Calculating the remaining percentage of the project

When someone asks you about the status of your project, you need to give an overall progress rate of a project, and for that, answering in a percentage would be the best idea. Answering in percentage is both straightforward and easy to grasp.

We’ll start by discussing some factors that you need to keep in mind eventually to calculate the percentage, and then we’ll discuss the methods to calculate.

To calculate the actual percentage of the project, you need to have the required data, and again, for that, you need to track your project, each task, its duration, and status.
Collect the details for completed and remaining tasks, the scheduled time for all the tasks, and the estimated completion time.
You will also have to know the beginning time of each task and what time your team has spent actually for every task so far. It will also help if you take an overall estimate from your team about how much more time they need to finish their tasks.
And when you have all the required data, you can calculate the project’s status in percentage. There are two methods to calculate; one is a direct method, the standard calculation, and another is using Excel.

How to calculate? Starting with the direct method, which is mainly helpful for one-time calculation

So, to calculate the remaining percentage of the project, you can divide the actual time spent on every task by the actual time spent plus the remaining time to complete the work.

For example, the actual time spent on the completed tasks of a project is 20 hours, but the estimate for the project to be achieved was 30 hours; the percentage for the completed work would be 30 hours / (30 hours + 10 hours) is equal to 75.

The result shows 75 percent of the work is complete at present, and to get the remaining percentage of the project, you can subtract 75 from 100 to get 25.

You got the remaining 25 percent.

Now let’s move on to the Excel-based calculation, which is used mainly for more extensive projects with a lot of data.

Calculation with Excel

Excel helps you keep track of the progress and simultaneously gives you the percentage of project completion. You have to add a few formulas and keep updating the tasks.

So, add the tasks and their values to the cells. You can also mention other details like price, budget, or any amount related to the project.

Which formula to use and what values to include?

To calculate the remaining percentage of the project, we only need the project’s status; you will have to mark as the project gets completed.

And talking about the formula, we’ll use the COUNTIF formula.

calculate-percentage

How to calculate using the formula?

Select a blank cell to use the formula,

Add ‘=’ sign,
Write countif, then opening round bracket
Select the whole range of cells you this formula to work on
Add a comma, (,)
Then add a double inverted comma following space
Then you need to add the criteria; the criteria depend upon what you have used to denote the completion of your project.

If you have used the term “Yes” or “Completed” to denote the completion, you will have to add the same.

Add the closing double inverted comma and the closing round bracket to complete the formula.
Now, hit enter.
Then it will show you how many tasks in the cells have been marked completed.

To get the number, we’ll divide the total number of tasks added in the cells by the formula.

Count the total tasks added and divide the formula by the total number of tasks.
You will get the number.
To get it in percentage, select the value and hit the percentage symbol in the menu.
You’ve got the percentage.

As your tasks get completed, you can mark the tasks as complete, and your percentage will automatically get updated.