet. When they’re sick or on leave, the project drifts.

When Off-the-Shelf Tools Work (And When They Don’t)

Before you build anything custom, consider whether a standard project management tool solves your problem. Monday.com, Asana, and Microsoft Project all handle dependencies, resource allocation, and status tracking out of the box.

They work well when:

• Your projects follow standard patterns (tasks, milestones, deadlines)
• You don’t need deep integration with other business systems (quoting, invoicing, inventory)
• Your team will actually adopt the tool (this is the hardest part)

They fall short when:

• Your project workflow is industry-specific — construction, field services, and manufacturing have scheduling constraints that generic tools don’t model well
• Project data needs to flow into other systems — if a completed task should trigger an invoice, update inventory, or notify a subcontractor, you’re back to manual processes or expensive integrations
• You need a single view across projects, resources, and financials — most off-the-shelf tools handle scheduling but not the business context around it

Making the Most of Excel While You’re Still Using It

If you’re not ready to move on, these steps will reduce the pain:

• Keep it simple. A task list with columns for task name, owner, start date, due date, status, and notes is more useful than a complex Gantt chart that nobody updates. Fancy visuals that drift from reality are worse than a plain list that’s accurate.
• Use conditional formatting for overdue items. A formula that compares the due date to TODAY() and turns the row red is a simple early warning system.
• Review weekly, not monthly. Excel project tracking drifts fast. A weekly 15-minute review to update status and flag risks is far more effective than a monthly deep dive that uncovers problems too late.
• Accept its limits. Use Excel for the schedule, but don’t pretend it replaces communication. Dependencies, resource conflicts, and status still need human attention — the spreadsheet is a reference, not a management system.

The real question isn’t whether Excel can track a project. It can. The question is whether it can warn you when a project is about to go wrong. That’s where it falls short, and that’s what purpose-built tools are designed to do.