Google Sheets CRM Template (Free): Columns, Formulas & How to Automate Follow-Ups

A good Google Sheets CRM template is one tab — a table with one row per deal, columns for the contact, company and email, a deal stage dropdown, deal value, probability and weighted value, a next follow-up date, and an owner — plus a small dashboard driven by three or four formulas. You can build one for free in about fifteen minutes, and you don't need to download anyone's file to do it. This post gives you the exact columns and the copy-able formulas, then shows how to turn that static sheet into a system that chases your follow-ups automatically.

Google's own template gallery has no real CRM, and the free downloads online range from over-engineered to abandoned. Rolling your own means you understand every cell, it matches how you actually sell, and — the part no download gives you — you can automate it later. We'll build the template properly first, then cover when it's worth making it do the work for you.

This is one of a set of free, owned-not-rented business tools we publish — see the free Google Sheets invoice template and the Google Sheets inventory template if billing or stock is your next job.

What your CRM template needs — the exact columns

A sales CRM has one purpose: never lose track of a deal or forget a follow-up. Everything below serves that. Put all of it in a single Deals tab, one row per opportunity.

Column	Example	Notes
Contact	"Jane Okoro"	The person, not the company
Company	"Okoro Interiors"	Group deals by account later
Email	jane@okoro.co	What the automation emails
Phone	+44 7700 900123	For calls / WhatsApp
Deal Stage	"Proposal"	A dropdown — see below
Deal Value	4,500	The full contract value
Probability	0.4	0–1 chance of closing (by stage)
Weighted Value	1,800	Formula: value × probability
Next Follow-up	2026-08-02	The date that drives reminders
Owner	"Sam"	Who's responsible (for teams)
Source	"Referral"	Where the lead came from
Notes	"Wants Q3 start"	Last conversation, next step

Two setup steps make this a real CRM rather than a list:

• Make Deal Stage a dropdown. Select the column, then Data → Data validation → Dropdown, and add your stages: New, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal, Negotiation, Won, Lost. This keeps stages consistent so your formulas and reports actually work — one person typing "proposal" and another "Proposal Sent" quietly breaks every COUNTIF.
• Freeze the header row (View → Freeze → 1 row) and format Deal Value as currency and Probability as a number between 0 and 1.

A useful convention: tie probability to stage so you don't guess per deal. For example New = 0.1, Qualified = 0.3, Proposal = 0.5, Negotiation = 0.75, Won = 1, Lost = 0. You can type it, or drive it with a lookup — either way, weighted pipeline stops being a gut number and becomes something you can trust.

The formulas cheat-sheet (copy these)

This is the entire math of a pipeline dashboard — four formulas. Assume your Deals table starts at row 2, with Deal Stage in column E, Deal Value in column F, Probability in column G, Weighted Value in column H, and Next Follow-up in column I.

What	Cell	Formula	Why
Weighted value	H2	=F2*G2	Deal value × probability, per row. Fill down.
Total weighted pipeline	anywhere	=SUMPRODUCT(F2:F, G2:G)	Your realistic forecast across all open deals.
Deals in a stage	anywhere	=COUNTIF(E:E, "Proposal")	How many deals sit at "Proposal".
Pipeline value in a stage	anywhere	=SUMIF(E:E, "Proposal", F:F)	Total value stuck at that stage.

A few upgrades that turn those into a dashboard:

• Total open pipeline (raw): =SUMIFS(F:F, E:E, "<>Won", E:E, "<>Lost") sums the full value of every deal that's neither Won nor Lost — your unweighted "what's still in play" number.
• Deals-by-stage table. List your stages down a column, then =COUNTIF(E:E, K2) and =SUMIF(E:E, K2, F:F) next to each — an instant funnel showing count and value per stage.
• This-week's follow-ups: =COUNTIFS(I:I, ">="&TODAY(), I:I, "<="&TODAY()+7, E:E, "<>Won", E:E, "<>Lost") counts deals due for a touch in the next seven days.

Now flag what matters most — overdue follow-ups. Select your data rows and add a conditional-format rule (Format → Conditional formatting → Custom formula):

=AND($I2<TODAY(), $E2<>"Won", $E2<>"Lost")

Any deal whose Next Follow-up date is in the past and isn't already closed turns red. That single rule is the difference between a CRM that catches slipping deals and a spreadsheet you forget to open. At this point you have a genuinely useful, free CRM. For a solo seller or a small pipeline, stop here — it's honestly all you need.

Where the static template starts costing you

The template is free, but it isn't free of work. The overdue-red rule only helps when you actually open the sheet. Every day you have to remember to check it, read down the red rows, and act — and the whole system depends on one habit that quietly lapses the first busy week you have. Deals don't go cold because you don't have a CRM; they go cold because nobody looked at it on Tuesday.

That's the exact job worth handing to a machine: a script that opens the sheet for you, every morning, and tells you (or each owner) precisely which deals need a touch today. You never miss a follow-up because you never have to remember to look.

Here's the honest comparison:

	Static Sheets CRM	Apps Script automation
Cost	Free	One-time build (no monthly fee)
Follow-up reminders	You remember to open the sheet	Emailed to you daily, automatically
Overdue deals	Red — if you look	Pushed to your inbox / each owner
New lead intake	Type the row by hand	Web form → row written automatically
Lead scoring	Gut feel	Auto-scored and prioritized
Reporting	Read the dashboard yourself	Weekly pipeline summary emailed
Where it lives	Your Google account	Your Google account
Good for	Solo / small pipeline	Any team that lets deals slip

Both options keep your pipeline in your own Google Drive — no third party holding a copy of your customer list. The difference is purely how much of the chasing you do by hand.

Want your CRM to chase follow-ups for you — without a monthly CRM bill? That's exactly what we build: an automated mini-CRM inside your own Google account, owned outright, no per-seat fee. See a working example in our WhatsApp AI Mini-CRM (Leadflow), or get a custom CRM scoped around how your team actually sells. Free feasibility review — we'll tell you honestly whether automation pays off at your volume, or whether the free template above is genuinely all you need.

Automating it: the follow-up reminder sketch

Here's the core of what turns the static sheet into a system — a daily reminder. This is illustrative but uses real Apps Script APIs. It scans the Deals tab for follow-ups due today or overdue, skips closed deals, and emails you a tidy list. Run it on a time-driven trigger so it fires every morning with no one touching it.

// Scans the CRM for due/overdue follow-ups and emails a daily digest.
function sendFollowUpReminders() {
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName('Deals');
  const rows = sheet.getDataRange().getValues();
  const header = rows.shift();  // drop the header row

  // Column indexes — adjust to your layout (0-based).
  const CONTACT = 0, EMAIL = 2, STAGE = 4, VALUE = 5, FOLLOWUP = 8, OWNER = 9;

  // Normalise "today" to midnight so date-only comparisons are clean.
  const today = new Date();
  today.setHours(0, 0, 0, 0);

  const due = rows.filter(r => {
    const stage = String(r[STAGE]);
    const followUp = r[FOLLOWUP];
    if (stage === 'Won' || stage === 'Lost') return false;   // closed — skip
    if (!(followUp instanceof Date)) return false;            // no date set
    const d = new Date(followUp);
    d.setHours(0, 0, 0, 0);
    return d <= today;                                        // due or overdue
  });

  if (due.length === 0) return;  // nothing to nag about today

  // Build a readable list, most-overdue (oldest date) first.
  const lines = due
    .sort((a, b) => new Date(a[FOLLOWUP]) - new Date(b[FOLLOWUP]))
    .map(r => `• ${r[CONTACT]} (${r[STAGE]}, ${r[VALUE]}) — `
            + `due ${Utilities.formatDate(new Date(r[FOLLOWUP]),
                    Session.getScriptTimeZone(), 'yyyy-MM-dd')}`
            + (r[OWNER] ? ` — owner: ${r[OWNER]}` : ''));

  GmailApp.sendEmail(
    Session.getActiveUser().getEmail(),
    `${due.length} follow-up${due.length > 1 ? 's' : ''} due today`,
    `These deals need a touch:\n\n${lines.join('\n')}\n\n— Your CRM`
  );
}

To make it run itself, add the trigger once — either in the editor (Triggers → Add trigger → time-driven → day timer) or in code:

// Run this ONCE to schedule the daily 8am reminder.
function installDailyTrigger() {
  ScriptApp.newTrigger('sendFollowUpReminders')
    .timeBased()
    .atHour(8)
    .everyDays(1)
    .create();
}

A few notes on how this actually behaves:

• It emails you, not the client — by design. The safe first version nudges you to make the call or send the message yourself. Once you trust it, the same loop can email the contact directly with GmailApp.sendEmail(r[EMAIL], ...) — but auto-emailing customers deserves a careful, personal template.
• Per-owner digests. On a team, group due by the Owner column and send each person only their own deals — one GmailApp.sendEmail per owner. Nobody wades through everyone else's pipeline.
• This is the on-ramp to more. The same daily trigger is where lead scoring and richer routing live. See auto-score and prioritize leads with AI so your reminders surface the deals most worth your time first.

The honest caveats

Automation isn't free of limits, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest:

• The 6-minute execution limit. A single Apps Script run stops at ~6 minutes. Scanning a few hundred deals is milliseconds, so this never bites for a normal CRM. But if you loop over tens of thousands of rows and send a lot of mail in one run, you'll hit the wall — the fix is to process in chunks, which we cover in Apps Script's 6-minute limit and how to beat it.
• Email quotas. Sending mail from Apps Script is capped at ~100 recipients/day on a consumer Gmail account and ~1,500/day on Google Workspace. A daily self-reminder is one email; if you start auto-messaging every contact, mind the ceiling.
• Sheets is single-tab, not multi-user. Two people editing the same rows at once will overwrite each other, and there's no per-user permission or audit trail. Past a few hundred active deals, or when a team needs to work the same pipeline concurrently, put a proper interface on top — that's the inventory-style web app pattern applied to deals — or move to dedicated software. Be honest with yourself about which side of that line you're on.
• It's a build, not a download. The static template is copy-paste-and-go. The automated version is a one-time setup — either you write it, or someone builds it for you. That's the trade-off against every deal you'd otherwise let slip.

Beyond reminders: scoring, WhatsApp, and B2B

Follow-up reminders are the highest-value automation to add first, but they're the doorway, not the room. Once the sheet is chasing dates for you, the same owned-in-Google-Workspace pattern extends naturally:

• Lead scoring on autopilot. Instead of chasing deals top-to-bottom, let a model rank each incoming lead so your day starts with the ones most likely to close. That's auto-score and prioritize leads with AI.
• WhatsApp in the same sheet. If most of your selling happens in chat, you can log inbound WhatsApp messages into the CRM and even connect WhatsApp and let AI handle replies — same data, no separate app.
• B2B and Magento accounts. Selling to businesses with existing contact records? Sync a B2B CRM with Google Contacts so your pipeline and your address book stay in step.

Each of those is a bolt-on to the exact template you just built — not a rip-and-replace. That's the whole point of owning it in your Google account: you start free and add only the automation you actually need.

Start free, automate when deals start slipping

Build the template first. Use the columns and formulas above — they'll give you a clean, working sales pipeline today, at zero cost, that you fully understand and control. Track deal stages with a dropdown, weight your pipeline with SUMPRODUCT, flag overdue follow-ups in red, and for a light or solo pipeline, genuinely stop there.

When you notice deals going cold because nobody opened the sheet on the right day — that's the signal to automate. The same sheet becomes a system that emails you every morning with exactly who to chase, lives in your Google account, costs nothing to run, and is yours to keep. No monthly bill, no vendor lock-in, no developer on retainer.

If you're at that point, tell us how your team sells today and we'll do a free feasibility review — a straight answer on whether automating pays off at your volume, roughly what a one-time build would cost, and where the free template above is genuinely all you need. No obligation, and we'll say so if a static sheet is the smarter call. You can also see a working version in our WhatsApp AI Mini-CRM (Leadflow).