Appointments and follow-up list

How to use it

1. Open the file in Excel, or upload it to Google Drive and open it with Google Sheets. Look at the example rows: they come from three fictional businesses (a restaurant, a garage and a salon or clinic). Delete them before you start; your own list contains only your own requests.
2. Add every appointment request to the list the same day, even if nothing has been agreed yet: date, source, first name, contact (only if you need it), service and the requested time.
3. Choose the status from the drop-down list. New = not answered yet. Waiting for customer = you have proposed a time or asked something. Confirmed = in the calendar and the customer has a confirmation. Rescheduled = a new time is needed. Canceled, No-show and Completed close the row.
4. Only confirm a time after you have checked the calendar and recorded the appointment there. Then fill in the confirmed time in the list.
5. Give every open row a person responsible and a follow-up date. An open row without a follow-up date falls outside the count and so drops out of sight.
6. Only set Consent to contact to Yes if the customer has said you may send a reminder or follow-up message. If it is No, send nothing extra. If a customer later no longer wants messages, set it to No right away.
7. Put a filter on the header row and sort by Follow-up date, oldest at the top. Every day, work through the rows with a follow-up date of today or earlier; that usually takes about ten minutes.
8. The Overview tab counts the rows with a follow-up date of today or earlier that are not set to Completed or Canceled. At the end of your daily routine that number should be zero.
9. After the appointment: set the status to Completed or No-show and clear the follow-up date if nothing more needs to happen. Always enter dates the same way, as MM/DD/YYYY (for example, 10/16/2026 for October 16), and write times like 7:30 PM.

What the spreadsheet calculates for you

• Follow up today or earlier: the follow-up date has passed and the request is not completed or canceled yet
• Requests without a person responsible
• Customers without consent to contact
• Number of requests per status

The formulas are in the file itself; click a cell to see them. In Google Sheets, open the file with File → Import or by dragging it into Google Drive.

The columns

Example data (fictional)

The file contains a few made-up example rows, marked in gray. They show what a completed row looks like. Delete them before you start.

Privacy and retention

Record only what you need to make and keep the appointment: a first name, a contact detail if you need to be able to reach the customer, and the type of service. Never put health information (symptoms, diagnoses, medication, test results) or payment details in this list; at a clinic or practice, clinical information belongs in the patient record. Share the file only with the colleagues who need it, using their own accounts, and not through a public link. Remove someone's access as soon as they leave. Choose a retention period yourself and delete closed rows you no longer need after that. Which legal rules apply to you depends on your sector and the applicable legislation; seek advice if in doubt.