Marketing Editorial Calendar Template
Four documents and four sheets that size the quarter against the stage actually capping your pipeline, then run the week on stage age.
Free download · No account needed
Capacity Plan, Q1
Why the quarter was impossible in week one
Two writers, one editor, a designer at a fifth of a week. A fictional instruments manufacturer, Havelock.
| Stage | Owner | Touch hours per piece | Hours available per week | Capacity per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brief | Editor | 3 | 12 | 4.0 |
| Draft | Two writers | 16 | 40 | 2.5 |
| Edit | Editor | 6 | 9 | 1.5 |
| Design | Designer, 0.2 FTE | 4 | 7.5 | 1.9 on 60% of pieces |
| Schedule | Editor | 0.5 | 5 | 10.0 |
Nine hours. That is what was left of a full-time editor's week after twelve hours of brief writing, three of calendar admin and six of standing meetings. Six hours per piece against nine available is one and a half pieces a week, and it was the lowest number in the pipeline, so it was the pipeline.
Thirteen weeks at 1.5 is 19.5. The plan committed 24, drafts arrived at 2.5 a week, and the queue grew by one piece a week until March. Delivered 17, eleven of them on the promised date.
Havelock Instruments committed to 24 pieces last quarter and shipped 17, eleven of them on the date they were promised. The plan was not ambitious. It was arithmetically impossible in week one. The number that made it impossible was nine, the hours of actual editing left in a full-time editor's week after twelve hours of brief writing, three of calendar admin and six of standing meetings. Six hours of editing per piece against nine available is one and a half pieces a week.
Every editorial calendar template on page one is the same grid. Publish date, working title, type, channel, keyword, owner, status. None of them contains the number that decides whether the cadence holds, which is the throughput of the slowest stage. Two writers producing two and a half drafts a week into an editor who clears one and a half do not produce two and a half pieces a week. They produce one and a half, and a queue that grows for thirteen weeks.
So the pack measures your pipeline before it plans anything, names the constraint, and sizes the quarter to that number. It runs the week on stage age rather than the publish date, gives every outside dependency a request-by date, and reconciles the grid against what the content system actually says. It installs into the marketing workspace, beside the content brief pack, the keyword cluster map, the content repurposing pack and the rest of the template library.
What's in the pack
Capacity Plan
Every stage with its touch hours, its available hours and its weekly capacity, the constraint named outright, and the quarter's number after the reserve and the ramp come out.
Capacity Method
How to get from a team to that number in an hour, including the subtraction nobody makes: what is left of a full-time editor's week once briefs, admin and standing meetings are taken out of it.
Calendar
The committed slots with two dates each, plus four fields on every dependency: what is needed, who owns it, their measured lead time, and the request-by date back-computed from the target.
Pipeline by Stage
The week, with days in stage read against that stage's own median and ninetieth percentile from your register. Four risk states, and every one of them arrives while there is still time to act.
Published Register
One row per piece with the stage-by-stage elapsed days, the returns and where they came from, and a slip cause that names a stage. Every other number in the space is derived from this sheet.
Workflow Definition and Editorial Policy
Stages with one owner and one testable exit condition each, the request-by mechanic for outside reviewers, and the standing decisions that otherwise get relitigated in every production meeting.
Slip Review
A full worked quarter: the plan that was impossible in week one, the three findings that changed it, and the same team going from a 46% on-time rate to 90% while committing to three fewer pieces.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or take it blank
Open the pack in River and send your publishing history, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and fill them in yourself.
- 2
Send the last two quarters
Everything published with whatever stage dates exist, who owns each stage and how much of their week it really gets, and anything needing an owner outside the team.
- 3
Read the constraint first
One stage, one number, and the quarter that number buys. It is usually smaller than the last plan and it is the first one that has ever been true.
- 4
Commit, then run the week
Fill the calendar to that number with request-by dates on every dependency, then work the risk view on stage age rather than waiting for a date to pass.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. The download is Word documents and CSV sheets, no account and no card. Edit with AI is the optional half: the agent measures your own pipeline, names the constraint and sizes the quarter. Every pack sits in the template library.
What makes this different from a calendar spreadsheet?
A spreadsheet holds dates. This holds the number that decides whether those dates are possible. Throughput is set by the slowest stage, so a pipeline with an editor clearing one and a half pieces a week carries 19 in a quarter no matter how many rows the grid has.
How do I know which stage is the constraint?
Divide each stage's available hours by the touch hours a piece takes there, then take the lowest number. It is almost never the writers. On most teams it is whoever reviews, because reviewing is the task that gets squeezed by everything else in that person's week.
Why not just flag pieces once they are overdue?
Because overdue is a result, not a warning. A piece eight days into a stage whose ninetieth percentile is five is beyond anything your pipeline has recovered, and its publish date is still three weeks away. That gap is where every recoverable slip lives.
Our delays always come from legal or a customer quote. Does that help?
That is what the request-by date is for. A five-day reviewer adds nine days to a piece when the request goes out two days before the date, and nothing when it goes out at the draft sixty per cent mark. The reviewer never got faster. The clock started earlier.
What does reconciling against the CMS mean?
Scheduled in a spreadsheet is a word somebody typed. WordPress carries a post status of publish, future, draft, pending or private, so the comparison is one field. Webflow items have no scheduled state at all.
What does Edit with AI actually do?
It signs you up, installs this pack as a private workspace, and starts on your history. Send an export of what you published, a screenshot of the old calendar, or just a list of promised dates against actual ones, and the capacity plan comes back filled.
Find out how many pieces your quarter holds
Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and send it the last two quarters of publishing history.
Edit with AI