Business plan Gantt chart template

• 7 phases
• 35 tasks
• 4 milestones
• 46 dependencies
• About 7 months
• Updated October 2, 2026

What does the plan cover?

Seven groups, each one a strand of work a new business has to get through before and just after it opens. They overlap on purpose: the company gets registered while the plan is being written, and the product is built while the lender makes up its mind.

Is the Gantt chart part of the business plan or a separate document?

Both, in a way. The written plan explains what the business is, who buys from it and why the numbers work. The Gantt chart is the part that says when each thing happens and what it depends on, and it usually goes into the plan as the milestones section or an appendix.

That is why writing the plan sits inside the chart as a task. Its checklist has a line for the milestones section, and the four milestone markers are the dates to copy into it: Business plan finished, Funding confirmed, Ready to sell and Launch day. Anyone reading the plan gets the short version, and you keep the full chart for running the work.

Why does the expensive work wait for the money?

Because spending money you have not got yet is how new businesses run out of cash before they open. In the template, three tasks are linked to the Funding confirmed milestone: the website by a paid designer, the first job description and payroll set-up. Advertising the job and onboarding follow the job description, so none of the hiring can start until the money is confirmed either.

Everything the founders can pay for themselves starts earlier. Research, registering the company and building the first version all run before the funding decision, so the months spent waiting on a lender are not wasted. If your business is funded from savings or first sales instead of a loan, keep the milestone and rename it to the point where you can afford to spend, because the gate still matters.

• Founder-funded, starts early: research, the written plan, registration, the bank account, brand work and the first version of the product.
• Waits for the money: the website build by a paid designer, the job description, payroll, advertising the job and onboarding the first employee.
• Waits for neither: the licence application, which only needs the company to exist, and runs in the background for about five weeks.

Which dates are not up to you?

Two of them. The lender's decision and the licence approval are drawn as long bars named Wait, because the bar is someone else's processing time rather than work you are doing. They are the dates most likely to move, and the chart treats them very differently.

The licence has room. It finishes around six weeks before the business is ready to sell, so a slow approval will not touch launch day unless it is more than about six weeks late. The lender's decision has no room at all. It sits on the longest chain in the plan: the written plan, the pitch deck, the application and the decision, then the website and the first hire, then launch day.

To see this on the chart, turn on Critical path and Hide weekends under Settings. The chains with no spare time are highlighted, and the licence, the legal work and payroll are not, which tells you where a late date is a problem and where it is just irritating.

What happens if the funding comes late?

Launch day moves by the same amount. Turn on Auto schedule and Hide weekends under Settings, so the chart counts working days, and stretch the Wait: lender decision bar by two weeks. The Funding confirmed marker moves, and so do the website, the job advert, onboarding, Launch day and both reviews behind it.

The chart also shows what you can do about it, because three separate chains end at Launch day: the product, the pre-launch marketing and the first hire. A late decision delays the marketing and hiring chains, but the product chain only depends on the founders. That gives you three options to compare:

1. Launch later. Let the chart move everything and tell the people waiting on the date.
2. Launch smaller. Open with a simpler website the founders build themselves and hire after launch, which takes two chains off the funding gate.
3. Find bridge money. Pay the designer from savings so the website starts on time, and keep only the hire behind the gate.

How do you show it to a bank or an investor?

Show less than you plan with. Someone deciding whether to lend you money wants the shape of the next six months, not who writes the customer terms. Collapse the groups so each phase shows as one bar with its milestone, switch the timescale to Month, and the chart fits on one page.

• For the written plan: export a PDF or an image from the Export menu and drop it into the milestones section.
• For an accountant or adviser: export to Excel, so they can see every task and date in a spreadsheet they already know how to read.
• For a meeting: keep it on screen with the groups collapsed, and open the Funding group when the conversation turns to money.

If the person reading it mostly cares about the big checkpoints, the milestone-led project timeline is a sparser layout built for exactly that audience.

What should you change when you copy it?

Click Use template and the whole plan lands in your account starting on the coming Monday, with every link in place. Then work through it in this order:

1. Swap the roles for names. Every task starts with who owns it. A solo founder will own almost everything, which is worth seeing on one chart before committing to dates.
2. Fix the waits first. Put in the real processing times for your lender and your licences, since they decide the rest of the schedule.
3. Delete what does not apply. No staff in year one? Remove the First hire group, then check the arrows into Launch day again. No licence needed? Delete that bar.
4. Rename the product phase for a service business. The build becomes putting the service together, and the pilot becomes your first few paying clients at a reduced rate.

If the launch itself is the bigger job, with documentation, support and sales all getting ready at once, the product launch plan covers those weeks in more detail. For comparing tools to run a small business's projects once it is open, see our pick of small business Gantt software.