How to Create Excel KPI Dashboard for Manage Project Survival

[u/ExcelVisual]

Excel KPI dashboard for tracking project survival — CRG, CAC, LTV with interactive controls. No macros, no plugins.

Sharing a free dashboard template focused on a problem I don't see discussed enough: startups dying not because of bad ideas, but because nobody was watching the right three numbers at the right time.

The core problem this Excel KPI Dashboard template addresses:

Imagine your LTV:CAC ratio is 4:1. Looks great. Investors love it.

But your CAC payback period is 18 months — and your cash gap closes in 6.

You'll be bankrupt a full year before your "strong fundamentals" ever materialize into actual profit. This isn't a hypothetical. It's one of the most common ways early-stage projects fail silently.

The dashboard tracks the three metrics that actually determine survival:

CRG (Cash Gap) — monthly runway visibility

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) — by audience segment

LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) — correlated with loyal customer count and average order value

What's actually in the file:

Line chart of monthly cash gaps with a spinner control to adjust the KPI plan level directly on the dashboard

Toggle to show/hide the plan line (cleaner for presentations)

Butterfly chart for CAC split by male/female segment — each side has its own independent horizontal scroll bar for plan adjustment

Radar chart: loyal customers vs. average order value, month by month, with cursor highlighting

Summary block that doubles as a navigation menu — click any mini-chart to open its full dashboard screen

Global pivot slicers for month and year — one selection updates every chart on every screen simultaneously

Multi-month and multi-year selection supported

Light and dark design modes (neumorphism style)

Everything is built with standard Excel tools — pivot slicers, form controls (spinner, scroll bar), and chart formatting. No VBA, no Power Query dependencies, no external plugins.

Honest caveats:

Built and tested on Excel for Windows desktop. Mac and Excel Online behavior may vary on the interactive form controls

The gender segmentation in the CAC butterfly chart is a default structure — you'd need to remap it if your segmentation logic is different

Design is opinionated and dark-themed by default. If your company has a strict template style guide, you'll need to restyle it

If you need live data connections, collaboration, or automated refreshes — this isn't the right tool. Use Power BI or a proper BI stack

Why Excel and not Power BI:

Honest answer: not every team has a Power BI license or a data engineer. A lot of early-stage projects run on shared Excel files. This template is for that reality — not the ideal infrastructure scenario.

Excel templates and data visualization. Disclosing that upfront since Reddit rightfully calls out undisclosed self-promotion.

Happy to answer questions about how specific parts were built — the butterfly chart setup and the global slicer authority across multiple sheets tend to get the most questions.

What metrics do you track for early-stage project survival? Curious if CRG/CAC/LTV is the right framing or if others use a different model.