Meta: The simple spreadsheet that tracks every quote you've sent: statuses, follow-up dates, close rates. Free template inside plus the automation that reminds you on schedule.
Quote tracking spreadsheet — never lose track of an outstanding proposal
Here's a question that decides freelancer income: how many quotes do you currently have outstanding — and which one is oldest? If you can't answer in five seconds, you're losing money to your own inbox. A quote tracker fixes that with one tab and five columns.
The template
`` client | project | amount | sent_date | status | next_action | last_touch ` Statuses: OUTSTANDING → FOLLOWED_UP → WON / LOST / WITHDRAWN`. One row per quote. That's the whole system — and it's better than a CRM because it's about *quotes*, not contacts, which is where your actual revenue risk lives.
The two views that run the business
- "Needs attention": status = OUTSTANDING or FOLLOWED_UP, sorted by sent_date. Anything older than 7 days without a next_action is a leak.
- "Close rate": a three-cell summary —
=COUNTIF(status,"WON")/COUNTA(status)— because your close rate is the single most informative number in a service business, and almost nobody tracks it.
The rule: every quote gets a next_action
When you send a quote, set next_action = "follow up 3 days" and last_touch = today. The sheet isn't a log of the past; it's a queue of the future. No next_action = the quote doesn't exist.
Automating the reminder (free)
Manual trackers decay — by week three you're back to "I think I sent something to that person." The fix: let the calendar do the reminding. A free n8n workflow can scan the sheet daily and email you one line: *"3 quotes need follow-up today (names + amounts)."* Five seconds of setup logic, zero daily discipline required.
The Follow-Up Autopilot pack ($39) goes one step further: instead of just reminding you, it sends the day-3/7/14 follow-ups themselves and stops when the client replies — the sheet stays the source of truth either way, and you approve the first ten sends.
What the numbers will show you in 60 days
- Your real close rate (most freelancers guess 50% and are closer to 30%)
- The average days-to-decision (if it's 20+, your follow-up timing is off)
- Which project sizes actually close (kill the ones that don't)
Quotes aren't finished when they're sent. They're finished when they're WON or LOST — everything else is an open loop, and open loops are where freelance income quietly leaks away.