For event organisers · The master timeline

The event is in 2028. Your timeline is in column T.

Timeline Master holds the full event journey as rows you can trust: every milestone, deadline, decision and planning window, with a phase, a focus area, an owner and an honest date — an exact day when you know it, a quarter when you don't. Zoom the same timeline from years to weeks. Overdue turns red by itself. Built for the three-year build-up a spreadsheet was never shaped for.

Test it free — no account → Own it · €99

Built from real master timelinesWorld championships, city games, annual events

25+ years of event workBonacube · Finland

What needs to happen when, from first meeting to final report — one timeline answers.

You know this file

The phase row was painted by hand. Cell by cell.

Twenty-two quarter columns, and the phase written into each one: CONCEPT eight times, PLANNING five — some with a trailing space, so even Excel thought they were different phases. One sheet ends in IMPLEMENTATION, the template says DELIVERY.
Milestones lived as prose in merged cells: "24 months to Opening Ceremony (21.2.2027). 17 Milestones Reached (see comments)." Seventeen milestones — filed inside a cell comment no meeting ever opened.
The weekly version grew to 169 columns. Zooming out meant building a second file; zooming in meant scrolling sideways past October. Same event, three timelines, none of them agreeing.
Risk management by punctuation: "Coordination Group (?)", "21.2.–4.3.2029 (TBC)". A question mark in a cell is not a status — but it was the only one the sheet could hold.
"OPERY 28.9. SIIRRETÄÄN" — a moved meeting, recorded by typing the move into the cell. The change-log sheet had one entry. The other hundred changes lived in "Päivitetty 16.5.2016" at the top, doing the work of a version history.

📄 Lahti2029_MasterTimeline_v1-3.xlsx — 22 quarter columns, phases painted by hand

📄 Toimintasuunnitelmat MASTER.xlsx — 169 columns and growing

Phase row, cells B10–V10CONCEPT ×8 · PLANNING ×5 — painted, not computed

Milestone cell, K11"17 Milestones Reached (see comments)"

Main event date"21.2.–4.3.2029 (TBC)" — the risk lives in the brackets

Template row 7"Right Holder Activitites" — the typo outlived three events

Cell AE6"OPERY 28.9. SIIRRETÄÄN" — the reschedule is inside the cell

The other way

Picture the same three years on a timeline that computes.

One row per timeline item instead of one painted cell per quarter. Each row knows its phase, its focus area, its owner, its date — and how honest that date is: fixed, target, or rough. The phases, the overview, the milestone list and the Now / Next board draw themselves. Change a date, and every view already knows.

Every milestone, deadline, decision and window is one row with an owner
Dates with honest precision: 15.9.2027 — or just Q3 2027, drawn a quarter wide
Years, half-years, quarters, months, weeks — same rows, five zoom levels
Overdue turns red on its own; the countdown to your main event runs in the toolbar

What it is

One timeline. Five views.

The 📋 Timeline is the working table: one row per item, grouped by phase, IDs assigned automatically per focus area (MKT-001, REP-004). Getting started, Concept, Planning, Preparation, Implementation, Live, Wrap-up — rename the phases, add your own. Same for the fourteen focus areas. A phase's date range is computed from its rows; nothing is painted.

The other views draw from the same rows. The 🗺 Overview is the visual timeline — phases across the top, main events in gold, one lane per focus area, today as a red line, zoomable from years to weeks. ⭐ Milestones filters down to the dates that matter, month by month with days-to counters. 🧭 Focus areas shows each team its own lane and what starts next. And ▶ Now / Next is the steering-meeting screen: what's late, what needs a decision, what starts soon.

It runs in the browser — laptop, tablet, phone — and the logic comes from master timelines that ran real events: a ski world championships build-up, city games, annual events. This is not a task manager and not a project-management platform. Tasks live where they live; this is the master timeline — the one picture of what must happen when.

Timeline Master. Lakeside Winter Games 2028 T−577 d ▶ Now / Next

Q3 26Q4 26Q1 27Q2 27Q3 27Q4 27

Concept Planning Preparation

Commercial

Partner sales window

Pricing decision · 8 d late

Venue & spaces

Venue agreements

Decision: structures

Staff & volunteers

Recruitment opens

Training plan

Marketing

Plan 27–28

Campaign starts

Reporting

Report #4 · 31.12.

Report #5

TODAY

Why it works

Six problems from the real files. Six fixes.

Rows, not painted cells

The old sheet painted CONCEPT into eight cells and forgot two. Here a phase is wherever its rows are — its date range, its counts and its "◉ Now" marker are computed from the items in it, every time you look.

Honest dates

Q3 2027 is a real date here — drawn a quarter wide, not rounded to a guessed day. Sharpen it to a month, then a day, as the event gets closer. The timing column says what's fixed, what's a target and what's still rough — so nobody defends a date that was never real.

One timeline, five zoom levels

The quarter sheet and the 169-column week sheet were the same timeline at two zoom levels — kept as two files that disagreed. Here it's one set of rows: years for the council, quarters for the OC, weeks for the run-in.

Red is earned, never painted

Anything past its date and not done turns red with the days counted. The next 30 days turn gold. The today-line crosses every lane, and the countdown to your main event runs in the toolbar. No question marks in brackets.

Every team sees its own lane

Fourteen focus areas — management, programme, venue, commercial, marketing, volunteers, safety and the rest — each with an owner, its own lane, and "next up" computed. Marketing sees when marketing starts without reading anyone else's rows.

Now / Next runs the steering meeting

Full-screen, dark, readable from the back of the room: overdue in red, decisions waiting, what starts in 45 days, what's live, the next key dates. The "where are we?" question answers itself before anyone asks it.

The second life

The steering meeting: what's late, what's next.

▶ Now / Next is the full-screen board for the monthly steering meeting: overdue at the top in red with the days counted, decisions that are waiting, windows that should start in the next 45 days, and the ten nearest key dates — each with its focus area and owner. Leadership items carry a gold ★. Pick one focus area and the board becomes that team's lane.

And between meetings: 🔗 Share makes two view-only links — the working table for the team, or the visual overview for leadership. The data travels inside the link. No account needed, nothing to install.

See it in the free test →

Timeline Master. Lakeside Winter Games 2028 09:02:47

T−577 d to Opening Ceremony · 49 open · 3 overdue · 3 decisions open

Overdue — 3

★ Decision: ceremonies scale and venue · Management · Jesse · 22 d late Progress report #3 to rights holder · Reporting · Jesse · 7 d late Volunteer programme lead hired · Staff · Elina · 36 d late

Needs a decision

★ Sponsor package pricing approved · Commercial · Sara · in 8 d

Starts soon — next 45 days

Operational planning programme · Operations · Mika · starts in 25 d Venue agreements negotiated · Venue · Mika · Q3 2026

Next key dates

★ City council progress briefing · 4.8.2026 OC meeting, September · 15.9.2026

Who built this

An event director. Not a software company.

I'm Jesse Kiuru. I help event organisers and host cities bid, plan and run better events. Event director of the Lahti 2017 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. Currently structuring the Winter World Masters Games 2028.

Timeline Master exists because I planned world championships on that quarter grid — painting phases into cells, filing milestones in cell comments, keeping a 169-column week sheet next to it for the same event. The timeline held everything and showed nothing. The overview for the council was a third file. This tool is the same timeline logic with the drawing, the zooming and the chasing built in.

270,000spectators, Lahti 2017

3,000workforce coordinated

25+ yrschampionships to conferences

Pricing

Test first. Buy when it earns its place.

The free test runs on a full example event — a three-year city winter games timeline with 58 items across all seven phases and fourteen focus areas: a live countdown, three deadlines already blown, a decision stuck since June. Everything works, nothing saves. When you want your own timeline saved and shareable, one payment.

Timeline Master · Full version

€99 one time · no subscription

Unlimited events and timeline items
Five views from one timeline: table, visual overview, milestones, focus areas, Now / Next
Honest-precision dates: day, month, quarter, half-year or year — fixed / target / rough
Zoom from years to weeks; today-line, phase bands, main events in gold
Phases and focus areas fully renameable — works for any event type
Overdue, due-soon and starts-soon computed daily; countdown to your main event
Item library — 30 standard master-timeline items; paste rows from your old sheet
Now / Next board · view-only share links · A3/A4 PDF · Excel/CSV · all updates included

Get Timeline Master · €99 → or test it free first — no account, 2 minutes

Pairs with Commitment Tracker: the timeline says what must happen when — Commitment Tracker chases who owes it. Ten tools in the toolbox.

Questions

Asked before buying.

Do I need to install anything?

No. Timeline Master runs in the browser — laptop, tablet or phone. Your events save automatically to your account.

Is this a project management tool?

No, on purpose. No task lists, no dependencies between every row, no resource planning. Those live in other tools. This is the master timeline: what needs to happen when, across the full event journey, on one screen the whole organisation can read.

We're a conference, not a winter games. Does it fit?

Yes. The phases and the fourteen focus areas are defaults, not rules — rename them, delete them, add your own. A nine-month conference timeline zooms to months and weeks; a four-year games timeline zooms to years and quarters. Same tool, same rows.

What if I only know the quarter, not the date?

Then write the quarter. "Q3 2027" is a valid date here and draws a quarter wide — the timeline stays honest about what is known. Mark it rough or target, and sharpen it to a day when reality arrives. Fixed dates with no date at all get flagged, because that's a contradiction someone should see.

Can leadership see it without an account?

Yes. 🔗 Share makes a view-only link that opens straight into the visual overview — phases, main events, lanes, today-line. The whole timeline travels inside the link; nothing to install, nothing to log into. It's a snapshot of the moment you share it; send a fresh link after big changes.

What does "free test" mean exactly?

The full tool on an example event — a three-year city winter games with 58 timeline items, three overdue rows glowing red and a countdown running to the opening ceremony. Open the Overview and zoom; then open ▶ Now / Next. Nothing saves — 100 people can test at once and never see each other's changes.