Project Tracker Template for Several Projects at Once

A project tracker that covers several projects at once needs seven columns: project, task, status, owner, priority, next step and blocked-by. Keep every project in one sheet rather than one sheet per project, limit status to four fixed values, give each row one owner, and write the next step as an action someone can take today. Filter by project when you work, and sort by priority and blocked-by when you review. The template, a filled example for three clients, how to show a client their part, and the signs you have outgrown the spreadsheet are below.

The seven columns a project tracker needs

1. Project: which piece of work the row belongs to. For an agency or freelancer this is usually the client’s name; for an internal team, the initiative. It is the column you filter by most, so spell each name the same way every time.
2. Task: one line starting with a verb, describing an outcome. “Homepage design, first draft,” not “Design.”
3. Status: one of four fixed values, such as To do, Next, Doing and Done. Free-text status (“mostly there,” “with Jo?”) is where trackers go to die, because nothing can be sorted or counted.
4. Owner: exactly one name. Helpers can be mentioned in the next step; the owner is who answers for the row.
5. Priority: a number where 1 is the most urgent. It answers “what do we do first,” across projects, which is the whole reason to keep them on one sheet.
6. Next step: the very next physical action, with a verb. A row whose next step is blank is a row nobody is moving.
7. Blocked by: what or who the row is waiting for. A tracker with this column filled in honestly is the most useful status report you will ever have, because it tells you where to spend your next phone call.

Leave out what you will not maintain. Percent complete, start dates, effort estimates and a notes column that becomes a running log all feel useful on the day you add them and are stale a week later. Seven columns kept true beat fifteen columns kept hopefully.

A spreadsheet project tracker template

Paste this into the first row of a sheet, then turn the Status column into a dropdown so nobody can type a fifth value. Google Sheets calls this an in-cell dropdown list↗ (opens in a new tab); in Excel it is done with data validation↗ (opens in a new tab), which restricts what can be entered in a cell. Do the same for Owner if your team is small enough to list.

Project,Task,Status,Owner,Priority,Next step,Blocked by
[Project or client],[Verb + outcome],To do,[One name],[1-10],[Next action],[Who or what]
[Project or client],[Verb + outcome],Next,[One name],[1-10],[Next action],
[Project or client],[Verb + outcome],Doing,[One name],[1-10],[Next action],
[Project or client],[Verb + outcome],Done,[One name],[1-10],,

Three small settings make the sheet usable: freeze the header row, turn on filters for every column, and apply conditional formatting that colors a row when Blocked by is not empty. That last one is the difference between a tracker you read and one you scroll.

A filled example: three clients on one tracker

Project,Task,Status,Owner,Priority,Next step,Blocked by
Harbor Dental,Homepage design first draft,Doing,Maya,2,Send draft for review Thursday,
Harbor Dental,Copy for the About page,To do,Maya,3,Chase the copy,Client: About page copy
Harbor Dental,Set up hosting and domain,Next,Luis,2,Move DNS to the new host,Client: registrar login
Pine & Co,Quarterly report layout,Doing,Luis,4,Apply the new brand colors,
Pine & Co,Fix the contact form email delivery,Next,Luis,1,Test with a real inbox,
Northside Gym,Class schedule page,To do,Maya,5,Get the fall timetable,Client: timetable
Northside Gym,Launch checklist,Done,Maya,3,,

Sort it by priority and the day’s order is obvious: the Pine & Co contact form first, then the two priority 2 rows for Harbor Dental. Filter Blocked by to non-empty and you have Friday’s client email: three things each client owes you, in one list.

Tracking several projects without losing any

One tracker for all projects only works with a short routine around it. A multiple project tracker template is not a different sheet; it is the same sheet with discipline about how it is read:

• Review it once a week with everyone who owns rows, in that order: blocked rows first, then priority 1 to 3, then anything whose status has not changed since last week.
• Re-rank across projects, not within them. A priority 2 for a small client is still a priority 2; the sheet exists so that one client’s noise cannot quietly starve another.
• Archive Done rows monthly to a second tab. A tracker that keeps every completed row slowly buries the live ones.
• Keep project names in a fixed list. One misspelled client name splits a project in two and the filter hides half of it.

What to show a client

Clients want to see their own rows, not yours, and not the other clients’. With a spreadsheet the usual answer is a separate sheet per client, or a filtered copy you send each week, because sharing the master sheet shows everything. Locking cells does not solve this: Google’s own help page on protecting sheets and ranges↗ (opens in a new tab) warns that protection “shouldn’t be used as a security measure,” since people can still copy, print and export a protected spreadsheet.

Whatever tool you use, give the client a view where they can see progress and comment, but not change your statuses or priorities. And make their open questions easy to find: the Blocked by column, filtered to their name, is the most useful thing they will read all week.

When a spreadsheet stops working

A spreadsheet tracker is fine for one person and a handful of projects. These are the signs it has stopped being the right tool:

• Two people overwrite each other’s changes, or a sort by one person reorders the sheet for everyone.
• Nobody can say who changed a row. Google Sheets can show a cell’s edit history↗ (opens in a new tab), but its own help page says some changes might not show up there, including added or deleted rows and changes made by formulas.
• You maintain a copy per client and they drift apart.
• Discussion about a row happens in email or chat, and the tracker never learns what was decided.
• An AI assistant is doing part of the work, and its updates are indistinguishable from yours.

The same tracker as a fenbs board

On a fenbs board, most of the seven columns are built in. Status is the lane: To Do, Next Up, In Progress and Completed. Priority runs from 1 to 10, where 1 is the most urgent. Project and category are labels on each task, made the moment you type a new name, and the board filters by either, so one board holds several clients and you look at one at a time. Every change is recorded in History with who made it, person or AI assistant.

Two columns have no field of their own. fenbs has no assignee field you can set and no dependencies between tasks beyond linking related ones, so owner, next step and blocked-by go in the task’s note. There are no due dates either. To bring the spreadsheet across, use Add many: paste one client’s rows as a list, set the project once for the whole batch, and the preview shows every task before anything is created.

- [ ] Homepage design first draft
      Owner: Maya. Next: send the draft for review Thursday.
- [ ] Copy for the About page
      Owner: Maya. Blocked by: the client's About page copy.
- [ ] Set up hosting and domain
      Owner: Luis. Blocked by: the client's registrar login.

For clients, fenbs uses roles instead of copies. Roles are set per company, and two are suggested, one press each to add. A Client sees the board and comments, and cannot change anything. A Reporter adds tasks and comments, and edits only their own. A role applies to the whole board, so if clients must not see each other’s work, give each client a board of their own; the client project board template is built for exactly that. A client sees the board by being added to it, never through a link.