CRM Template

What is in the CRM template

Six working tabs plus a Start here sheet. Every tab links to the others by account name, so a deal, its contacts and its activities stay connected without lookups you have to build.

Most free CRM spreadsheets stop at a contact list and a stage column. This one adds the four fields that tell you whether a deal is real: the forecast category, the first close date, how many times the close date has been pushed, and the date of the last meaningful change.

How to set up a CRM in Excel or Google Sheets

Set it up in about the time it takes to paste your current deal list. Work in this order, because each tab looks up the one before it.

1. Lists. Type each rep's name under Owners. Leave the stage and category names as they are unless you also update every old row, since the Summary looks them up by exact name.
2. Accounts. Paste one row per company. Keep account names unique: deals, contacts and activities find their account by name.
3. Contacts. Add the people, pick each one's account from the dropdown, and set their role. A deal with only one contact, and no economic buyer, shows up fast.
4. Deals. One row per opportunity. Enter the first close date once and never change it. When the close date moves later, update it and add 1 to Close date pushes. When the stage, amount or close date changes, set Last meaningful change to that day.
5. Activities. Log the touchpoints that matter, with a next step and a due date. Overdue items turn red.
6. Summary. Set the period (usually the current quarter) and its target. Leave the as-of date as =TODAY() to keep it live, or type a date to freeze a snapshot for a weekly review.

In Google Sheets, upload the file to Drive and open it with Google Sheets. Use the Sheets share settings to give reps edit access to the Deals, Contacts and Activities tabs, and protect the Summary and Lists tabs so the formulas stay intact.

Why each deal has a stage and a forecast category

Because they answer different questions. The stage says where the buyer is in their process. The forecast category says what the rep will stand behind closing this period, at this amount. A deal in Signature whose buyer cannot sign until January is late stage, and it is not commit for this quarter.

The five stages follow ORM's guide to building a sales pipeline that forecasts, where the last stage is called Commit. The template calls it Signature so it cannot be confused with the Commit category. The four categories are Commit, Best Case, Pipeline and Omitted, with the evidence bar for each written out in ORM's forecast category definitions template. The Start here tab carries both sets of definitions and the exit criteria for every stage.

CRM template example: a three-rep team on October 23

This is the example file. The companies, people and numbers are fictional and illustrative. Three reps sell a B2B software product. The period is Q4 2026 (October 1 to December 31) with a $300,000 target, and the as-of date is October 23, 2026.

The pipeline on paper. There are 11 open deals worth $718,000, an average of $65,273. The four deals the team has won averaged $34,000. Open deals run 1.9x larger than what actually closes, so the headline pipeline overstates what the team can expect. The win rate across the nine closed deals is 44% (4 won, 5 lost).

The call. Closed won plus commit is $167,000, which leaves a $133,000 gap to the target. The team needs most of its $150,000 of best case to land. Two open deals are dated after December 31 ($245,000), so they sit outside the roll-up.

The flags. Four of the 11 open deals get a flag, and they hold $248,000, or 35% of the open pipeline:

• Stale ($40,000). Orchard Retail has had no change to stage, amount or close date for 396 days and its close date has been pushed three times. It is already in Omitted. It should come out of the pipeline count too.
• Close date passed ($120,000). Lakeview Schools was due to close October 16, has been pushed three times, and has no dated next step. It is the largest deal in the quarter and the shakiest.
• Pushed 2+ ($18,000). Redwood Dental moved from September 30 to December 4 over two pushes, and its follow-up is overdue. It is best case at most.
• Check ($70,000). Mesa Robotics has gone 38 days without a meaningful change, past the 30-day check setting. A logged email is not movement.

The Summary also shows two open deals with no next step date, and that Priya Shah owns $365,000 of open pipeline with nothing in commit this quarter. Those are the two questions for the next pipeline review.

The formulas in the template, in Excel and Google Sheets

Every formula uses functions both apps share. Ranges are shortened here for reading. In the workbook they run to row 204 on Deals.

AsOf, Start, End, Check and Stale are the yellow cells on the Summary tab. Formulas are wrapped in IF and IFERROR so an empty row shows blank, not an error. MAXIFS needs Excel 2019, Excel 2021 or Microsoft 365. Google Sheets has it.

What Pete Furseth would track in a spreadsheet CRM

Pete Furseth, ORM's COO, builds forecasts from B2B SaaS teams' CRM data. These points shaped the columns.

• Track the change, not only the state. "The most interesting data in a CRM for forecasting is often not the data itself. It is the change in the data." A deal in Proposal is useful. Knowing it moved into Proposal yesterday is more useful. A spreadsheet keeps only the current value, which is why the template has a Last meaningful change date and a push counter.
• Count stage, amount and close date as movement. ORM treats meaningful activity as a change in stage, close date or amount, and works to a 12-month rule for most customers: a deal with no such change in a year is not real pipeline. That is the template's 365-day Stale default.
• Watch the close date. The best signal that a deal will slip is a rep changing the close date, and a deal that slips from one quarter to the next is less likely to close, even in commit. The earliest signal is no signal at all: no data changing, no notes.
• Compare open deal size with won deal size. Most deals close for less than the amount on the opportunity. Pete's example is a pipeline averaging $80,000 per deal where closed-won deals average $40,000. The Summary puts both numbers side by side.
• Keep renewals apart. Renewals carry less uncertainty: the amount is usually known and the renewal date sets the close date. New business timing follows the last stage change. The Type column keeps them separate.
• Consistent beats perfect. "Everyone has 'bad data' and it doesn't matter," as long as it is recorded the same way every time. Pick definitions, write them on the Start here tab, and stick to them.

Across ORM's customers, 10% or more of the pipeline has typically not been touched in 12 months, and only about 20% of the pipeline dated to close in a quarter on its first day usually closes in that quarter. A spreadsheet that records the first close date and every push shows you your own version of those numbers. For the field rules to enforce at each stage, see required CRM fields by sales stage, and for a monthly cleanup routine, the CRM data hygiene checklist.

When to move from a spreadsheet to a CRM

Move when the spreadsheet stops being trusted, not at a fixed contact count. Vendors put the line in different places: HubSpot pitches its own CRM spreadsheet for "your first 25-50 customers", and OnePageCRM's template roundup suggests switching somewhere around 50 to 100 contacts. Signs you have outgrown the sheet:

• More than one person edits the same deal rows and nobody knows who changed a close date, or when.
• Follow-ups are missed because nothing sends a reminder.
• Email, calendar and the CRM disagree, and someone reconciles them by hand.
• The Summary is rebuilt or patched every week instead of read.
• The spreadsheets multiply. Pete describes Sales Ops teams maintaining 37 spreadsheets with 12 tabs each before they look for help.

Moving does not fix data on its own. In Validity's 2025 survey of 602 CRM users and admins, 76% said less than half of their CRM data is accurate. Bring the definitions from this template with you: stages by buyer action, categories with an evidence bar, a first close date, and a record of every push.

Forecasting is a separate step. Pete's rule of thumb for a machine learning forecast is a couple of hundred closed-won deals at minimum, and a team closing a handful of deals a month does not have the volume yet. He describes a three-rep company at about $5M ARR, with the founder in every deal, as better served by direct conversations and deal reviews. For a stage-weighted forecast built from this pipeline, use the sales forecast template. For the trade-offs once you are in a CRM, read CRM forecasting vs dedicated forecasting. To track closed sales by rep against target by day, week and month, pair it with the sales tracker template.

ORM's take: a CRM is a record of change

The value in a CRM is less the list of companies than the history of every deal: when it moved stage, how its amount changed, how often its close date slipped. A spreadsheet can hold the current state and a few markers of that history, which is enough for a small team that reviews it every week.

ORM snapshots the pipeline in your existing CRM every day, so every stage, amount and close date change is captured and used to forecast the quarter. It works on the data you already have, with no clean-up project first. ORM targets 95% forecast accuracy on new and expansion bookings.

Common questions

Can I create a CRM in Excel?

Excel can do the core of a CRM for a small team: one table per record type (accounts, contacts, deals, activities), dropdowns for stage, category and owner, and COUNTIFS and SUMIFS formulas that roll the pipeline up. What it cannot do is record who changed what and when, send reminders or sync email. This template is built that way and works in Excel 2019 or later.

Is there a free CRM template for Google Sheets?

This one works in Google Sheets and Excel. Upload the .xlsx to Google Drive and choose Open with Google Sheets, or use File > Import in Sheets. The dropdowns, deal flags and summary formulas carry over. There is a worked example with fictional data and a blank copy with the same formulas, and neither needs an email address to download.

Can ChatGPT make a CRM?

An AI assistant can draft a CRM spreadsheet layout, suggest columns and write formulas, and with detailed instructions it can build a simple app. It will not keep your records current, enforce stage rules or remember how a deal changed over time. Check every formula it writes against a few rows you can verify by hand, the way you would check a colleague's work.

Can I build my own CRM for free?

A spreadsheet CRM like this one costs nothing beyond Excel or a free Google account, and several CRM vendors offer free tiers with user or feature limits. The real cost is time. Someone has to keep stages, amounts and close dates current, because a CRM nobody updates shows a pipeline that is not really there.

What are the 7 components of CRM?

There is no single official list. Most lists include contact management, account management, deal or pipeline management, activity and task tracking, reporting, sales forecasting, and automation or integrations. This template covers the first six by hand: accounts, contacts, deals with stages and forecast categories, activities with due dates, and a pipeline summary. Automation is where a spreadsheet stops.

When should you switch from a spreadsheet to CRM software?

Switch when the sheet stops being trusted: several people editing the same rows, no record of who moved a stage or close date, follow-ups missed because nothing reminds anyone, or reports rebuilt by hand every week. Vendors draw the line somewhere between 25 and 100 customers or contacts. Team size and update discipline matter more than a contact count.

More free tools

Sales Forecast TemplateBuild a deal-level forecast with stage weighting.Open the tool →Sales Tracker TemplateTrack sales by rep against target by day, week and month, with pace and projected finish.Open the tool →Pipeline Velocity CalculatorSee how much revenue your pipeline moves per day.Open the tool →