Creating an Excel template allows a person to reuse a workbook setup over and over, without the need to recreate the wheel every time, nor continuously to clean out old information. By using a template, your workbook is ready and waiting for you to enter data; everything else will happen automatically, when you automate your workbook.
Most of the time, when we are told to use a particular template, the file we are asked to use is not an actual template. This is why the person telling us to use the template also reminds us to do a Save As and rename the file, so we don’t overwrite the existing file. That’s the first indication that it is not an actual template.
The nice thing about a template is that it forces you to save your newly opened template as a workbook. Thus, it is extremely hard to accidentally overwrite your template. To overwrite a template, you would need to follow a number of steps and rename the updated template with the exact name of the old template.