Quote tracker spreadsheet: the columns, formulas and weekly routine to keep every trade quote moving

A quote tracker spreadsheet is one row per quote, with the date you sent it, what it's worth, its status and the date of the next thing you'll do about it. Fifteen columns cover what a small trade business needs, and two formulas turn the overdue follow-ups and nearly expired quotes a different colour. Open it at the same time every week and no quote goes quiet without you deciding it should.

Below are the columns, headings you can paste into Excel, Google Sheets or a similar spreadsheet app, the formulas, a filled-in example and the weekly routine that makes it work. Some firms call the same sheet a quote register. For writing the quote itself and following it up, see the guide to writing a trade quote customers say yes to.

Where quotes get lost without a tracker

Most small firms keep track of quotes in three places at once: the sent folder in their email, a stack of paper in the van and their memory. That works for the first few quotes in a quiet month. It stops working the week you send eight quotes and get two emergency call-outs.

The quotes that get lost are rarely the big ones. They're the boiler swap you priced on a Tuesday, the customer who said "we'll let you know after the weekend", and the landlord who needed to check with the owner. No one said no. The follow-up just never happened, and the customer booked whoever rang them back.

A tracker fixes this by turning each quote into a row with a date on it. The date is what matters. A list of open quotes tells you what's out there; a list of open quotes with a next action date tells you what to do this morning.

There's a second reason to track quotes, and it pays off later. Once you've closed a few dozen, the tracker tells you how many you win, what size of job you win most often and why the others went elsewhere. That's information you can't get from a sent folder.

Fifteen columns for a quote tracker

Every column below earns its place by answering a question you'll ask when a customer rings, or when you sit down to chase. Put them in this order, from left to right, so the columns you use every week sit together in the middle.

Use the value before VAT, so the totals compare like with like whether or not a job carries VAT.

Fifteen columns sounds a lot, but you fill most of them once, on the day the quote goes out. After that, a typical week means changing the status, the next action and its date.

Leave out anything you won't use. If you work alone, the Who column can go. If you only work for homeowners, Customer type can go. Add a column only when you know which question it answers: an "Enquiry came from" column is worth having if you want to know whether web enquiries turn into more work than phone calls.

Citizens Advice tells homeowners that a quote should include how long the price is valid for, along with a fixed total and a breakdown. That advice applies to England. If your quotes don't carry a valid-until date yet, the quote template linked further down has a line for it, and the Valid until column gives that date a job to do.

Download the Excel template or copy the headings

The quickest start is the free Excel quote tracker. It has the fifteen headings in order, drop-down lists, the red and amber follow-up colours, a frozen top row and a Summary tab with the four totals. Any spreadsheet app that opens .xlsx files will run it.

Download the Excel quote tracker (.xlsx)

To build your own sheet instead, open a new spreadsheet, name the first tab Quotes, click cell A1 and paste the line below. It will land in one cell. Then use your spreadsheet's option to split text to columns, with a comma as the separator, and the fifteen headings spread across row 1 in the right order.

Excel and Google Sheets both do the job; use whichever you already open. A shared online sheet helps when there's a partner or office person, because both of you see the same copy, and no one works from an old version saved on a laptop.

Three settings make the sheet easier to use. Freeze the top row, so the headings stay in view as the list grows. Turn on the filter for row 1, so you can show only the open quotes. And set the three date columns and the Next action date to a date format, so the formulas below can work with them.

Fix the status and reason lists

The Status column is the one every count and formula relies on, so it needs the same four words every time. If one row says "Won", another "won" and a third "Yes, starting Monday", a formula counting wins will miss two of them.

Use your spreadsheet's data validation option to give the Status column a drop-down list with four choices: Open, Won, Lost and No response. Every new quote starts as Open. It changes to Won or Lost when the customer gives an answer, or to No response once the quote has expired and your follow-ups have gone unanswered.

Do the same for the Reason column, with a short list such as Price, Timing, Chose another firm, Job cancelled, Scope and Won. A fixed list feels restrictive for the first month. After six months it's the only reason you can tell whether you lose more work on price or on timing, because every row uses the same words.

Keep a few words of detail in the Next action column instead. "Ring, waiting on landlord" tells whoever picks it up what's going on, while the Status and Reason columns stay clean enough to count.

Formulas that flag overdue follow-ups

What it does · Formula to paste. Two colour rules do most of the work, and the download already has them. To build your own, select the rows from A2 down to the bottom of your list and add a conditional formatting rule using a custom formula. Both rules work in Excel and Google Sheets. Paste each one exactly, starting with the equals sign.

The letters assume your columns are in the order above, with the headings in row 1. If you add or remove a column, change the letters to match: in the first rule, I is Status and K is Next action date.

The red rule is the one you'll use every week. Open the sheet, filter Status to Open, and every red row is a follow-up due. The amber rule matches the final message in our quote follow-up messages for trades, which is sent a few days before the price runs out.

The win share counts closed quotes only, and shows a blank until the first one closes.

Keep customer details safe in the sheet

A quote tracker holds personal information: customers' names, phone numbers, email addresses and postcodes. That brings it under data protection law in the same way as a paper diary or a job app.

The ICO says you must have appropriate security measures in place to protect the personal data you hold. For a small firm, that usually means keeping one copy of the tracker in an account with a strong password, sharing it with named people instead of emailing the file around, and locking the phone or laptop it's opened on.

The ICO also says you must not keep personal data for longer than you need it, and that you should review what you hold and erase or anonymise it when you no longer need it. For quotes that didn't go ahead, pick a period and stick to it. Once a year, for example, clear the Customer, Phone or email and postcode details from Lost and No response quotes older than your period, and keep the job type, value, dates and reason. The numbers stay useful; the personal details go.

Quotes you won become part of the job and the invoice, which you keep for your own business and tax records. Those rows can stay until the job's other records are due to go.

The ICO notes that its guidance on both points is under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act. This is not legal advice. It summarises ICO guidance, which applies across the UK.

Record the acceptance date for home jobs

When a homeowner accepts a quote for work agreed in their home or at a distance, they may have a right to cancel. Regulation 30 of the Consumer Contracts Regulations says that for a service contract, the cancellation period ends at the end of 14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into.

That's why the tracker has a Date decided column and a Cancellation ends column. If a customer accepts on the 1st, the period ends at the end of the 15th. Write that date in the Cancellation ends column on the day they accept.

The date matters when the customer wants you to start sooner. Starting inside the cancellation period needs the customer's express request, made in the right way, and they may have to pay for work done if they then cancel. Our quote template for trade work explains when the right applies, what to give the customer and how to handle an early start.

This is not legal advice. It summarises one regulation; the quote template guide covers the rest.

Example: a fortnight of quotes in the tracker

This is an invented example to show the tracker in use. The business, customers and figures are made up, and some columns are left out to fit the page; the ones shown are in spreadsheet order.

Illustrative example: Northgate Roofing is a roofer and a partner who does the office two mornings a week. On a Monday morning, the partner opens the tracker, filters to Open and sees two red rows: the letting agent due a call and the roof window customer due a day-after text. She rings Hollins Lettings first, notes that the landlord is abroad until Thursday, and changes the next action date to Friday. Mr Doyle's row is amber because his price runs out in a few days, so the final message goes out that morning.

The Patel job shows why the Cancellation ends column is there. They accepted on the 12th, so the period runs to the end of the 26th, and the start date of the 30th sits after it. If they'd asked for a start on the 20th, the tracker shows straight away that the job would start inside the period.

A ten-minute weekly routine

A tracker only works if someone opens it at a fixed time. Pick a slot you already have, such as Monday at 7.30 before the first job, or Friday afternoon when the office person is in, and put it in the diary.

In that slot, work through the same five steps:

1. Add any quote sent since last time that isn't on the sheet yet.
2. Filter Status to Open and work down the red rows: ring, text or email, then write the new next action and its date.
3. Send the final message for every amber row.
4. Change any quote with an answer to Won, Lost or No response, and fill in Date decided and Reason.
5. Look at the Summary tab: the number of follow-ups due, the value of open quotes and the win share.

Most weeks that's ten minutes. On a busy week it might take twenty, which is still quicker than finding out a month later that three quotes went cold while you were busy on site.

Between the weekly slots, add each new quote the day it goes out. It takes a minute while the details are in front of you, and it means the first follow-up date is set before you forget. If a customer rings back about a quote while you're up a ladder, that callback goes on the same list as any other enquiry; our enquiry form template for trade businesses gives you the fields to note it down.

What your closed quotes show

After three months or so, you'll have enough closed quotes to see patterns. Filter to Won, Lost and No response, and look at four things.

The win share tells you how many quotes turn into work. There's no target that suits every trade, so compare yourself with your own last quarter rather than a figure from somewhere else. If it drops, the reasons column tells you where to look.

The reasons show what's costing you work. Mostly "Price" means looking at how you price or how the quote explains what's included. Mostly "Timing" may mean your diary is too full or too far out. Mostly "No response" often points to quotes sent too long after the visit, or follow-ups that didn't happen.

The values show which jobs you win. Many firms find they win small jobs easily and lose bigger ones, or the other way round. Either is useful to know when you decide which enquiries to chase hardest.

The gap between Date sent and Date decided shows how long customers take. If landlords take three weeks and homeowners take one, you can set follow-up dates to match, so you don't chase an agent who is still waiting on an owner abroad.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

A spreadsheet suits most firms sending a handful of quotes a week. It starts to strain when several people send quotes, when you want follow-up texts to go out on their own, or when a won quote needs retyping into a job app, a diary and an invoice.

At that point, quoting and job apps can do what the tracker does without the retyping: the quote, the follow-up dates, the acceptance and the job all sit in one record. Before you pay for one, list what your tracker does today, because that's the minimum any app must do. Our guide to choosing job management software explains how to test an app on your own jobs during a trial.

Keep the spreadsheet running until the app has handled a full month of your quotes. If something goes wrong in the switch, you'll still know what's open.

Tracker mistakes that let quotes slip

A status with no date. "Chasing" in the status column tells you nothing about when. Every Open quote needs a next action date, or it never turns red.

Free text in Status. Typed answers such as "maybe" or "said yes on phone" break every count. Use the drop-down list and put the detail in Next action.

Adding quotes in a batch at the end of the month. By then the first follow-up date has passed. Add each quote the day it goes out.

Two copies of the sheet. One on the laptop and one emailed to the office person means two versions of the truth within a week. Keep one shared copy.

Never closing anything. A tracker full of Open quotes from months back hides the ones that need you this week. Close each quote when it expires.

Add every open quote to the tracker tonight

Set up the sheet, paste in the headings and add the two colour rules. Then go through your sent emails and the paper in the van for the last month, and give every quote you haven't heard back about its own row and a next action date. Tomorrow morning, start with the red rows.

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