Template ·
A free sample tracking template that actually fits how labs work.
Nine columns, a permanent ID scheme and three rules of use — that is a sample tracking spreadsheet that survives real lab life. Download it below as a CSV that opens in Excel and Google Sheets. No email gate, no sign-up. And when your lab outgrows a spreadsheet, this page says so instead of pretending it never happens.
sample-tracking-template.csv
CSV · 9 columns · two worked example rows · opens in Excel and Google Sheets · no email required
Download the templateWhat is in the template?
Nine columns. Every one exists because leaving it out has lost somebody a sample.
- sample_ide.g. S-001
- One short, unique, permanent ID per sample. Never reused, never renamed. This is the column every other record points at.
- namee.g. HeLa p12
- What a human calls it. Free text; the ID does the identifying.
- typee.g. cell line
- A short controlled list you agree on once — cell line, tissue, DNA, aliquot.
- ownere.g. MK
- Initials of the person responsible. Blank owner means nobody thaws it and nobody culls it.
- date_createde.g. 2026-08-14
- Always YYYY-MM-DD. Any other format and Excel will eventually rewrite it.
- projecte.g. tumour-line
- The grant, paper or project the sample belongs to. One word, hyphenated.
- statuse.g. in freezer
- Where it is in its life: in freezer, thawed, shipped, used up, discarded.
- locatione.g. -80 #2, rack 3, box 7
- Free text, written so a rotation student can walk to it. Freezer, rack, box.
- notese.g. passage 12, mycoplasma neg 2026-07
- Everything else. If a note repeats across many rows, promote it to a column.
How should you name the samples?
The template ships with the simplest scheme that works: a prefix and a counter, S-001, S-002, zero-padded so it sorts. The ID is permanent and meaningless on purpose — dates, types and owners live in their own columns, where Excel cannot mangle them and renames cannot break them.
If you want to design your own scheme, read sample naming conventions that survive real lab life first — it covers the failure modes, including the one where Excel rewrites gene names as dates.
What keeps the sheet alive?
Three rules. Labs that keep them get years out of a spreadsheet.
- One owner. One named person merges changes and settles disputes. A sheet everyone edits is a sheet nobody trusts.
- Append, do not edit. When a sample changes, add to the notes with a date — never overwrite what a row used to say. Overwritten history is the spreadsheet failure you cannot undo.
- Export weekly. A dated copy in a shared folder. When — not if — someone breaks the live sheet, you lose a week, not a lab.
What can this template not do?
The honest limits, so you are not surprised by them: a spreadsheet has no per-sample history — a row shows the current state, not who changed it or when. It has no safe concurrent editing. Search across old states is grep-and-hope. And at the bench, with gloves on, nobody is opening Excel on a phone — the record gets updated later, from memory, or not at all.
Whether those limits matter depends on your lab. The full argument, both directions, is at spreadsheets vs sample tracking software.
What happens when the sheet stops working?
Usually one of two things: the lab grows past what one owner can merge, or a student leaves and takes the sheet’s logic with them. If you get there, this exact CSV imports into tinysamples with column mapping — that is on the Pro plan, $12/month, and we print that price here because a free template with a hidden toll is not free. The tinysamples free plan (100 samples, one user) accepts hand-entered samples at $0.