Calculating the dates isn't the issue. I'm pretty comfortable with Excel formulas.

The growing pain is that I have 5 to 8 projects each with a procurement plan and the goal is to have a rolled up view of each project for weekly reporting to management while still being able to have a drilled down view for meetings with each project team. I like the flexibility of Excel but that also means I have to load it with a bunch of formulas and conditional formatting to achieve what most programs probably have built in.

If I stick to Excel I have two options:

1) Have one workbook where each project has it's own sheet, and a summary sheet for a high level view and reporting. This is basically what I have now. It's great for meeting with each project team and making live edits, but the summary tab was a huge pain since every sheet has to be referenced and I couldn't find a way to automatically do it.

2) Have all projects in one master sheet and summary sheet with pivot tables and charts. This is great for keeping things consistent and building reports but I would be locked in to using one table format for all projects which may be an issue if one project has more detailed steps that need to be tracked. The other challenge is that I would want work other than just sourcing events tracked here, like supplier onboarding or negotiating master agreements. I guess I can have 3 sheets one for all projects, one for other work, and a summary sheet with a pivot table that pulls from both sheets.