Client Request Tracker for Agencies — Free from Sheets

Here is how work enters most marketing agencies: an email to the account manager, a Slack DM to whichever designer the client likes, a comment on last month's report, and — for the special clients — a 9:40pm text that begins "super quick one." Each channel feels harmless. Together they mean the agency has no queue, only vibes, and the person deciding what gets done next is whoever happened to see their phone.

The damage shows up on the last day of the month. That "tiny tweak" to the landing-page hero took a designer half a Tuesday. The client on the 20-hour retainer consumed 34, and nobody can prove it because the requests lived in four apps and zero rows. Meanwhile the contract promises a 48-hour response time that no one is measuring, which is a fun thing to discover during a renewal negotiation.

Agencies don't need another project-management suite for this — the intake is the broken part. What fixes intake is a request tracker every client feeds and one sheet the team runs from.

Step 1: One Sheet, One Row per Request

Structure the main tab around the questions that decide an agency's week — what is it, how big is it, and when did we promise it:

Then two quiet workhorses: a directory tab pairing each client and request type with its owner (Marco owns Halcyon's creative, Dana owns paid media across accounts), and an FAQ tab answering the questions clients repeat — how to send assets, what a retainer includes, when reports go out.

Step 2: Grab a Free Account

Register at lovespreadsheets.com. The free tier builds and operates everything below; upgrading buys the login-gated team console and running the whole thing on youragency.com, which clients notice and juniors don't.

Step 3: Write the Brief in Agency Language

Select the Website template and brief the AI the way you'd brief production. Client side:

"Each client gets a simple request page: name, what they need, how urgent, attachments. Submitting creates a row tagged with their client name and an auto-generated ticket ID, and they instantly receive an email confirming we've logged it. If their question resembles something in my FAQ tab — like how to share assets — include that answer in the confirmation as a pointer, with a note that their account manager will follow up either way."

Team side:

"Internally, show one master queue across all clients behind a login — filter by client, type, and status, edit estimates and assignments inline, and alert the owner listed in my directory tab whenever their client submits."

Three requests that make this an agency tool rather than a generic queue:

• Per-client request portals feeding one sheet — every client gets their own submission link; the team sees a single consolidated queue
• An hours-logged column beside the estimate — so retainer burn is visible mid-month, not autopsied after it
• SLA timers keyed to contract tier — platinum clients on 24-hour clocks, standard on 72, with overdue rows surfacing first

Run AI Optimize, answer whatever it asks back, and the build completes in about 15–20 minutes.

Step 4: Every "Quick One" Becomes a Row

Send each client their link with a one-line policy: requests submitted here get SLA treatment. Texts and DMs still happen — the account manager forwards them into the form in ten seconds and replies "logged, ticket REQ-0312." From that moment the request has an ID, an estimate, an owner who was already alerted, and a deadline the sheet is watching. To be clear about scope: this queue handles inbound requests; for the status-reporting side, client portals are their own build.

Why Agencies Keep the Sheet

Scope creep becomes arithmetic. Sum hours-logged per client, set it beside the retainer, and the "can we talk about expanding the engagement?" email writes itself — with receipts.

One queue outranks four channels. When intake converges on rows, prioritization stops being a memory contest between account managers and starts being a sort by SLA due.

Timestamps win renewals. "Median response: 6 hours against a 48-hour SLA" is a renewal slide you can generate from two columns, the same way agencies already report from a spreadsheet project tracker.

Common Questions from Agency Owners

Will clients actually submit forms instead of texting? Most will once the form is the fastest route to a guaranteed response — and for holdouts, forwarding a text into the queue takes less time than triaging it in Slack.

Can one client see another client's requests? No. Each portal is client-specific; only your logged-in team sees the consolidated master sheet.

How do we bill overages this catches? Filter the month, subtract the retainer from hours logged, and attach the ticket list to the invoice — disputes get short when every request has an ID the client created.

Build Yours

The foundational pattern lives in our Google Sheets customer support system guide; the agency edition swaps customers for clients and adds the burn math. Draft the eight columns, brief the AI at lovespreadsheets.com, and by Friday the 9:40pm "super quick one" arrives with a ticket ID and an SLA clock already running.