In some countries, a new academic year is about to begin. These are new academic calendar templates for 2012/2013 period. There are four models available now,
> August 2012 to August 2013
> July 2012 to July 2013
> August 2012 to July 2013
> July 2012 to June 2013

There is a new feature developed in these templates which I believe it will help you much on designing your school academic calendar, comparing with previous academic calendars.

The new feature is its capability to mark consecutive dates by typing start and end dates of designated period. There are three tables available to differentiate any period colors. With this feature, you can mark mid or final test, school holidays, and others without typing date after date.

How to use:
Marking single dates:
> Put your date on column B and its description on column C for any exams (green colors).
> Put your date on column D and its description on column E for any holidays (red colors). There is a default US holidays that you can change or replace with your own dates. Or just add new holidays below those US dates.
> Put your date on column F and its description on column G for any exams (blue colors).

Marking consecutive dates:
> Put your start date on column H, end date on column I, and its description on column J. There are three different colors available, brown, yellow and grey.
–Your start and end dates in row 2-9 (H4-I11) will have brown color
–Your start and end dates in row 12-19 (H14-I21) will have yellow color
–Your start and end dates in row 22-29 (H24-I31) will have grey color

You can change any column titles to suit your needs.

You can download those templates below:

If you are interested to see how the consecutive date marker formula works or you want to customize the calendar and make it as your official school academic calendar or just want to thank me , you can get the unlocked version by  sending me $4.99 through paypal by clicking the button below.

Get Unlocked 2012/2013 Academic Calendar

Perhaps, this credit card payoff calculator is just an ordinary tool you can find easily online. I have created this tool last year to help me getting a better view about my credit card debts.

As most of people know, the toughest part of paying off credit card debt is a commitment not to use it again for any transactions, so everybody can commit on their designated payoff plan. But, there is always a temptation to use it again and again with some consideration that they still have some budget to pay or they will earn some money to pay it later. But, it is more common also that they are running out of credit card limits and the money budgeted for those credit card payment is already spent for other things.

Back to the template, basically this is a simple credit card payoff calculator that is created using microsoft excel built-in financial function, PMT and NPER function, which you can create yours just by following the formula I used in this template.

But, if you are just planning to use it, you can just simply put numbers in your credit card statement in related input boxes. The needed numbers are: current balance or usage, yearly interest rate, and minimum payment. There are two cells available for minimum payment. You can fill both or just fill one of them based on your bank policy. Then, you can go to the Pay Off Goal part and type your desired months to pay off or desired monthly payment or you can fill both white boxes to compare to find the best payment option.

All blue boxes are filled with numbers automatically revealed based on your input.

That’s all guys. You can download the file below. The main worksheet is not password protected, so you can learn the excel formula inside. Just remember that the results in this tool is an illustrative result since the real result could be different based on credit card issuer policy, as I stated in the beginning paragraph, that I used this tool only for getting a better view about my credit card debts.

Formula 1 season 2012 will be started in less than a month. As usual, the first race will take place in Australia. Sebastian Vettel will try to retain his 2011 crown. He will compete with 5 other former champions, Fernando Alonso with his Ferrari, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton on their McLaren, Michael Schumacher on his Mercedes and the Iceman, Kimi Raikkonen, now with Lotus. And with surprising pre-season test results in Barcelona this week, Vettel won’t have an easy season like last year.

Every teams has improved their cars, and will make all drivers become a strong contender to Vettel. Even though those 6 F1 Champions are still in favour to win F1 2012 trophy. And there are interesting facts I found when adding a new F1 race winners in this spreadsheet. The previous five drivers who become the pole sitter at Australian GP for the past five years were crowned as F1 champions by the end of those seasons, as you can see in table below.

Year	Pole Position	Winner	F1 Champion
2011	Sebastian Vettel	Sebastian Vettel	Sebastian Vettel
2010	Sebastian Vettel	Jenson Button	Sebastian Vettel
2009	Jenson Button	Jenson Button	Jenson Button
2008	Lewis Hamilton	Lewis Hamilton	Lewis Hamilton
2007	Kimi Raikkonen	Kimi Raikkonen	Kimi Raikkonen

Interesting, isn’t it? Will the driver who get the pole position in this Australian GP crowned as F1 Champion by the end of 2012 season ? We’ll see.

Honestly, when I created the new spreadsheet for F1 2011 Calendar, I have put 20 races in it. But, after Bahrain GP was cancelled, I had to re-create the schedule to accommodate 19 races instead of 20 races. So, this year, I don’t have to do some adjustments in excel formulas. I just modified the drivers (7 drivers, Rubens Barrichello, Adrian Sutil, Sebastian Buemi, Jaime Alguersuari, Jarno Trulli, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Jerome d’Ambrosio are out, and Kimi Raikkonen, Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg, Daniel Ricciardo, Jean-Eric Vergne, Pedro de la Rosa, Charles are in), the teams (Lotus-Cosworth to Caterham, Virgin-Cosworth to Marussia), and re-order GP races (Turkey GP is out and replaced by Bahrain GP, USA GP is in as the new race at 19th order, and Brazil GP will close the 2012 season).

Since there is no major changes, you can follow the same guidance as the previous 2011 templates here.

OK guys. Download the file below and send me some feedback if you found some errors or false information. It needs Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 to make all the functions running well.

The worksheet with main formula in this spreadsheet is password-protected. But, if you are kind enough to send me 5 bucks, I will send you the unlocked one where you can learn the formula and how it works. Or, in the other words, if you are kind enough to donate me 5 dollar, I will send you the unlocked one as my gratitude >:D<.

Get Unlocked 2012 Formula 1 Calendar and Championship Tracker

It has been 2.5 years since I released my first Gantt Chart template for excel. There were many feedback come to me directly through email or via my comment box to add more features and function to ease them creating their plan. With the release of Excel 2007/2010, most of those requirement and features are becoming easy to accomplish, especially the requirement of having more than three conditions to be implemented in one cell. Instead of updating the Gantt Chart post, I decided to publish a new post, because there are major changes have been made in the new Gantt Chart. This Gantt Chart templates are still created without Macro, but require Microsoft Excel 2007/2010 to make all the functions working well.

Below are short guidance about features and how to use this template :
Holiday List Worksheet
A worksheet to put your country holiday and your company official holiday dates. There are 24 holiday dates can be entered.
- Date: Enter your holiday dates
- Holiday: Enter your holiday short description.

Gantt Chart Worksheet
There are 2 big areas in this worksheet. Those area are setting at the left side of the worksheet and Gantt Chart area. I put the setting on the left side of this worksheet to ease you seeing the effect of changing your setting in Gantt Chart area.

Setting Area
Date Information
- Start Date: Enter your project start date here
- End Date:
> End Date: Select this type, and enter your date, if your project has a fixed end date
> Week Period: Select this type, and enter your week period, if your project has a fixed week period
- Working Days:
Do not tick anything if your workdays is from Monday to Friday, tick Saturday if your workdays is until Saturday and tick Saturday and Sunday if you work without holidays.
- Today’s Date (Set Today’s Date marker to “Yes” to reveal the date marker inside Gantt Chart):
> Actual: Select this type, if you want to refer today’s date with actual today’s date
> User Defined: Select this type, and enter your specific date, if you want to refer today’s date with your date other than actual date

Date Marker
- Today:
> Function: to mark today’s date on gantt chart. There will be a blue border color surrounding the area below corresponding date.
> How to activate: Type of select “Yes”
- Holiday:
> Function: to mark holiday’s date on gantt chart. There will be red and orange solid color in your gantt chart to mark it as non working days (red color) and  country holidays (orange color)
> How to activate: Type of select “Yes”
- Passing Days:
> Function: to view the progress and mark the number of days that has been passed from the beginning of any tasks until today’s date.  There will be a gray solid color revealed on corresponding dates.
> How to activate: Type of select “Yes”

Display
There is no option in lite edition. The Gantt Chart will show a 52-week period with weekly scroll bar.

Gantt Chart Area
The top part of this are is a place to input you project initial information
- Project Name: Enter your Project Name here
- Description: Enter your Project Description here
- Leader: Enter your Project Leader here

The second part below project description information is the part where you can see your project timeframe information that has been set in setting area. You can see your Start Date, End Date, Project Length and Displayed Week Period. There is a scroll bar at the bottom left side where you can scroll it left or right to move between week period.

Below project time frame part, there is a table to write your project plan. The first 5 columns in this chart (Level, Task, Assignment, Start Date and Finish Date) are the area to populate this chart.
- Level: Type the level based on WBS or Non WBS level as you have set in Setting area
- Tasks: Type or write a short description your employee tasks
- Assignment: Select your employee name (To add new employee name, go to Employee name worksheet)
- Start Date: Type your task start date
- Finish Date: Type your task finish date
After finishing all of your information in the first 5 columns, you will see a task bar revealed. You can set the markers in Setting area to enable or disable date color markers
- Working Days: This column will show you a real working day within any task period by calculating the number of working days based on your working days selection and  holidays.
- Finish Date Realization: Enter your actual finish date if you want to see your task completion performance. The ahead of/behind schedule will show you the dates based on your information. It will give you “check” warning if your date is beyond task period
- Remaining WD (Workdays): The formula inside this column will calculate the remaining days left to complete the task.

There are some notes that you have to put attention when you are running this template:
> The weekday in the chart is begin Monday
> The date below W# corresponds with the first date of the week
> Maximum rows/tasks available to be entered is 100 tasks
> A new row will be revealed automatically if you type a level
> A number of week should be different with window week due to window  week always start on Monday, and week could start in any day
> Do not insert new rows if you want to insert a new task. It will break the formula. Copy the tasks and paste it one row below. And you can type a new one.
> The date format is included with day name information to remind you about what day it is when you enter dates
> Some parts/worksheets are protected with password.

The ones that you download below are the lite version. I made the premium version which has been added many tools to ease your planning tasks, you can proceed HERE to read more information about the premium ones.

Project Gantt Chart Template – Week V3.12

There are several to do list templates that you can find as part of my excel templates. For example in my daily planner template and gantt chart template. But, if you need a more simple and standalone to do list template, you can use this one. I called it simple because there is no time or date references inside this template. There are only task name and completion status that you have to fill. It is will be more suitable for kind of jobs or tasks that have to be finished without any strict completion time or date or to be finished within one day or short period of time.

There are two kind of templates available. The first one is a single to-do list where it is more suitable to be used for single person. Inside it, there are 26 rows that you can use to fill your tasks. There are no excel formula inside the table. Just type the number, type your tasks name, and type a completion status once you finished your tasks. You can put word “done” or type “v” or any other characters. Remember to leave the status column blank when the tasks are not finished yet. The reason why you have to leave it blank, because the completion bar on top of the table will calculate the percentage of finished job by counting the number of columns that is not blank. You can modify this excel formula to suit your needs.

The second one is the team to do list. Basically, it is an aggregation of single to-do list templates with additional summary where you can see accomplishment of any members in this team. For example, it can be used to monitor the performance for any voluntaries project that is held in one day. Or, it can be used to measure performance of its member for doing the same job within the same period of time. To use this template is the same with the first template, except you can switch between to-do list from summary worksheet by selecting it from the column name. You can download both templates below which is only can be opened if you are using Microsoft Excel 2007 or 2010.

While waiting for an approval from my bank for new house loan mortgage application, I have been informed that the bank has checked my loan history and status and they said that my debt-to-income ratio is slightly above their ratio number. But, since I am already being their customer for more than 10 years with good payment track record, it looks like that my loan mortgage will be approved.

What is debt-to-income ratio? If you are a financial people, you will understand this term. Debt-to-income ratio is a personal finance measure that compares the amount of money that you earn to the amount of money that you owe to your creditors. This number is arisen when they plan to finance their new house, new car, or others. Any financial institutions or banks usually calculate it to determine your mortgage affordability.

Calculating your debt-to-income ratio is easy, open up an excel spreadsheet, put and sum up all of your bank or financial institution debts in one column, then put and sum up all of your income in other column, and divide the sum of your debt to the sum of your income. That’s it. That is your debt-to-income ratio. If you are still confused to run it using excel you can download this simple debt-to-income ratio calculator to help you find out your ratio. Replace item name in the template with your income and loan item.

Inside this tool, there is a ratio classification which I quoted from Gerri Detweiler, author of The Ultimate Credit Handbook. And there are some other classification from other experts that probably more suitable for you. There are many factors that affect the ratio, because it will depend on other expenses. For example, family with children will have different expenses compare with single people. Your living neighborhood also will affect your monthly expenses. So, be wise with your expenses, and read many references in internet if you have problem on managing your monthly expenses.

This tool will be more suitable if you plan to apply for a loan mortgage and you want to calculate whether your ratio is below your bank requirement where maximum ratio of 36% or 37% is the most common parameter used by banks to give you loan.

This is a pregnancy calendar that should accompany your journey into motherhood. It will help you to find out your pregnancy week easily every time you want to know how many weeks that have been passed on certain date.

And it should help you plan your weekly activities until you delivered your baby. For example, you can plan your visit to your obstetrician where it could be once a month for the first 6-7 months, and it will be 2-4 times a week when entering 8th month. And you can plan a time when you and your husband go shopping together to prepare your needs and your newborn baby needs.

I am not an obstetrician, so I won’t explain more about pregnancy. You can search and read from hundreds of references you can find in internet or bookstores. I was just creating this excel template based on experiences  my wife had. Since some of my friends found that this calendar is useful for them, I think it should be useful also for you who pregnant or have a pregnant wife. And for you who just plan to have a baby, probably you can use this calendar to plan and calculate the birth of your baby.

This is a two-year calendar where you can fully monitor your 9 month pregnancy within two year calendar period. To make this calendar works, you can follow several steps below:

• Select 1st Calendar worksheet
• Fill cell V5 with the beginning of your last menstrual cycle information
• Fill cell V6 with the length of your menstrual cycle period information
• Fill cell V7 with the length of your luteal phase period information. Filling this cell is optional, where it is already filled with a common luteal phase period (14 days).
• Select your start day of the week for this calendar by selecting from Sunday-Monday drop down menu in cell K2.
• After typing those information, you will see that the first calendar will be generated with the same year with your last menstrual cycle year. You will see the red marker in the calendar as your last menstrual cycle (W0), the first green marker as your conception prediction date(W2), the pink markers as your pregnancy weekly reference(W1,2,3-39,41-42), and the last green marker (W40) as your expected date of delivery, which based on statistic, it is very rare that the prediction date is punctual.
• There are blank notes at the left and right side of the calendar. It consists of two columns without border line between those columns. the left column (column B and V) are places where you can type your important dates on corresponding month next to the notes. The second column (column C and W) are places where you can type the important information for those dates. Blue markers will be revealed after you typing those dates.
• At the bottom of each calendar, there is a pregnancy summary information that you can fill with your own information

After finishing filling your information, you can print it and stick it in your wall or put it as your book insertion. If there is a new information you would like to add, you can manually write and mark new important dates directly in the calendar. Please use this pregnancy calendar as your side reference only. Always refer to your doctor for more accurate information on your pregnancy.

UEFA have made the draw for the group stages of 2011/2012 Champions Leagues on Thursday, 25 August 2011 in Monaco. Barcelona, the former champions, will try to defend its title at their home by playing against AC Milan on 14 September. Both of teams are looked like will go through the next round if they don’t underestimate the other two clubs in group H, Viktoria Plzen and Bate Borisov.

The other top seededs are looked like will also advance from their groups, if they don’t underestimate their opponents, as you can see the group division below.
-  Group A: Bayern Munich, Villarreal, Manchester City and Napoli.
-  Group B: Inter Milan, CSKA Moscow, Lille Metropole and Trabzonspor.
-  Group C: Manchester United, Benfica, Basel and Otelul Galati.
-  Group D: Real Madrid, Olympique Lyonnais, Ajax Amsterdam and Dinamo Zagreb.
-  Group E: Chelsea, Valencia, Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Genk.
-  Group F: Arsenal, Olympique de Marseille, Olympiacos and Borussia Dortmund.
-  Group G: Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, Zenit St Petersburg and Apoel.
-  Group H: Barcelona, AC Milan, Bate Borisov and Viktoria Plzen.

All group matches will start from 14 September and will end at 8 December 2011. Below is the full schedule of drawing and matches until the final at 19 May at Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany.
- Group matches, 14 Sep – 8 Dec 2011
- Round of 16 drawing, 9 December 2011
- Round of 16 matches, first leg, 14 – 15 December 2012 or 21 – 22 February 2012
- Round of 16 matches, second leg, 6 – 7 March 2012 or 13 – 14 March 2012
- Quarter-finals drawing, : 16 March 2012
- Quarter-finals matches , first leg, 27 – 28 March 2012
- Quarter-finals matches, second leg, 3 – 4 April 2012
- Semi-finals matches, first leg , 17 – 18 April 2012
- Semi-finals matches, second leg, 24 – 25 April 2012
- Final matches, 19 May 2012

This 2011/2012 UEFA Champions League Fixtures and Scoresheet is the same with the previous season template. I plan to make additional calendar worksheet so you can see the whole schedule in one worksheet but I don’t have enough time to do it now due I will be out of town for a week. Perhaps later I will add it.

For you who never use this template before, below is a short guidance to use this Champions League 2011/2012 schedule template :

-  Put result scores in score boxes in ‘Group Qualification’ worksheet. The standing table next to it will be adjusted automatically.
-  When all group matches are played, you will see the top two teams that qualify for round of 16 shown up in the drawing rows below group standing table. Watch the round of 16 drawings at 9 December (or you can just read from newspaper or internet at the next day ), and fill the box beside those teams with the drawing numbers. Drawing numbers are corelated with matches numbers. For example put matches #1 in cell next to Barcelona in group winner box and in cell next to Villareal in group runner up box. There are several rules applied when UEFA draws these matches, for example, round of 16 cannot have matches between teams from the same countries or the same groups.
-  Go to ‘Knock Out Phase’ worksheet. Since some entries are based on drawings, I cannot make it all entry automatic. You should fill it manually. The blue boxes at the left and right side of these matches are applied to home teams. Start filling the date and time of first and second legs in corresponding boxes.
-  Fill the result scores of round of 16 matches
-  When all round of 16 matches are finished, UEFA will do the drawing once again. You should do the pairing matches manually. All round of 16 winners will be shown in cell H99-H106 (with words ‘Winner of First round #’ next to it. There are selection boxes on top of it. Do the pairing matches by select the teams manually. You will see that there are another pairing matches for semi-finals. You will do this pairing later.
-  In the quarter-finals box, fill again the date and time of the first and second leg matches.
-  Fill the result scores of quarter-finals matches
-  When all quarter-finals matches are finished, go once again to the semifinal box inside the drawing box, and you can see information about winner of quarter-finals matches. Since which teams that will become a home team at the first leg is not yet known in the beginning, you have to enter the team manually once again from selection boxes.
-  Again, do filling the date and time for first and second leg in semifinal boxes.
-  Fill the result scores of semifinal matches
-  Fill the result scores of final match.

You can make two copies of this scoresheet, where you can use one copy to play with your prediction and one copy for the real results.

Ok guys. You can download the file here. If you found some minor errors, for example group names, or dates, you can manually correct it inside the box. Or, if you want to display it by group instead of by matches date, you can manually change it. If you found major error, which usually related with the excel formula, let me know. It could be unnoticeable error eventhough this template is already being used to the 3rd season.

In less than 20 weeks from now, we will enter year 2012. Year 2012 is a leap year where some people predicts that this year could be the end of the world based on Mayan Calendar. I don’t believe it. A calendar is a calendar… It is a passive tool to help us doing anything with time reference in this world either planning forward or seeing backward. Without a calendar, you will got some difficulties on planning anything. And it is already started a thousand years ago when ancient people developed their own method to plan or doing anything based on natural signs that could give them time references. Like moon position, star or sun position, animal behavior, rains, etc. These signs have helped them, for example, to predict a good time for animal hunting, to keep staying in their house on winter season, to go farming etc.

We are living in modern world now where we don’t need to see natural signs to plan anything. Experts are already doing this for us. And with the help of internet, you can find many tools that will help you planning anything where calendars are one of those useful tools. Here, you can download several type of 2012 calendars that can help you make your plan for next year. But, these are not perpetual calendars. These are just fixed date calendars with custom event functions  which is the same with the previous 2011 calendar templates.

These calendars below are 2012 calendars where you can fill maximum 3 different event categories to be marked in the calendar. You can choose between portrait or landscape version with either Monday or Sunday as its starting day before you print it.

This type of calendar below will have calendar and event information in the same page. You can type your information at the left and right side of the calendar on specific month and the date will be colorize based on type of event you have typed.