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Most project plan templates assume one project and one fixed team. Agencies, consulting firms, and IT services teams rarely work that way. You're usually running several client projects at once, using the same pool of people. Every hour spent has to map back to a client and a budget.
A generic Excel template doesn't capture any of that. It tracks tasks and deadlines, but it leaves out the fields that matter most for services work: which client a task belongs to, and whether the time is billable. It also won't show you who's already stretched across other projects. Below is a free professional services project plan template for Excel, built for exactly this kind of work.
What Is a Professional Services Project Plan Template?
A professional services project plan template gives you one place to plan and manage client-facing work from kickoff to completion. It covers the basics of any project plan, tasks, owners, timelines, milestones, and dependencies, plus what services work adds on top: resources, billable hours, approvals, and project costs.
This is especially important for agencies, consulting firms, and IT services teams. These teams rarely manage one project with one dedicated team. Instead, they often run several client engagements at once, with the same people contributing across multiple projects. A template built for this reality helps you see how project work connects to client commitments, team capacity, and available time.
Read also: Project Delivery Checklist for Professional Services Team
What's Included in the Professional Services Project Plan Template
1. Project Phases, Deliverables, and Tasks
Start by breaking each client engagement into a clear hierarchy of phases, deliverables, and tasks.
- Phases represent the major stages of the engagement, such as Discovery, Design, Implementation, Testing, and Launch.
- Deliverables are the outputs you commit to providing, such as a requirements document, completed configuration, or final report.
- Tasks are the individual pieces of work required to produce each deliverable.
For example:
Implementation → System Configuration → Configure user roles
This structure makes a large project easier to plan and gives each task a clear connection to the client outcome it supports. It also helps prevent smaller pieces of work from being missed when building the schedule.
2. Client / Project and Assignee
Every task carries the client or project it belongs to, and the person doing the work.
Useful for:
- Filtering to see one engagement in isolation
- Checking everything one person is carrying across every client
- Spotting the moment a project needs a different assignee
For professional services teams, it is important to see this across projects. The same specialist can look available on one engagement while already committed to another.
3. Status and % Complete
Track where each task stands using a simple workflow:
Planning → Ready → In Progress → Review → Done
% Complete is a number you update as work progresses. It drives the timeline bar next to each task, so the bar fills in to match how far along the work actually is, not just whether it started.
4. Billable vs. Non-Billable
Separate billable work from internal or non-billable
activities such as coordination, administration, or rework.
This helps managers understand how much team capacity the project will consume compared with the hours that can actually be billed to the client.
5. Team Workload
See how much work each person is really carrying, across every client they're on, not just one project.
This catches the problem early. A specialist can look free on one engagement while stretched thin on another. You catch it while there's still time to move a task, not at the deadline.
It also splits each person's work into billable and non-billable, so you can see how much of their time drives revenue.
6. Project Costs and Budget
Track whether a phase is running over budget, without adding up the task list by hand.
Enter estimated and actual cost per phase, including any expenses on top of labor, like travel or software, so the number reflects the full cost of the phase, not just time. You get a running read on profitability as work happens, not just a number at the end.
Free Professional Services Project Plan Template for Excel
This template brings together everything covered above in one file: phases, tasks, and subtasks with WBS numbering
, client and assignee tracking, status and % complete, billable vs. non-billable work, a visual timeline that colors itself in as work progresses, team workload by person, and budget by phase.
It works in Excel and is ready to use as soon as you download it. No setup required, just replace the example rows with your own work and start planning.
Download the free Professional Services Project Plan Template →
How to Build a Professional Services Project Plan in Excel
Once you have the template, turn your client commitments into a working delivery plan. The goal is to connect each task to the right project, owner, timeline, and billing status, not just create a list of work. Here's how to make it yours.
Step 1: Replace the Example Rows with Your Own Work
The Initiation, Planning, and Execution rows are included as examples. Replace them with your own project phases and tasks, or keep a few at the top as a reference while you get started. Each phase gets its own row with a WBS number (1, 2, 3), and tasks go underneath with numbers like 1.1, 1.2.
Step 2: Replace the Sample Clients and Projects
Replace sample clients such as Acme Consulting Group and Nolan & Vance LLP with your own client or project names.
If you manage several engagements at once, keep them in the same plan. You can then filter by Client / Project to focus on one engagement or review work across multiple projects.
Step 3: Number Tasks and Subtasks
Use the WBS # column to show the hierarchy. A task gets a number like 1.1, and a subtask underneath it gets 1.1.1.
For example: 1.1 Define project scope → 1.1.1 Confirm client requirements → 1.1.2 Align on success metrics
Indent the subtask name in Task Name so the hierarchy is easy to scan.
Step 4: Add Assignee and Dates
For each task, add:
- Assignee
- Start Date
- Due Date
Before finalizing the schedule, check whether the same person is assigned too much work across overlapping client projects.
Step 5: Use the Status and Billable Dropdowns
These two columns already have dropdowns built in. Set Status (Planning, Ready, In Progress, Review, Done) and mark each task Yes or No under Billable.
Step 6: Update % Complete
Enter a % Complete for each task as work progresses. This number drives the timeline bar next to it, so keep it updated as work moves, not just at the end.
Step 7: Review Resource Summary
Once your project data is filled in, use the Resource Summary tab to review tasks and billable split per person without counting manually.
| Metric | Formula |
|---|---|
| Total Tasks | =COUNTIF('Project Plan'!D12:D49,A5) |
| Billable Tasks | =COUNTIFS('Project Plan'!D12:D49,A5,'Project Plan'!F12:F49,"Yes") |
| Non-Billable Hours | =B5-C5 |
| % of Billable | =IFERROR(C5/B5,0) |
Step 8: Fill In Budget Summary
Budget Summary is filled in by hand, one row per phase, it does not pull from Project Plan.
| Metric | Formula |
|---|---|
| Variance | =B5-C5 |
| % of Budget Spent | =IFERROR(C5/B5,0) |
Step 9: Customizing the Template for Your Team
The phase names, Initiation, Planning, Execution, are a starting point. Rename them to match how your team actually works, for example Discovery → Design → Delivery, or Onboarding → Build → Handoff
Add more rows to Project Plan as you take on new clients. Team Workload's formulas cover rows 12 to 49, so if you add tasks beyond row 49, extend that range in both Team Workload and Report, or the new rows won't be counted.
What a Spreadsheet Can't Do Once You're Running Multiple Projects
A spreadsheet works well for a small team running a handful of client projects. Past a certain point, the manual work outweighs the flexibility.
Watch for these signs:
- You spend more time updating the plan than actually managing the work
- More than one person needs to edit it at the same time, and versions start to conflict
- You can't tell who's overloaded until a deadline is already at risk
- Checking client status means opening several files instead of one shared view
- Approvals and sign-offs get tracked in email instead of the plan itself
None of this means the spreadsheet failed. It means the team outgrew what a static file can do on its own, which is a normal point to reach once you're running more than a couple of projects at a time.
Read also: Top 10 Professional Services Automation Software in 2026
Why Use Software for Professional Services Project Plan
Excel is a practical starting point for building a professional services project plan. But as the number of clients, projects, and shared people grows, keeping that plan accurate gets harder.
The right software keeps planning connected to execution, a live view of work, timelines, and resources. Instead of updating separate spreadsheets, managers see changes as they happen and how those changes affect delivery.
A few moments where this matters most:
- Manage multiple client projects together
- Spot resource conflicts earlier
- Keep dependencies and deadlines connected
- Track progress as work changes
- See which projects are on track or at risk
The goal is not just to replace Excel, but to make the project plan easier to manage as delivery becomes more complex.
Move From Project Planning to Delivery With TaskFord
TaskFord brings project planning, resources, and execution into one connected workspace, so teams can move beyond maintaining the plan and focus on delivering the work.
- Boards keep tasks, owners, priorities, and progress organized for each client project.
- Gantt connects timelines, milestones, and dependencies so schedule changes are easier to understand.
- Schedule helps coordinate shared team members across projects and spot resource conflicts earlier, the live version of what Team Workload tracks by hand.
- Portfolios bring multiple client projects into one view instead of managing separate spreadsheets.
- Dashboards give managers visibility into progress, workload, and delivery risk across projects.
The goal is to keep the plan connected to how the work actually gets delivered, not just to replace the spreadsheet.
Final Thoughts
A project plan template doesn't need to be complicated. It needs the right fields for how your team actually works, tasks, owners, timelines, and for professional services, the client, the billable hours, and who's shared across which projects.
Start with the free template. It's a solid way to plan a client engagement from kickoff to delivery. Once you're running more projects than one spreadsheet can hold, that's the point to look at something built for it.
