Airtable gives you unlimited creative control to design your own bases, tables, forms, and interfaces. But it can be immensely helpful to build off the work that someone has already done rather than build everything from scratch for the first time.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the most popular use cases for Airtable and their corresponding templates to give you a jump start on your next project.
I've divided the templates into the most common team structures I see utilizing Airtable: Accounting, HR, Marketing, Product Management, Product Management, and Sales.
Free Airtable templates that are easy to deploy
Important to note is that most Airtable templates are free. Unlike Notion, which makes it very convenient to create and charge for Notion templates, the majority of Airtable templates are hosted for free on Airtable Universe (a source for Airtable community templates)
With Airtable templates hosted on Airtable Universe, you'll find a button that allows you to Explore the base.
From there, you can click to Copy the base which duplicates the base and any data into your own Airtable workspace to start modifying to your heart's content.
Accounting Templates
If you have a simplistic accounting setup (cash vs. accruals, low volume), you may want to use an Airtable accounting template to manage company financials.
My personal take would be that Airtable is great for expense tracking and project management, but that you may want to leave payroll and tax management up to a tool like Quickbooks. However if your current setup is simple and spreadsheet based, there’s no reason you can’t take advantage of the integrations and ease-of-use of the Airtable ecosystem.
The best example of an accounting template I've found is the Financial Budget & Ledger for Accounting and Bookkeeping which includes a setup for transaction entry and approval, complete with expense codes and a basic ledger.
Fundraising templates
If you're a startup looking to raise VC money, here's a handy little fundraising CRM that will do the trick.
Alternatively, if you're a non-profit looking to find pledges, Airtable fundraising template will be a better fit for you.
Personal finance template
If personal finance is more your speed, there are a few helpful templates to get you started. Fancy Finances is one to help you for budget planning, managing financial accounts, and tracking transactions over time.
Human Resources templates
Given the hyper-competitive hiring landscape coupled with fragmented systems for hiring, training, and retention, it's especially helpful to have Airtable HR templates to unify data about people operations.
One of the most comprehensive templates is KasPer Lite Human Resources. Employee tracking, absence management, team training and skills, benefits analysis, review tracking; this is a pretty all-inclusive way to kick off your next HR project!
Marketing templates
Given the heavy use of Airtable within marketing teams, there is a great wealth of Airtable marketing templates to be found for free.
Content calendar templates
Regardless of which marketing channels you utilize for your organization, here are some of the best templates to manage your content pipelines with calendar templates:
Creative Management
These templates are perhaps a bit too simplistic for my liking, but I think it's useful to be able to think through some of the use cases and how you might string them together.
Internal link tracking for SEO template
Tracking testimonials for your product/website template
Visual asset management template
Product management templates
Agile Template
Does your company utilize agile software development methodology? This Agile Workflow template is set up with a backlog to manage stories, sprint planning, record keeping for standups, and team management. It even utilizes Airtable forms to allow external users to be able to create new stories for backlog grooming.
Project management templates
By far one of the most comprehensive Airtable project management templates I’ve found is called AirSquared. Rather than a simple base only consisting of projects and tasks, this template helps track an entire portfolio of projects, deliverables for projects, risks to call out, work items and activities.
AirSquared goes above and beyond by having filtered views to easily group information, and extensions to display relevant charts (such as deliverables by status).
My only real criticism of the template is that the creator chose not to include any sample data which makes it a little unwieldy to play around with when you’re first getting started. However, it is much easier to start creating your own data when coming from a clean slate.
Checklist template
For those of you looking to manage internal projects (but aren't a full blown professional services team), you might just want a simple Airtable checklist template.
This template was built for travel in mind, but the principles remain the same even if you wanted to repurpose it for a business use case.
Sales Templates
CRM Template
Airtable works great for building a sales CRM. Lots of different options are available depending on whether you are B2C or B2B focused. Some salespeople prefer rigid CRMs to enforce sales process, while others prefer simplicity to encourage usability.
The Airtable-produced Sales CRM template works well for simple B2B use cases as it includes Accounts and Contacts, as well as Opportunities to track your deal pipeline.
A nice addition is "Interactions" which can aid in activity tracking for sales reps.
Proposal template
Does your sales organization rely heavily on winning RFPs? I've used some of the most expensive RFP management tools on the market and have found several to be rather lackluster.
If you're looking for a simple solution that you can configure as needed, the Proposal Management Flow is a good starter Airtable proposal template to manage who needs to complete each item of the proposal.
Invoice template
If you need a quick way to keep track of time and material to invoice to clients, check out the Freelance invoice generator template. This lets you track tasks and completion time, linking tasks to invoices.
An easy way to get started with invoicing if you don't need the overhead of a full CRM.
Airtable interface templates
Airtable interfaces are still a relatively new feature in the Airtable ecosystem, so there aren't a ton of released templates on Airtable Universe. However, interfaces are bundled with the rest of your base when you release content to the Universe - so recent contests to highlight creative bases include the ability to copy these interfaces as templates into your own base.
Check out the contest results for some unique ideas for creating your own interfaces!
How to sell Airtable templates
Despite most templates being free, it is possible to sell templates as well.
If you're interested in creating your own template, there are a couple of settings you need to be aware of in order to make the base reproducible for others.
Perhaps the easiest way of selling Airtable templates is by using a third party solution such as Paytable to restrict access and manage payments.
Wrap-Up
Have you found any templates that have been especially helpful for your team? Let us know!
While Airtable templates are awesome for getting up and running quickly, most organizations find that they still need to invest time and resources in tailoring Airtable for the unique needs of their team.
If you're in need of any Airtable development, configuration, or support, don't hesitate to reach out!