Somewhere past ten active clients, the shared spreadsheet starts to fail. Tabs multiply, someone keeps a private copy, and nobody is sure which version is current. This post covers how to keep client tracking simple, and which part of that job a CRM like JRNY can take over.
JRNY is a sales CRM built by BetterQA, a software testing company in Cluj-Napoca. It is not a project management tool: it has no task boards, timelines or budgets. It covers the client-relationship side of the work, and that is what this post is about.
Why spreadsheets break down
Spreadsheets are free, familiar and flexible, which is why every agency starts with one. The trouble shows up as the list grows:
- Status columns go stale because updating them is a chore nobody owns.
- Two people edit two copies, and the differences surface in front of a client.
- Nobody can answer "when did we last talk to them?" without searching an inbox.
None of this needs software to fix. It needs a small set of habits first.
Habits that work in any tool
Keep the status list short. Five statuses is plenty, and more than that means people start guessing which one applies.
Track only what drives a decision. If nobody acts on a column, delete it.
Give every client one named owner. A team is not an owner.
Write down the next step and its date after every contact. A project with no next step is the one that goes quiet.
Tools do not fix a process that nobody follows. Agree on these habits first, then pick the tool that makes them cheaper.
What JRNY takes off your plate
Three parts of the job are tedious by hand, and JRNY handles them.
One place for company and contact records. Each client is a company record with its contacts under it, and a pipeline status of Pre, Hot, Cold, Signed or Closed. Five statuses is the short list the habits above call for.
Email from the same place. Connect Gmail and you can send from JRNY, with the sent mail stored on the company record. The next person to open the account sees what was said.
Notes from meetings. After a meeting, paste your rough notes into JRNY. An AI parser pulls out contacts, timeline, budget, urgency and a fit score, so you do not retype them, and JRNY can organise notes in date order. The AI features run on your own OpenRouter key, and you pay OpenRouter directly for that usage.
Moving out of the spreadsheet
JRNY imports contacts from Excel (.xlsx) files and handles duplicates as part of the import. Gaps and repeats are the problems a long-lived spreadsheet collects, so expect to tidy the list by hand afterwards.
A sensible order for the move:
1. Clean the sheet first. Remove dead rows and agree on the five statuses. 2. Import it into JRNY, which handles duplicates during the import. 3. Connect Gmail so mail you send from JRNY is stored from then on. 4. Stop editing the old sheet on a fixed date, and tell the team that date.
Where JRNY is not the right tool
If you need task assignment, time tracking, deadlines or budget tracking per project, use a project management tool and keep JRNY for the relationship record. The two work side by side. JRNY will not tell you a project is three weeks behind, because it does not hold that data.