If there’s one thing I’ve learned after spending far too many hours tinkering with Excel, it’s that I don’t need to build every spreadsheet from scratch. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel when someone else has already created a perfectly good template, especially when they’ve done all the heavy lifting for free.
A big portion of the ones I rely on come from Vertex42.com, a site that’s been developing free templates for both Google and Excel since 2003. Many of these templates have been around for years, which means they’ve been tested, refined, and proven to work. And even if they aren’t immediately clear, almost every one includes a dedicated help sheet, making it that much easier to start using them.
Balance sheet template for Excel
Get financial clarity without building formulas
If you’re running a business and not tracking your financial position, you’re basically flying blind. The challenge, of course, is that creating a balance sheet from scratch in Excel means wrestling with the accounting equation and checking every number to make sure it balances.
The Vertex42 balance sheet template handles all of that for you. It’s designed specifically for small-business owners and automatically calculates your owner’s equity by subtracting liabilities from assets. All you need to do is plug in the relevant figures.
The template breaks everything into clear categories: current assets, such as cash, inventory, and anything you’ll convert within a year, and long-term assets like property and equipment that you plan to keep for a while. Your debt follows the same structure, separating short-term obligations from long-term loans and mortgages.
You also get two years of comparison built right in, so you can quickly see whether things are improving or slipping. On top of that, it includes a handful of common financial ratios, letting you compare your performance to industry standards without doing any extra calculations.
Download: Balance Sheet Template
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Income statement template for Excel
A ready-made way to track your profit
This income statement template pulls together all your revenue, subtracts your expenses, and shows you whether you made a profit. It offers two formats, and the one you choose depends on how your business operates.
If you’re running a service-based business where the cost of goods sold isn’t a major factor, the SingleStep format is ideal: total revenue minus total expenses equals net income, and you’re done. If you’re in retail or manufacturing, the MultiStep version makes more sense. It separates your gross profit from your operating income, which is crucial because it helps you determine whether it’s the cost of products or your operating expenses that are squeezing your margins.
Once you enter your numbers, the template automatically calculates net income, operating income (EBIT), and income from continuing operations so that you can focus on your profit (or loss).
Download: Income Statement Template
RACI matrix template for Excel
The quickest way to stop arguing about who owns what
Nothing derails a project faster than confusion over who’s supposed to do what. You think Bella’s handling it, Bella thinks it’s Jack’s job, and meanwhile, nothing gets done. A RACI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) is a simple way to eliminate that kind of organizational chaos.
You start by listing every task or deliverable, then assign each person a role: R for the person doing the work, A for the person responsible if something goes wrong, C for people who need to weigh in, and I for those who only need to be kept in the loop.
By default, the Vertex42 template also includes D and S, which function as additional support roles. It uses color-coding to prevent misunderstandings and offers drop-down selections, so you’re not retyping the same letters repeatedly.
If your team uses a variant like RASIC or CAIRO, you can easily customize the abbreviations. It takes only a few minutes to set up.
Download: RACI Matrix Template
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Gantt chart template for Excel
A timeline that actually makes deadlines feel manageable
A Gantt chart in Excel is a project manager’s best friend because it shows every task, when it starts and ends, and how much progress has been made. The format hasn’t changed much since Henry Gantt introduced it in the early 1900s, largely because it still does the job perfectly.
This template doesn’t require anything complicated: no macros, installation, or advanced Excel skills. You set the project’s start date, list your tasks, assign start dates and durations, and the chart will automatically handle the timeline. As you work through the project, all you have to do is update the “% DONE” column, and the bars fill in to reflect your progress.
For larger or more intricate projects, the template supports task dependencies, which ensures one task won’t begin until another is completed. You’ll find how to automate this on the template’s Help sheet. You can also add hierarchical numbering to show which tasks are subtasks of larger workstreams.
The template has been downloaded more than three million times, which is a solid indicator of its reliability. But if it still feels too complex for the way your team operates, you might prefer creating a Kanban board in Excel instead, where you can drag and drop tasks between columns like To Do and Done.
Download: Gantt Chart Template
Random group generator template for Excel
Perfect teams with zero bias and zero effort
Whether you’re running a conference, teaching a class, or organizing a pickup basketball game, you’ll eventually need to divide people into groups. The challenge is doing it fairly, and the simplest solution is to randomize the grouping, which this template handles for you.
You start by pasting your list of names into the “Names” worksheet. You can also add extra details, such as phone numbers, skill levels, or anything else you might need. Then, you sort by the RAND column, and the template will randomize the list.
From there, you pick your grouping pattern: either consecutive groups (1,1,1,2,2,2) or rotating groups (1,2,3,1,2,3). Set the number of groups you want, and the template will figure out how many people go into each one. If you ever need to restore the original order, just sort by the CUST ORDER column.
Download: Random Group Generator Template
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The right template saves hours and sometimes your entire project
You could build all of these from scratch. You could reinvent the wheel and debug your formulas. Or you could download any of these free templates from Vertex42, spend a few minutes customizing them, and get to the work that actually matters.
Most of these templates are available for older versions of Excel—even those as far back as 2010—except the random group generator, which requires Excel 2016 or later. Considering how long ago Excel 2016 launched, chances are you already have access to it.
Either way, the templates are easy to download and ready to use, so there’s no reason not to take advantage of them.
