Tracking Progress Status With A Monthly Report Template
Monthly Report Template
Having a monthly report template will be necessary for those businesses working on projects with long durations. Essentially, the monthly status report's purpose is to communicate the status of your project with all of the relevant stakeholders, including supervisors, colleagues, and/or clients. In doing so, a monthly report template helps define your project’s workflow, highlight dependencies, track your resources, and identifies errors.
Monthly Report Template
Monthly Status Report Template
A monthly status report template should be designed to present data on cost, schedule, and technical status for a given project. This template allows the relevant project leaders, stakeholders, and management to quickly assess project progress and deliver a solid basis for determining which projects require special attention.
Designing an Effective Monthly Status Report Template:
Ideally, a monthly status report template is written with the view of getting everyone on the same page and preventing confusion over what has been achieved and what is still outstanding. Your monthly status report template should encourage collaboration so that stakeholders know what all the teams are doing and can offer help to the relevant teams where needed. The report aids transparency and fosters a sense of responsibility and, most importantly, accountability.
Your monthly status report template should not be overly detailed and should show respect for the reader’s time and busy schedule. An effective template is written almost like a Q and A session with simple, specific language which is straight-to-the-point. You can even go one step further and tailor your report to each individual client.
Present the information under clear headers. For consistency purposes, use the same template where possible. As explained below, parts of the report will stay the same month to month, which will help you achieve a consistent report. Therefore, it is advisable to not be too rigid from the outset and ensure that if you need to make rapid changes to the document to incorporate new information, your template accommodates this as necessary.
Your monthly status report template can include the following:
1. Executive Overview
Monthly Status Report Template
The executive overview is an overview of the project's current state and includes the project name, the project summary, and the overall health and status of the project. Much of this information will stay the same month to month but do not underestimate the importance of including the project identifiers in your executive overview.
The project summary should include a review of the project goals and the progress you have made to date. While keeping it brief, your monthly status report template will clarify to anyone reading it whether or not your project is on track, ahead of schedule, at-risk or off track completely. Color coding systems can help to this end. For example, green could signify your project is on track, whereas red would suggest your project has derailed somewhat and is no longer going to plan.
If you want to be more specific, the executive overview also provides a good space to detail your project's financial health. Your monthly report will therefore not only explain whether or not your project is on track, but how much of the budget has been consumed and whether or not you expect to stay on track with the budget.
2. Project Financials
An essential element for your monthly report template is the project financials. This will comprise the overview of all the income and expenses associated with your project(s) for the month. That way, you can gain a comprehensive insight concerning your profitability and then do good financial projects regarding the project in the subsequent month.
Aside from that, project financials should include your cash flow statement, balance sheet, and income statement so you can know how much the business has made over a month. Ideally, you should also include the number of hours expended by each team member towards your project goals for hourly remuneration. Moreover, it is vital to improving your performance so that your finances are appropriately spent to ensure maximal profits.
Check out Financial Dashboard Template here.
3. Milestones and Deliverables
Milestones and Deliverables - Progress Status
Your monthly report template should next evaluate the progress you have made towards any significant milestones and deliverables. It would make sense to focus on two or three key areas worth highlighting, particularly the milestones you have been working on since you last updated your stakeholders.
It is important for your clients and stakeholders to know if you and your teams are on track to complete deliverables, particularly where billing and invoicing is concerned. This section will also inform your stakeholders how much time and money are being spent on each task.
Without going into too much detail, this section should demonstrate the actions you have taken, what you are working on, and what’s coming next. This can be explained using percentages to show how much of the milestone is still outstanding. You can also include planned start and finish dates, which can, in turn, be compared and contrasted with the actual start and finish dates.
4. Issues and Challenges
This section of your monthly status report template should advise stakeholders of the known issues, risks, or challenges identified in your previous monthly reports and identify any potential new ones.
This section of the report accepts that all projects will encounter problems. By identifying them and highlighting them with your stakeholders, you can readily solve the problem as you move forward month by month by providing and outlining the strategies your team will be used to manage each risk and issue.
This would also be the appropriate section to open up discussion on any issues that require the stakeholders’ attention, including, for example, requesting a budget increase due to unforeseen issues that have affected the project’s overall scope.
Check out the issue log template to record issues or problems.
5. Team Progress
This segment illustrates your team’s productivity and compares actual progress made since the previous monthly report to what was estimated at the time.
This is a useful section of the monthly status report template which allows you to raise additional notes or highlights, particularly where it involves thanking certain teams or team members where appropriate. Moreover, this section also provides an ideal opportunity to call attention to tasks that still have not been completed.
This section should also list all the tasks scheduled for the next month, including incomplete items.
How Techno PM Can Transform Your Monthly Status Report Template:
Techno PM’s creative project management software can transform your monthly status report templates by allowing you to promptly and painlessly provide updates to your stakeholders while reducing your stress, time, and cost in the process.
To learn more about our monthly status report templates, visit our website and contact us today.
Check out Monthly Status Report PPT Template