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Creator guide

How to track brand deals

To track brand deals, record the key details of each deal, move it through clear stages from first pitch to final payment, and track payment status as you go. The five steps below cover exactly what to capture, how to stage your pipeline, and when a spreadsheet stops being enough.

  1. 1

    Capture the right details for every deal

    For each deal, record the brand, your contact there, the agreed value, the deliverables (with platform), the usage rights, the posting date, and the payment terms. These are the fields you'll actually need later — the value for your income, the contact for the follow-up, the usage rights for the invoice. Capture them once, at the start, and you never reconstruct them under pressure.

  2. 2

    Use stages that match how deals move

    Track each deal through clear stages rather than a flat list. Creator deals move through roughly five: Prospecting (a conversation, no terms yet), Negotiating (agreeing rate and deliverables), Contracted (signed), In Progress (creating and delivering), and Completed (delivered and paid). Stages tell you at a glance where your attention is needed and what's close to money.

  3. 3

    Track payment status separately from deal status

    A deal being finished isn't the same as being paid. Record when each invoice was sent, its due date, and whether it's been paid, so you can see outstanding and overdue money at a glance. This is the step spreadsheets quietly skip, and it's the one that costs you — an invoice you forgot to chase is income you never collect.

  4. 4

    Review your income regularly

    Once a month, total what you've earned, which brands paid the most, and how this month compares to the last. This isn't admin for its own sake — it tells you which relationships to nurture, which rates to raise, and whether your business is actually growing. If your deals carry their values, this review takes minutes instead of an afternoon.

  5. 5

    Know when a spreadsheet has stopped keeping up

    A spreadsheet is fine at low volume. The signs you've outgrown it: you've missed a deadline that was buried in a tab, you're not sure who owes you money, or updating it has become the chore you avoid. When tracking the deals costs more than doing them, it's time for a dedicated tool that connects the deal to the invoice and the income automatically.

Doing it the easy way

Where a tool does the tracking for you

Every step above is doable by hand — and worth doing however you track deals. The catch is that doing it by hand means keeping five things in sync yourself: the deal, its stage, its invoice, its payment status, and your income total. Miss one update and the whole picture drifts out of date.

Poppi Social's brand deal tracker is built to do this for you. Each deal carries its value and stage, you raise the invoice straight from the deal, payment status stays attached, and completed deals roll into your income dashboard automatically. It's the same five steps — without you being the thing that keeps them connected. If your spreadsheet has started to creak, here's what replaces it.

Common questions

Tracking brand deals — answered

Keep track of brand deals by recording the key details for each one — brand, contact, value, deliverables, usage rights, posting date, and payment terms — and moving each deal through clear stages from first contact to paid. Track payment status separately from deal status so you can see what's outstanding, and review your income monthly. A spreadsheet works at low volume; a dedicated brand deal tracker connects the deal to its invoice and income automatically as you scale.
For each brand deal, track the brand name and contact, the agreed value, the deliverables and which platform they're for, the usage rights, the posting or delivery date, the payment terms, and the current status of both the deal and the invoice. Those are the details you'll need to create the invoice, chase payment, and total your income later.
Track payments separately from the deal itself. For each invoice, record the date sent, the due date, and whether it's been paid, so overdue money is visible rather than something you discover by checking your bank. The most reliable setup keeps the payment status attached to the deal, so a paid, outstanding, or overdue invoice is one look away from the deal it belongs to.
A spreadsheet is fine for one or two deals at a time. Once several deals overlap — different deadlines, payment states, and approval stages — a spreadsheet stops keeping up, because it can't remind you of deadlines, track payments, or connect a deal to its invoice and income. At that point a dedicated brand deal tracker saves you the manual upkeep and the dropped deliverables that come with it.

Track your brand deals without the busywork

Poppi Social keeps every deal, invoice, and payment connected, so tracking takes care of itself. Free for 60 days.

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