Finish Schedule Template: Free Excel Download

This is a free finish schedule template built for the way a builder actually runs client selections, allowances and change orders on a job. It works in Excel and it works in Google Sheets. No email required.

Download the finish schedule template (.xlsx)

The tagline on the first tab says it plainly: one sheet that answers, can we order this today. That's the question a finish schedule exists to answer, and it's the one a group text, an email thread or three versions of the same Excel file can't answer with any confidence.

What's actually a finish schedule (and what it isn't)

A finish schedule tracks the selections on a job: room by room, item by item, from the first decision down to what's ordered and what's installed. It is not a full construction schedule and it is not a Gantt timeline for the whole build. If you're after a bar-chart project timeline, this isn't that file. What it does track is the dates that selections live and die by: when a decision is due, when an order has to go out to hit the job, and how far behind you are on either one right now.

What's inside

The workbook has 8 tabs.

Start Here walks through how to use the sheet, states the one rule the whole thing runs on ("do not order from a blank"), and gives you the color legend.

Dashboard is the summary of the whole job. Tiles for total selections, how many are approved (with a percentage), how many are ready to order, and how many are ordered or past that. A separate row of tiles flags what needs attention: decisions overdue, orders overdue, orders due inside the next two weeks, and allowance overage that hasn't been signed. Money tiles show the selections total, allowance over or under, signed change orders, and the revised contract number. There's a status bar chart, an allowance-vs-actual chart by category, and a by-room table.

Project holds the job info: who's authorized to sign changes, the original contract number, your markup on allowance overage, your default change order markup, and four decide-by dates tied to construction phases (before you dig, before rough-in, before drywall, before install). It also rolls up the contract summary: original contract plus signed change orders plus billable allowance over or under equals the revised contract, with overage that isn't signed yet called out separately.

Finish Schedule is the core of the file. One row per selection, 300 rows to work with. Columns cover room, item (in the client's words), location, category, decide-by date, decision due date, manufacturer, model or SKU, finish, size, quantity, unit, unit cost, actual cost, allowance, over/under, supplier, a link field, lead time in days, the date it's needed on site, and the order-by date the sheet calculates for you. Status, approval date and who approved it are tracked per row, along with alternates and notes.

Two columns do the real work. Ready to Order? only says READY when model, finish, quantity, supplier, lead time and approval are all filled in; otherwise it tells you exactly what's missing, like "Missing: finish, approval." Flag marks a row DECISION OVERDUE, ORDER OVERDUE, or ORDER SOON when the order-by date is inside 14 days. That order-by date is just the needed-on-site date minus the lead time, and the decision-due date pulls from the phase dates you set on the Project tab. Room, category, phase, unit and status are all dropdowns, so nobody's typing "Kitchen" one week and "kitchen " the next.

Allowances rolls the Finish Schedule up by category, 8 editable categories plus an "all other" bucket, showing allowance, actual, over/under, percent over, the billable amount with your markup applied, how many lines are in each category, how many are approved, and unsigned overage.

Change Orders tracks up to 100 change orders: number, date, type (client swap, over allowance, added scope, unforeseen), room, what changed, the was and now values, cost, markup, price to the client, days added to the schedule, who requested it, status (draft, sent, signed, void), and who signed it and when. The totals at the top separate signed changes, days added, what's waiting on the client, and open change orders, and change orders flagged as over-allowance are kept out of the signed total so an allowance overage doesn't get counted twice.

Client Sign-Off builds a one-page approval sheet for a room you pick, pulling the allowance, price and over/under straight from the Finish Schedule, with an initials column, totals, an approval statement, and signature lines for the client and for you. It prints on one letter-size page, which matters when you're standing in the kitchen with the client instead of emailing a PDF back and forth.

Lists holds the editable dropdown values: rooms, categories, units, statuses, and change order types.

Getting started

The file comes filled in with a sample job, Lakeshore Residence, so you can see the sheet working before you touch it: 40 selections and 5 change orders moving through every status. Model numbers marked "(sample)" are for illustration, not real product data, and the dates in it move with today's date. To start your own job, delete Finish Schedule rows 6 through 45 and Change Orders rows 8 through 12, then fill in the Project tab.

The status list itself is worth knowing before you start: Pending, Options Sent, Selected, Approved, Ordered, Received, Installed, On Hold. The sheet treats Selected and Approved as two different things on purpose. A client picking a faucet isn't the same as that faucet being locked and ready to order, and the whole point of the Ready to Order column is to stop the gap between those two from turning into a bad order.

Download the finish schedule template (.xlsx)