Grant tracking sounds like a filing problem and is a calendar problem. The reason offices lose applications is almost never that a record was missing; it is that a deadline was visible only to the person who knew about it, and that person was on leave, or writing something else, or had left. What has to be tracked is therefore not just what happened but what is about to, and the test of any system is whether next month's deadlines are visible to somebody who was not in the conversation.
The four things that have to be tracked
The funder, with what it gives and to whom, so research is not repeated. The application, with its deadline, its status and what you asked for. The award, with what was actually granted, over what period, and on what terms. And the reports the award owes, with their dates. Those four, joined, are the whole job; anything else a template offers is optional.
What a grant management template holds, and where it stops
A spreadsheet does this well for a while. It holds the rows, it sorts by deadline, and it costs nothing. It stops working at three predictable points: when more than one person edits it, when an award's reports need to appear on a calendar automatically rather than being remembered, and when you want to know what you asked this funder for two years ago and the answer is in a tab somebody archived.
Hit rate, and why most offices cannot calculate theirs
The most useful number a grant office has is what proportion of applications are funded, by funder type and by size. Almost nobody can produce it, because the ask and the award are recorded in different places and declines are not recorded at all. Keeping the declines is the unglamorous half: an office that only records wins cannot tell which kind of application is worth writing.
What to do at the point a spreadsheet stops
Move the four records rather than the whole filing system. Funders, applications, awards, reports. Narratives can stay in a drive; what has to move is the thing with dates on it. The free sheets on this site cost the work an application takes, and the paid plan keeps the record it belongs to, which is the same distinction: the arithmetic is free, the calendar is the product.
Questions people ask about grant tracking
Can I track grants in a spreadsheet?
For a handful of applications a year, yes, and you should. The failure point is shared editing and remembered reporting dates rather than volume alone.
What is a grant management template?
A spreadsheet with the four records laid out: funders, applications, awards and reports. Useful as a starting shape; the columns matter more than the format.
Should declined applications be kept?
Yes, with the reason if you were given one. They are half your hit rate and the best starting point for next year's attempt.