Use case
Crm Template
A spreadsheet CRM is a legitimate choice, and it stops being one at an identifiable moment. Knowing where that moment is worth more than any template.
Most people searching for a CRM template want a spreadsheet: a set of columns for tracking customers and deals that they can start using today without evaluating software. That is a reasonable instinct, and for a solo operator or a very small team it works.
We sell source code you clone and run yourself, so there is no spreadsheet to download here. What this page can usefully give you is the structure a working spreadsheet CRM needs, the point at which it fails, and what to do then.
The columns a spreadsheet CRM actually needs
Most templates fail by having too many columns. The set below is close to the minimum that stays useful, and the discipline is in not adding more.
One row per company, and these fields
- Company, contact name, and one contact methodOne row per company rather than per person keeps the sheet readable. If you genuinely deal with several people at one company, that is an early sign a spreadsheet is not going to hold.
- Status, from a fixed listFive or six values, typed identically every time, which means a data validation dropdown rather than free text. Free text status is what makes a spreadsheet CRM unfilterable within a month.
- Next action and next action dateThe two most valuable columns and the ones most templates omit. Sorting by next action date turns the sheet from a record into a to-do list, which is the only reason anybody opens it daily.
- Value and expected closeOnly if you need a forecast. If you are not going to add these up and act on the total, leave them out.
- Last contact dateAnswers the question that actually matters, which is who has gone quiet. This can be maintained by hand if you are honest about it.
- Notes, in one cellDated lines, newest at the top, in a single cell per row. Imperfect and far better than separate sheets or a document per client, which nobody keeps up.
Nine columns. A template with thirty is a template somebody built to demonstrate a spreadsheet rather than to run a business.
Where the spreadsheet stops working
Three failure points, and they are recognisable rather than gradual.
The first is a second person. Two people editing the same sheet produces silent overwrites, and the person whose edit was lost never finds out. Cloud spreadsheets handle simultaneous editing better than they used to and still have no concept of who owns a record.
The second is history. A spreadsheet holds the current state, so when a deal is lost there is no record of what the status was three weeks ago or when it changed. Any question about how long things take is unanswerable.
The third is anything automatic. Reminders, emails, and follow-up sequences are where free CRM tiers earn their place, and a spreadsheet cannot do them without becoming a small software project of its own.
The free CRMs are free, which changes the calculation
The main historical argument for a spreadsheet CRM was cost. That argument is weaker now, because several CRMs give away contact and deal management with no seat limit and no time limit, funded by charging for automation and reporting.
If cost is the reason you are looking for a template, it is worth an hour to try one of those first. The reasons to stay in a spreadsheet that still hold are wanting the data physically in your own file, and having a process so unusual that no CRM models it, which brings us to the last section.
When the shape is genuinely the problem
Some businesses do not track deals. They track matters, placements, properties, patients, claims, or applications, and the relationships between them are many-to-many rather than one pipeline.
Those businesses often end up in a spreadsheet not because it is cheap but because every CRM they tried forced them to rename fields and still could not answer their questions. That is the situation where building becomes reasonable, and it is a genuinely different reason from cost.
What you would start from here
There is no CRM in this stack and no spreadsheet template. No contacts, no companies, no pipeline, no deal stages, and no activity history.
What exists is the layer underneath a custom one: organizations as the unit records belong to, roles and invitations, a Hono backend with Prisma and Kysely on Postgres, an admin app, and Stripe billing if you are selling the result rather than using it internally. The editor rules in the repository describe the codebase conventions, which gives a coding agent something concrete to follow when writing the record layer, though its output still needs review.
One design note if you build. Adding a field should not require a migration and a deploy, or routine configuration becomes development work. A typed core with a JSONB attributes column on top is the usual way to get both, and it is much easier to design in than to retrofit.
If you came here for a spreadsheet, the nine columns above are the template. If you outgrew one, try a free CRM tier before building. The packs below are for the case where the shape genuinely does not fit.
What is Hype Stack?
Every product starts with the same month of work nobody pays you for: sign-up and login, teams and permissions, taking payments, notifications, an admin panel to run the business. Hype Stack is that month, already built and tested. Start from the free open-source app, add the pieces you need with one command, and keep going on the part that is actually your idea.
Everything lands as real code in your own repository, so there is nothing to rent and nothing anyone can switch off. For the engineers: React 19, Hono, Postgres, and a desktop build, typed end to end.
See it running
Templates are curated project starters built on this stack: a layout, feature packs, a custom theme, and bonus pages. The previews below are recordings of the real apps.
Packs in this stack
Every pack ships real source code: frontend, backend, and admin surfaces where the feature needs them. The ones this stack installs come first; the rest can be composed in later.
Two ways to install features
Same features underneath, different starting point. Either command resolves what the packs depend on, copies the source into your repository, and merges the Prisma schema.
Take a template
A landing page, a design system, a themed layout, and the features already wired into it. Rebrand it, put your product in the middle, ship.
npx @hype-stack/cli template$ hype-stack compose
Compose your own design
Your design and your choices, without rebuilding auth, billing, or notifications. Tick the packs you want and the CLI wires them into the open-source starter.
npx @hype-stack/cli composeQuestions, answered
More stacks
Turn your ideas into
Real applications.
Start free and own every line you ship. When you want more, one All-Access license unlocks every premium pack and template for a year.