Task Tracker Template: The Columns That Matter

A task tracker template needs six columns: task, status, owner, priority, next step and blocked-by. Add a seventh, a date, only if the dates are real commitments to someone outside the team. Status should be a short fixed list, owner a single name, priority a number, and next step an action someone can take today. Everything else, from percent complete to hours estimated, costs more to keep true than it gives back. The template to copy, a filled example, the setup that makes it work in Excel or Google Sheets, and the signs that a spreadsheet has become the wrong tool are below.

Two neighbors cover the edges of this. How to write each row so someone can pick it up is in the task list template. Keeping several projects or clients on one sheet, with a project column to filter by, is the project tracker template. This guide is about the columns themselves: which ones, why, and what goes wrong with each.

The six columns every task tracker needs

1. Task: one line that starts with a verb and names an outcome. “Update the returns policy page,” not “Returns.” If you cannot finish it in a day or two, it is several tasks.
2. Status: four values at most, chosen from a list, such as To do, Next, Doing and Done. The moment someone can type free text here, you get “almost,” “waiting?” and “see email,” and the column can no longer be sorted or counted.
3. Owner: exactly one name. A row with two owners is a row each assumes the other has. Helpers go in the next step.
4. Priority: a number, where 1 is the most urgent. Numbers sort; “High” and “Medium” pile up until half the sheet is High.
5. Next step: the very next physical action, with a verb. “Call the printer about the proof,” not “Printing.” A blank next step on an open row means nobody is moving it.
6. Blocked by: who or what the row is waiting for, in a few words. Filled in honestly, this is the most useful column in the sheet, because it tells you which conversation to have next.

Notice that status and next step answer different questions. Status says where the row stands; next step says what happens to it. A tracker with only a status column tells you that twelve things are “Doing” and nothing about why none of them are done.

The date column, if you use one

Most trackers have a due date column, and most of the dates in it are guesses that became promises by accident. Use one only when a date is real: a launch, a filing deadline, a customer who was told Friday. Call it “Needed by” and put the reason next to it, so a reader can tell a hard deadline from a hopeful target.

• Leave it blank for work that has no outside deadline. Priority already says what comes first.
• Never fill it in for every row. When every row has a date, people learn to ignore the column, including the three dates that matter.
• Review it weekly. A date that has passed with the row still open is either late or was never real; decide which and change the row.

Columns to leave out

• Percent complete. It is a feeling written as a number, and it sits at 80 percent for weeks.
• Start date. Useful for a plan, not for a tracker. Status already says whether it has started.
• Estimated hours. If you need sizing, a rough small, medium or large beats a number nobody checks.
• Notes or comments. One cell cannot hold a conversation, and it turns into a running log that nobody reads. Keep discussion where it can be threaded, and copy decisions into the next step.
• Last updated, typed by hand. People forget, so it is wrong exactly when you need it.
• A second owner column, or a “team” column. See the owner rule above.

A spreadsheet task tracker template

Paste this into the first cell of an empty sheet in Excel or Google Sheets and split it into columns. It works as a task tracker excel template and as a Google Sheet without changes.

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

A filled example

Task,Status,Owner,Priority,Next step,Blocked by,Needed by
Update the returns policy page,Doing,Priya,2,Send draft to Marcus for a legal read,,
Fix the broken coupon field at checkout,Next,Dev,1,Reproduce on a phone,,
Order spring packaging,Doing,Marcus,3,Approve the printer proof,Printer: revised proof,March 6 (spring launch)
Set up the new shipping rates,To do,Dev,4,Compare carrier rate tables,Carrier: account approval,
Write the March customer email,To do,Priya,5,Pick the three products to feature,,
Renew the business license,Next,Ana,2,Fill in the renewal form,,March 31 (county deadline)
Migrate the mailing list,Done,Priya,3,,,

Sort by priority and the day starts with the coupon bug. Filter Blocked by to non-empty and you have two follow-ups to send. Only two rows carry a date, and both say why, so nobody wonders whether “March 6” is a hope or a launch.

Making it work in Excel or Google Sheets

• Lock the Status column to a list. In Excel, data validation↗ (opens in a new tab) restricts what can be entered in a cell, which is how you stop a fifth status from appearing. Google Sheets has the same thing as a dropdown. Do the same for Owner on a small team.
• Highlight blocked rows. Google’s help page on conditional formatting↗ (opens in a new tab) shows a custom formula that colors a whole row based on one cell, so any row with Blocked by filled in stands out without anyone scrolling for it.
• Freeze the header row and turn on filters for every column. A tracker you cannot filter by owner is a tracker people stop reading.
• Give each person their own filter. In a shared Excel workbook, Microsoft’s Sheet Views↗ (opens in a new tab) let you filter “without being affected by others sorting and filtering in the document.” Without them, one person’s sort reorders the sheet for everyone.
• Move Done rows to a second tab once a month. A tracker that keeps every finished row slowly buries the open ones.

When a spreadsheet tracker breaks

A spreadsheet tracker is fine for one person, or a small team that meets every week. These are the signs it has stopped working:

• Status is out of date more often than not, because changing it means opening the sheet and finding the row.
• Nobody can say who changed a row or when, and you argue about it.
• The Blocked by column is full and nothing happens, because being blocked is not visible to the person doing the blocking.
• Discussion about a row happens in chat, and the sheet never learns what was decided.
• An AI assistant is doing part of the work, and its updates look exactly like yours.

The fix for most of these is to make status a place instead of a cell. The Kanban Guide↗ (opens in a new tab) puts it simply: “The visualization of a DoW is a Kanban board,” where DoW is the team’s definition of workflow. When the status column becomes columns on a board, moving a card is the update, and a card sitting still is visible to everyone. For when a list is still enough, see Kanban board vs to-do list.

The same tracker as a fenbs board

On a fenbs board, four of the columns are built in and two go into the task itself. Be clear about the two that are missing: fenbs has no due dates and no assignee field you can set.

• Status is the lane: To Do, Next Up, In Progress and Completed. Moving a card is the status change, and History records who moved it.
• Priority runs from 1 to 10, where 1 is the most urgent, and the board filters by band, so “high” means P1 and P2 without arguing.
• Task is the title, and every task is a feature, an enhancement or a bug, with a ref such as BUG-014 that is never reused.
• Next step goes in the Plan, the box for how the work will be done, rewritten as you learn.
• Owner goes in the note, as “Owner: Priya,” because there is no assignee field to set. History still shows who created, moved and changed each task.
• Blocked by goes in the note too. When the blocker is another task, link the two, and they show on each other. When it is a decision nobody has made, link the decision from the Decisions and rules page, and the card says “decision waiting” until it is made.
• Needed by has no field. For the few real deadlines, write the date and the reason in the title or the note, and let priority do the ranking.

To bring a sheet across, paste the rows into Add many, one task per line, with the owner and blocker on an indented line under each. The preview shows every task before anything is created, and lane, priority, project and category are set once for the whole batch. For a team, roles are set per company, so a tester or a client can be added to the board with the role that fits, rather than getting a copy of the sheet.