How_to_use_this_template
📖 How to use this template
One task per status report. Its five subtasks are the five sections every sponsor-facing report needs, in the order the reader needs them: overall status, progress against plan, milestones, risks and issues, decisions needed. The fields on the task carry the numbers, so a Table view of this project is the project's history: one row per week, one RAG color per row.
The sample is a website relaunch over six reports: a milestone report at design sign-off, three green weeks, one yellow, one red with an escalation and a decision, and the current week back to green.
- Duplicate this project into your own organization (dropdown next to the project name, then
Duplicate) - Each Friday, duplicate the task under Report skeleton, move the copy to This week, and rename it to the week and the project
- Set the fields first: RAG Status, Period, Complete (pct), Budget Used (pct), Next Milestone, Audience. Then write the five sections, each under 120 words
- Move the report to In review for a second pair of eyes, then Sent when it goes out, then drag it into Previous reports. Mark it Acknowledged when the sponsor replies
- The Friday: send the status report task repeats every week. If the report is not ready by 3 pm, send the one-line version anyway: color, one sentence, the ask
The fields
| Field | What it holds |
|---|---|
| RAG Status | 🟢 On track, 🟡 At risk, 🔴 Off track. Red means the end date or budget moves without a decision this week |
| Period | The dates the report covers, written out, because the task's own dates are when you wrote it |
| Complete (pct) | How far through the plan the project is. From the plan, not from the calendar |
| Budget Used (pct) | How much of the approved budget is spent or committed |
| Spend vs Progress | Formula. 🔴 when spend runs more than 10 points ahead of progress, 🟡 when it is ahead at all, 🟢 otherwise. The one number a sponsor checks before reading anything else |
| Next Milestone | The date of the next milestone, so Table view sorts the portfolio by what lands soonest |
| Audience | Who the report is written for. A sponsor report and a team report say different things about the same week |
Status is the report's life
Draft → In review → Sent → Acknowledged, plus Skipped for a week with no report, so the gap is on record instead of silent.
Write the ask first
Section 5 is the only part of a status report that changes what happens next. Write it before the other four, then write the rest as the evidence for it. A report with a clear ask and thin progress notes gets a decision; a report with perfect progress notes and no ask gets filed.
Every ask carries a date and a cost of waiting. "Approve the contractor standby by Monday; approving Wednesday costs the launch date" gets answered. "Please advise on contractors" does not.
What goes in each section
| Section | What it is for |
|---|---|
| 1. Overall status | The color and two sentences. The sponsor who stops reading here should still know whether the date holds |
| 2. Progress against plan | Three lines every week: planned, done, not done and why. Same three lines, so a missed item is visible by its absence |
| 3. Milestones | The full milestone table to launch, with Done / On track / At risk / Missed. Never delete a missed one |
| 4. Risks and issues | A risk might happen, an issue has. Each one has an owner and a date. Close them here when they close |
| 5. Decisions needed | The ask, the deadline, the cost of waiting. If none, write None |
Tags
Weekly, Milestone, Escalation, Decision Needed. Filter on Decision Needed to see every open ask across every project in one list, which is the meeting agenda for the steering committee.
Reading it
Switch to Table view and sort by due date. The RAG Status column, read top to bottom, is the project's story. Sort by Spend vs Progress to find the project spending faster than it delivers.
Group by Audience when one project reports to several people, so the sponsor version and the team version never get sent to the wrong list.
Adapting it
One project per report is the default. For a portfolio, add the project name to each task and group Table view by section, or run one copy of this template per project and read them side by side in a Smart Folder.
A two-week cadence works the same way: rename the Friday task, change its repeat to every two weeks, and expect each section to run a little longer.
If your sponsor wants a one-pager, send the task's description with the five section descriptions pasted under it. The subtask structure is for writing it; the reader never needs to see it.