Stacking Plan Excel Template

When managing a relocation, consolidation, or real estate reorganization project, one of the first reflexes is to create an Excel template to structure team distribution across the different floors of a building. This "Excel stacking plan" has become a common tool in real estate departments, AMOs, or project managers.

But while Excel is familiar, flexible, and quick to set up, it quickly reaches its limits as soon as the project grows or becomes collaborative. It's in this context that specialized tools like Stackfit take on their full meaning. They offer a powerful, fluid, and evolutive alternative to spreadsheets, while maintaining stacking plan rigor.

What is an Excel stacking plan template?

An Excel stacking plan template is a table model allowing visualization, floor by floor, of who occupies what, where, and on what surface. It can contain:

A column for floors (often from ground floor to top level)

Columns for teams or services

Occupied surfaces (in m²)

Number of employees

Densities (m²/person)

Possibly color codes or manual bar charts

This file is sometimes accompanied by a PowerPoint diagram to visualize distribution vertically.

Advantages of an Excel stacking plan

Accessible to all: everyone has Excel, and little training is needed.

Flexible: it adapts to any company structure or building typology.

Quick to build: in a few hours, you can produce a first distribution model.

Compatible with other files: it can be linked to HR extracts, AutoCAD plans, or real estate data.

Limitations of an Excel stacking plan

1. No dynamic visualization

An Excel file is table-centric. It doesn't clearly show the vertical stacking of floors. Any attempt at graphic representation requires manual effort (conditional formatting, stacked charts, copy-paste into PowerPoint...).

2. Difficult to collaborate

When several people need to work on the stacking plan, Excel quickly becomes a puzzle:

Versioning risks

Locked files or sent by email

Difficult to track modifications or trade-offs

3. No link with plans or real-time data

The Excel template is a frozen snapshot at a given moment. It's not linked to:

architectural plans,

HR or real estate databases,

nor to hypotheses under validation.

Result: as soon as there's a change (headcount, partial relocation, merger, team change), everything has to be redone manually.

4. Not readable for non-experts

Excel files are often designed for expert use. They can be off-putting for business units, HR, or executive committee members. However, these stakeholders must understand and validate implantation choices.

Stackfit: a modern and performant alternative

Stackfit is a SaaS tool designed to intelligently replace Excel stacking plan templates. It allows building, visualizing, and sharing dynamic, visual, and collaborative stacking plans in a few clicks.

What Stackfit does better than Excel

1. Immediate visualization in "building" mode

Stackfit directly represents floors as stacked columns, with colored zones for each entity. At a glance, you understand:

Who is located on which floor

What surface is used or vacant

What the occupancy rate is

Which team is dispersed or grouped

Advantage: form follows function. No need to create a separate chart or PowerPoint presentation.

2. Drag and drop to test scenarios

With Excel, testing a new hypothesis often means copy-pasting a new version of the file. With Stackfit, you can:

Move a team from one floor to another by drag & drop

Instantly see impact on surfaces and density

Compare several scenarios

Save each version with comments

Advantage: facilitated decision-making, real-time arbitration.

3. Real-time collaboration

Stackfit allows several stakeholders (project manager, real estate department, HR, business units...) to work together:

Adding comments

Modification history

Scenario validation

Sharing via secure link

Advantage: one centralized tool instead of 5 divergent Excel files.

4. Link with HR and real estate data

Stackfit can be connected to databases:

Number of employees per team

Forecast headcount evolution

Real floor capacity (in m²)

Occupancy or booking data (in case of flex office)

Advantage: you work with up-to-date data, not manual assumptions.

5. Professional exports in one click

Stackfit automatically generates quality visuals for your steering committee meetings:

Distribution charts by entity

Occupancy rate by floor

Summary tables by scenario

Visual presentation plans like PowerPoint

Advantage: considerable time savings and better readability for all audiences.

Practical case: merger of two departments

Context:

A company wants to consolidate two departments in the same building. Objective: have 600 employees coexist on 5 floors, optimizing business proximities while respecting a 0.8 workstation/person ratio.

With Excel:

Several files are exchanged between AMO, HR, and real estate department

Validation takes weeks

With each modification, visuals and tables need to be re-prepared

With Stackfit:

Team creates three scenarios in one hour

Directors visualize different options in real-time

One version is collectively validated in workshop

Result: 3x time savings and consensus obtained more quickly.

Summary

Conclusion

Excel has long been the default tool for building a stacking plan. But as soon as a project becomes complex, multi-stakeholder, or evolutive, spreadsheet limitations appear very quickly.

Stackfit offers a modern, powerful alternative designed for real estate professionals, space planners, and project managers. It transforms an often tedious exercise into a fluid, visual, and collaborative process.