Summary
- Google Sheets is popular for its free price, collaboration features, and integration with Google Workspace apps.
- Utilize templates for invoices, project timelines, and financial overviews to save time and boost productivity.
- Explore a variety of templates for tasks like tracking habits, managing projects, and maintaining employee schedules.
Thanks to its collaborative features, integration with Google Workspace apps, and free price tag, Google Sheets has become a de facto choice for individuals, professionals, and startups. It’s a versatile tool for creating invoices, managing projects, and analyzing data. While you can create a new spreadsheet from scratch, a relevant template can save you valuable time and effort. Here are the top Google Sheets templates to reduce errors, make data management a breeze, and boost productivity.
If you want to use any of these templates, open them up in separate browser tabs via the links. Next, within each tab, select File > Make a Copy to save the template to your Google Drive account. Then open the spreadsheet from your Google Drive account to start making changes. If you plan to reuse the template again in the future, make sure to save a local copy of the original template on your computer or Google Drive so that you can make ongoing spreadsheets with it too.
10 Invoice template
Whether you are a freelancer or a small business owner, you need to have a smooth invoice process. Instead of a bland invoice with item name and price, you should use a well-crafted invoice template in Google Sheets to give it a professional touch. Google Sheets offers several invoice templates, but this one surely stands out from the crowd for several reasons. It uses a light blue background and lets you include the company logo, item name, description, quantity, price, discount, tax rate, sales tax, and more.
You can end the invoice with relevant notes, website address, due date, and other details.
9 Project timeline
While there are loads of capable project management tools out there, many still prefer Google Sheets to handle their projects. This project timeline template in Google Sheets uses a Gantt chart and offers a visual representation of your project’s schedule, tasks, deadlines, and overall progress in real-time. You can save the template in your Google Sheets account and reuse it by changing the project title, manager, company name, date, and other details.
The entire template is divided into several categories which you can adjust, including project concept, definition, planning, launch, execution, performance, and control. Once your Google Sheets template is ready, make sure to invite your team members to collaborate. You can also change permission settings to avoid accidental edits by others.
8 Financial overview
Juggling multiple accounts, expenses, and income streams can be overwhelming at times. You can always use a dedicated financial planning app for desktop or mobile, but a dedicated Google Sheets template takes the entire experience to the next level. It helps you take control of your personal finances like a pro. The template has spreadsheets for each month where you can register your expenses and income streams in detail. And finally, you can check the overview menu to check the yearly data it tabulates in style.
You can even get creative and add another spreadsheet for your financial goals and investments. Once you develop the habit of managing your finances, you will gain a clear understanding of your spending patterns and identify areas for improvement.
7 Grade book
As the name suggests, this is a must-have template for educators and professors. It's a dedicated grade book, divided into several sheets to track your class' semester performance. You can enter the student's name, write down assignments and quizzes, and note down the total points possible for each one. The spreadsheet automatically calculates student grades in column C/D. You can also create an individual student report in Google Sheets. To do so, simply pick a student from the list in cell B4, and you'll see the individual report. And finally, we have the Overview sheet where you can glance over the final grading data, grade distribution, and average scores.
6 Content calendar
Whether you are a social media influencer, YouTuber, blogger, or marketer, you can use the content calendar template in Google Sheets to plan, track, schedule, and execute your posts and videos across various platforms. It's another neat productivity template for marketers and social media users.
You can set status and title, assign priority, enter a short description, enter assignee, draft and publish data, and keep track of any other details you wish. You can check all of your content planning in a dedicated calendar view, monitor hashtags, and add more details to manage your workflow like a pro.
5 Sales dashboard
Sales dashboard by Zapier is a must-have template for businesses and startups. After all, monitoring sales performance is critical to making informed decisions and driving growth. The template offers a visual overview of the average deal size, total sales, total revenue, and overall win rate by each employee, as you use a spreadsheet designed for these data points. We liked how the template shows the win rate by each employee in a neat speedometer view. It surely adds an aesthetic touch to your spreadsheet. At the end of the year, you can review employee sales performance and give them incremental rewards accordingly.
4 Habit tracker
So far, we have only talked about free Google Sheets templates. However, there is no shortage of paid templates on third-party marketplaces. Many power users create and sell such templates on platforms like Etsy. And this habit tracker on the Etsy marketplace is one such option with rave reviews from buyers. It is worth taking a closer look if you want to use Google Sheets to track your routine and habits. It lets you keep track of up to 25 daily habits and 10 weekly habits. There is also an extra section for 10 monthly habits.
As you complete your routine, simply click the check boxes, and the spreadsheet should update graphs and totals automatically for you. The developer has done a commendable job with decorating the template with various colors.
3 Employee shift schedule
As the name suggests, this template lets you maintain a clear and organized employee schedule to help you run a smooth operation. It's an essential template when you deal with dozens of employees and want to track their day and night shifts and overall hours with astute details. You can plan and manage shifts, calculate total shifts and total hours per week, and even create an organization chart at the top. You can streamline the entire scheduling process, improve communication with employees, and ensure adequate staffing levels at all times.
2 Customer relationship management
The CRM template comes with several sheets where you can manage customer details, company information, opportunities, and more. You can effectively manage interactions, improve customer satisfaction, and make data-driven decisions. There is a dedicated Dashboard sheet to keep track of overall sales, a number of opportunities by stage, and value of opportunities by stage. It's an essential template for large companies, businesses, and startups to manage customer info and strike a deal with new ones.
1 Holiday budget planner
As the name suggests, a holiday budget planner helps you plan and manage your holiday expenses efficiently. It offers different sections and categories such as gifts, entertainment, travel, packaging, meals and more to keep track of your spending.
You can adjust your budget in real-time and ensure that you stay within your financial limits. You can also add charts and graphs to get a clear overview of your holiday budget and expenses.
Supercharge your spreadsheets
Whether you want to plan your finances, arrange events, manage customer leads, or create a habit tracker, our hand-picked Google Sheets templates cater to an array of needs. There are even more cool options waiting to be discovered when you poke around online. In addition to templates, you should also explore Google Apps Script to automate repetitive tasks in Google Sheets. Check out our separate guide to write and run Google Apps Script and streamline your workflow in no time.
