Spreadsheet CRM setup: nine columns and a weekly habit

Aug 22
3 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

Introduction

Most small businesses do not need CRM software. They need one place where every enquiry is recorded, which is a different and much smaller problem.

A spreadsheet solves it completely for the first few hundred customers, and it has an advantage no software has: everyone already knows how to use it.

1. Spreadsheet CRM setup needs nine columns and no more

Date of enquiry. Name. Contact. Source. What they wanted. Stage. Value. Next action. Next action date.

That is the whole system. Every one of those columns earns its place by answering a question you will actually ask, and adding a tenth is where these sheets start to decay.

Resist the urge to track more. The failure mode is never too few columns — it is a sheet so wide that nobody fills it in.

2. One row per enquiry, never one row per update

The structural decision that determines whether the sheet survives.

Each enquiry is a single row, updated in place. Do not add a new row every time something happens, and do not keep notes in the same cell as the stage.

If you need a history of interactions, put it in one notes column with dates written inline. Anything more elaborate belongs in software.

3. Use data validation on stage and source

These two columns are the ones you will count, so they must be consistent.

Set them as dropdowns with a fixed list. Six stages at most — new, contacted, quoted, won, lost, dormant — and your agreed channel names for source.

Free-typed values in these columns are what make the sheet unreportable. Twelve spellings of one channel produce twelve rows in any summary.

4. The next action columns are what make it useful

Most sheets record what happened. The two columns that change outcomes record what is supposed to happen next.

Every open row needs a next action and a date. Sort by that date and you have your day's work, which is the point at which the sheet stops being an archive and becomes a working tool.

A row with no next action is either closed or forgotten, and this format makes forgetting visible.

5. Build the summary once, then leave it alone

On a second tab, count what you need: enquiries per month, enquiries by source, conversion rate from enquiry to won, average value of won deals, current open pipeline.

Five formulas, written once, referencing the whole first tab. After that the reporting is automatic and nobody has to compile anything.

Keep the summary tab read-only in practice. The most common way these sheets break is someone typing over a formula.

6. Decide access and keep one copy

The sheet must live somewhere shared, with more than one person able to reach it.

A version on someone's laptop is a business risk and it stops being updated the moment that person is away. A shared cloud document with edit access for whoever handles enquiries is right.

Never allow a second copy to exist. Two versions of the sheet is the beginning of the end for the data, and it happens through the ordinary act of someone downloading it to work offline.

7. Make updating it part of an existing routine

The sheet fails through neglect rather than design.

Attach it to something that already happens: updated when the enquiry is answered, reviewed in the weekly slot, cleaned monthly. Assign it to a role.

The weekly review is the important one — sort by next action date, deal with anything overdue, and mark anything dormant. Fifteen minutes, and it prevents the slow accumulation of stale rows that eventually makes people abandon the sheet.

8. Know when to move to software

There are real limits, and reaching them is a good sign.

Move when several people need to work in it simultaneously, when you need automated follow-up sequences, when the history per customer matters more than the current state, or when the row count makes it slow — practically, somewhere in the low thousands.

Until then, a well-maintained sheet outperforms a poorly-adopted CRM, and the discipline you build maintaining it is what will make the eventual migration work. Software does not fix a business that never recorded its enquiries; it just costs more.

Conclusion

Nine columns, one row per enquiry updated in place, dropdowns on stage and source, and a next action with a date on every open row.

Write the summary formulas once on a second tab, keep exactly one shared copy with access for everyone who handles enquiries, attach updating to an existing routine with a weekly sort by next action, and move to software only when concurrency, automation or volume genuinely demands it.