When collaboration details are hard to locate, deadlines become easier to miss. A useful tracker gives every deal a current stage and a next date.
The stages worth writing down
Brief → Negotiation → Confirmed → Deliverables → Draft → Approval → Published → Invoice → PaymentIf a deal is “somewhere in WhatsApp,” pick the stage that is still true and put the next action next to it. Examples:
- Negotiation: send usage cap and fee
- Draft: upload V2 by Thursday
- Invoice: due 18 September
The fields that prevent disasters
For each live brand:
- campaign name and brand legal name
- compensation (paid / barter / mix)
- each deliverable: format, platform, due date
- usage window
- latest version and whether it is approved
- live URL or handover note
- invoice number, amount, due date, received date
That is enough. Colour-coding your Notion is optional.
Why spreadsheets fail at five
One row per deal works until:
- Campaign A needs a revision the same morning Campaign B shoots;
- the invoice for Campaign C is net-30 while D prepaid;
- a story due date moves and only exists in a voice note.
Cells do not tell you what to do next. They tell you what you typed last. When volume rises, you want a campaign record that still answers: *what is blocked, and by whom?*
A simple column layout is in the campaign tracker template. The product walkthrough of the same lifecycle is How to manage a brand collaboration.
A weekly 20-minute pass
Every week, scan only non-terminal stages (anything not Paid). Update dates. Send the one follow-up you have been avoiding. Archive the dead pitches.
That pass is the difference between “I think Nova paid” and “Nova, invoice 14, due last Friday.”
When you are ready to run this in one place
Managing one collaboration in a spreadsheet is easy
Once you have five simultaneous campaigns, dates, revisions, invoices, and payments become harder to track. Put each deal in one place so the next action is obvious.