Every creator's first deal tracker is a spreadsheet. It's free, it's fast, and for your first couple of brand deals it genuinely works. The problem isn't the spreadsheet — it's what happens to it around deal ten.
What it looks like by week three
This is week three. By deal thirty, nobody can tell what's paid, what's overdue, or what a brand is even allowed to run.
Nothing here is a disaster on its own. Together, they're a business you can't actually see: a payment that's overdue and un-chased, a status nobody remembers the meaning of, a formula that broke three edits ago, and a "brand from a DM" you'll never follow up with.
Where a spreadsheet quietly breaks
- No reminders. A due date in a cell doesn't tell you it's overdue. You find out when the brand doesn't pay — or when you finally scroll back and notice.
- No payment tracking. "Paid?" is a column you have to update by hand, honestly, every time. One missed update and you've lost track of who owes you.
- Contracts and rights live somewhere else. The agreement is in your email, the brief is in a DM, the license terms are a vague memory. The spreadsheet can't hold any of it.
- It only exists in one place. It's a file on one laptop, in one browser tab. Update it from your phone between shoots? Not really.
- It doesn't scale. Four deals fit on a screen. Thirty means constant scrolling, re-sorting, and colour-coding you'll abandon by February.
Spreadsheet vs. a real deal system
The difference isn't features for their own sake — it's that a system remembers for you. The deadline nudges you. The invoice knows if it's been paid. The contract and the rights sit on the deal, not in your inbox archaeology.
What a real system adds
A purpose-built deal system treats each brand deal as one record that carries everything: the brief, the contract, the deliverables, the invoice, the payment status, and the usage rights. It has stages, so you always know what's next. And it lives in the cloud, so it's the same on your laptop and your phone.
How this works on Plug
On Plug Pro, every deal you log gets its own pipeline record — stage, deadline, money, and license in one place — with a "needs you" view so nothing quietly stalls. You can import your existing spreadsheet to start, and it's a flat monthly price with zero per-deal fees, so you keep 100%.
Still deciding how to track things? Read the best way to track UGC deals, or see how UGC deals work end to end on Plug.