Applicant tracking spreadsheet: a free template for small teams

If you hire a few people a year, a spreadsheet can track your applicants perfectly well. What makes it work is not the software but four decisions made up front: one row per application, a fixed list of stages, a date on every next step, and a rule for how long you keep the data. Get those right and a spreadsheet will do the job until volume or team size outgrows it.

Download the template: applicant tracker (Excel). Free, no sign-up. It has the stages as dropdowns, flags anyone left waiting, and calculates follow-up and deletion dates for you.

What the tracker is for, and what it isn’t

An applicant tracker answers three questions at a glance: where is each applicant, what happens next, and has anyone been left waiting? It doesn’t decide who is worth interviewing. That’s screening, and it needs a different sheet: our free applicant screening sheet records the evidence for each requirement. Keep them separate. A tracker that tries to hold the evidence too becomes too wide to read.

The columns

Column	What goes in it
Job	The role. One sheet can hold several jobs; filter by this column.
Applicant	Their name.
Stage	One of a fixed list (below). Never free text.
Needs attention	Calculated: anything overdue or missing for this applicant (below).
Days since applying	Calculated, while the application is still open.
Next step and due date	What happens next, and by when.
Owner	Who is responsible for the next step.
Screening outcome	From your screening sheet: Recommended, Possible, or Requirements not met.
Date applied	The date the application arrived.
Source	Where they came from: careers page, a job board, referral, email.
Email, phone	Contact details. Nothing else personal.
Last interview date	If interviewed.
Decision notice due	Calculated: 45 days after the last interview (see below).
Outcome sent on	The date you told them the result.
Keep until	Calculated: when the row can be deleted under your retention rule.
Notes	Short and factual. Write nothing you wouldn’t want the applicant to read.

Fix the stages before you start

Free-text stages (“spoke to her”, “maybe”, “chase”) make a tracker unreadable within a week. The template uses these, in order:

1. New: arrived, not yet screened.
2. Screened: read against the requirements; outcome recorded.
3. Phone screen
4. Work sample
5. Interview
6. Offer
7. Hired
8. Not progressing: decided against at any stage. Record the stage and the date you told them.
9. Withdrew

Sort or filter by stage and you have your pipeline. Drop the stages you don’t use, but keep the list fixed.

Put a date on every next step

A common way for a spreadsheet tracker to fail is quietly: an applicant who deserved a call sits at “Screened” for three weeks because nobody owned the next step. The template’s Needs attention column flags it: a next step that’s overdue or has no date, an application open longer than a limit you set, an interviewed applicant still waiting for an answer, or a rejection decided but not yet sent. Filter on it once a week and clear the list.

Follow-up deadlines that are now law in some places

In Ontario, since 1 January 2026, employers with 25 or more employees must tell anyone they interviewed for a publicly advertised job whether a hiring decision has been made, within 45 days of their last interview (Ontario Ministry of Labour). The template calculates that date from the last interview date. Even where it isn’t required, it’s a good standard: answer everyone you interviewed within 45 days. Our article on what job postings must disclose covers this and the other new posting rules.

How long to keep the data

Applicant data is personal information, and keeping it forever is a risk, not a safety net. But you do have to keep it for a while.

• United States: employers covered by federal equal-employment law must keep application and hiring records for at least one year, and longer if a discrimination charge is filed (EEOC).
• California: regulations that took effect in 2025 require employers to keep employment records, including data from automated-decision systems, for at least four years (California Civil Rights Council).
• Ontario: employers covered by the job-posting rules must keep a copy of each posting and of the notices to interviewed applicants for three years.

These are examples, not a complete list, and other rules may apply to you. Set your retention period with that in mind and enter it on the template’s Start here sheet. The Keep until column then calculates the date for each closed application, and Needs attention flags the rows that have passed it. Once a month, delete those rows, along with their resumes.

Five rules that keep a spreadsheet tracker safe

1. One file, in one shared place, with access limited to the people hiring. Not copies on laptops or in email attachments.
2. One row per application. Someone who applies for two jobs gets two rows.
3. Resumes stored in one folder, named consistently (job, surname, date), not attached to emails.
4. No sensitive information in notes: nothing about health, family, age, religion or anything else you shouldn’t be deciding on.
5. A weekly fifteen minutes to sort by Days waiting and clear the backlog.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

A spreadsheet tracker usually holds up until one of these happens:

• More than a couple of people need to update it at the same time.
• You’re receiving more applications than you can screen carefully in the time you have.
• You need to email applicants in bulk, or keep an audit trail of who changed what.

Our guide to whether you need an applicant tracking system helps you decide what to move to, and our comparison of SortTheStack with spreadsheets and email sets out where each one fits.

Using the template

The workbook has three sheets:

• Start here: how to use it, and three settings: how long you keep closed applications, how many days you allow to tell interviewed applicants the outcome, and when an open application counts as waiting too long.
• Applicants: the tracker, with formulas ready in 300 rows. Grey columns calculate themselves; Stage and Screening outcome are dropdowns. Four example rows show the fictional Larkspur Partners hire used in our guides; delete them before you start.
• Pipeline: how many applications are at each stage and how many need attention, for every job or the one you name.

Where SortTheStack fits

SortTheStack is not an applicant tracking system, and it doesn’t need one. If you’re keeping the spreadsheet, you can still use SortTheStack for the step a spreadsheet doesn’t help with: reading every application against your requirements, with the evidence. It also has simple stages, sends each applicant a receipt, and exports to CSV, so its results can go straight into your tracker. See how the screening works.

Sources

All accessed 12 October 2026.

• U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Recordkeeping requirements.
• California Civil Rights Council, Regulations to protect against employment discrimination related to artificial intelligence, 30 June 2025.
• Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, Requirements related to publicly advertised job postings.