Stalled Jobs & Waiting Time Tracker Spreadsheet
How many days your jobs spend standing still, whose desk each one is sitting on, and what the waiting costs.
Every business with work in progress has the same argument once a quarter: why is nothing finishing? The answer is almost never that people are working slowly — it is that a large share of what is on site is standing still waiting on somebody, and most of those somebodies do not work there. A job board tells you where a job is; it does not tell you how long it has been there, whose fault that is, or what it is costing you to look at it.
What is in it
- One row per time a job stopped: which job, the day it stopped, the day it started again, and what it was waiting for
- Leave the end date blank and the file counts the days up to today, keeps the money tied up and lists the job as still waiting
- Against each party in Setup, one question with three answers: can you do anything about it — Yes, Partly or No
- Both costs priced from two figures you type once: the money standing in the job, and the space it is holding
- By Who and By Reason kept apart, because the same supplier’s back order and wrong delivery are different problems
- Still Waiting: everything stopped right now, oldest first — 200 jobs, 600 stoppages, eight linked tabs
Who it is for
Anywhere work sits still waiting on somebody else: building, joinery, print, legal, architecture, veterinary, IT, planning, repairs, installations, surveying, insurance work. It works retrospectively too — twenty jobs from memory will still show you where the days are going.
The worked example
In the worked year 60 jobs stopped 101 times for 2,082 days between them: an average wait of 20.6 days, a longest single wait of 61, 36 waits longer than three weeks, and $45,823 of cost. A quarter of every job’s life, 25.6%, was spent waiting.
Only 171 of those days were yours to fix; 1,646 were partly yours and 265 were nobody’s, which means 91.8% of the waiting was not anybody in the building. On the day the file was cut, 24 jobs were stopped with $42,000 standing still in them, holding 27 of 34 spaces on site, and the oldest had been there 51 days.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Buy it on Etsy — $9
Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the buyer protection are all handled by Etsy.
A look inside the file
Questions people actually ask
How do I work out what a stalled job is costing me?
Log four things per stoppage — which job, the day it stopped, the day it started again and what you were waiting for — and the file prices two costs at once: the money already tied up in the job and the space it is standing in. In the worked year 101 stoppages ran to 2,082 days and $45,823; the average wait was 20.6 days and cost $454, and the dearest single one cost $1,807. A quarter of every job's life, 25.6%, was spent waiting.
Is this only for a workshop?
No — it fits anything where work sits still waiting on somebody else: building, joinery, print, legal, architecture, veterinary, IT, planning, repairs, installations, surveying, insurance work. Both lists in Setup — your reasons and the parties you wait on — are named by you, and nothing else in the file is hard-wired.
Do I have to log every stoppage as it happens, and what if I don't know what a space costs?
It works far better if you log them live, but it also works retrospectively — twenty jobs from memory will still show you where the days are going, and the shape almost never changes once you start logging properly. For the space, take your rent and rates for the year and divide by the number of spaces and by 365; roughly right is enough, because it is only there to stop a stalled job looking free. Leave the restart date blank and the file counts the days up to today on its own.
Does this work in Google Sheets, and is there anything to install?
Yes — the file is built as .xlsx, so it opens in Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, goes into Google Sheets through File → Import → Upload, and works in LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install and no subscription. You download a file and it is yours. Two hundred job rows and six hundred waits, with a filled-in worked year, a blank copy and a plain-English PDF guide.
Is it a job board or a scheduler, and will it make somebody look bad?
No — it is not a job board, a planner or a scheduler and it never tells anybody what to do next, and it is not time tracking either, because it measures the days a job did not move rather than the hours somebody worked. Setup asks one question of each party — can you do anything about it: Yes, Partly or No — and in the worked year only 171 of 2,082 days, about eight per cent, were the business's own to fix. Most people find that reassuring rather than the opposite. Nothing syncs and nothing logs in.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes jobs that physically sit somewhere while they wait. If yours is different — a matter waiting on a court or a council rather than a supplier, stage payments that only release when a job restarts, subcontractors holding several of your jobs at once, or plant and vehicles hired by the day while nothing moves — I can build the same logic around how you actually work.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.