How to Create a Betting Tracker in Google Sheets

Tracking your bets is the single most effective step you can take to move from casual gambling to strategic sports investing. A detailed record is the only way to honestly evaluate your performance, find your strengths, and plug leaks in your strategy. This guide will walk you through building a powerful, custom betting tracker from scratch using Google Sheets - no advanced spreadsheet skills required.

Why Use Google Sheets for a Betting Tracker?

While slick-looking apps and paid software exist, building your own tracker in Google Sheets has several distinct advantages. For starters, it's completely free and accessible from any device. You have total control over what you track and how you analyze it, creating a system that perfectly fits your betting style rather than forcing you into a one-size-fits-all box.

Most importantly, the process of building it yourself teaches you what metrics actually matter. You're not just plugging numbers into a black box, you're designing a system to get genuine answers about your betting habits. The simple, customizable nature of a spreadsheet is all you need to uncover the insights that lead to long-term profitability.

Part 1: Setting Up Your Spreadsheet with Essential Columns

The foundation of a great betting tracker is the raw data. The more detailed you are during this setup phase, the more powerful your analysis will be later. Let's create a new Google Sheet and name it something like "My Betting Tracker." On the first sheet (which you can rename to "Bets"), create the following columns.

The Core Data Columns

Date: The date you placed the bet. Consistent formatting here is helpful. You can use Google Sheets' date picker by double-clicking the cell.
Sport: The sport you're betting on (e.g., NFL, NBA, Soccer). This is perfect for filtering your data later to see which sports are most profitable for you.
Event: The specific game or match. For example, "Kansas City Chiefs vs. Baltimore Ravens." Be specific enough that you can remember the context later.
Bet Type: The category of your wager. Common types include Moneyline, Spread, Total (Over/Under), Prop, and Parlay. Tracking this helps you realize you might be amazing at totals but terrible at props.
Selection: Exactly what you bet on. For instance, "Kansas City Chiefs -3.5" or "Over 54.5." This should be distinct from the event itself.
Bookmaker: Where you placed your bet (e.g., DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM). This is crucial for comparing odds and seeing which platforms you perform best on.
Stake: The amount of money you wagered on the bet. Enter this as a standard number without the currency symbol (e.g., 25).
Odds (Decimal): The odds of your bet. While you might see American (-110) or Fractional (10/11) odds most often, using decimal odds will make all your formulas infinitely simpler. Most sportsbooks let you toggle this view. For quick conversion, a -110 American odd is 1.91 in decimal.
Status: The result of your bet. The best practice is to limit this to three options: "Won," "Lost," or "Push." We'll create a dropdown for this later to prevent typos.
Profit/Loss: The heart of the tracker. This column will automatically calculate your net gain or loss from each bet based on the data in the other columns.

Your blank sheet should now have 10 columns, ready for you to input a couple of test bets.

Part 2: Bringing Your Tracker to Life with Formulas

This is where your spreadsheet goes from a simple logbook to an automated analysis tool. We'll add formulas and formatting to do the heavy lifting for you.

Automating the Profit/Loss Calculation

This is the most important formula in your tracker. Instead of manually calculating how much you won or lost, we can have Google Sheets do it automatically based on the stake, odds, and status.

Click on the first empty cell in your "Profit/Loss" column (let's say it's cell J2). Enter this formula:

=IF(I2="Won", (G2*H2)-G2, IF(I2="Lost", -G2, 0))

Here's a breakdown of what that formula is doing:

IF(I2="Won", ... ): It first checks if the status in cell I2 is "Won."
(G2*H2)-G2: If the bet was won, it calculates the profit. With decimal odds, (Stake * Odds) gives you the total return, so subtracting the original Stake (G2) leaves just the profit.
IF(I2="Lost", -G2, 0): If the bet was not won, it checks if the status is "Lost." If so, the profit is your negative stake (-G2). If the status is neither "Won" nor "Lost" (meaning it's a "Push"), your profit is 0.

Once you enter this formula in J2, you can click the small blue square in the bottom-right corner of the cell and drag it down. This will copy the formula for every row, and it will automatically adjust to the correct row numbers.

Ensuring Clean Data with Dropdown Menus

Typos can ruin formulas. A simple "wom" instead of "Won" would break our profit calculation. To prevent this, let's create a dropdown menu for the "Status" column.

Select the entire "Status" column (click the "I" at the top).
Go to the menu bar and click Data > Data validation.
In the "Criteria" dropdown, select List of items.
In the box to the right, enter: Won,Lost,Push (separate each with a comma, no spaces).
Make sure "Show dropdown list in cell" is checked.
Click Save.

Now, every cell in the "Status" column will have a small arrow, allowing you to select an option instead of typing it. This small step guarantees your data is always pristine.

Visualize Performance with Conditional Formatting

Let's make our Profit/Loss column easier to read at a glance with color-coding.

Select the entire "Profit/Loss" column (click the "J" at the top).
Go to Format > Conditional formatting.
Under "Format rules," choose "Format cells if..." and select "Greater than." In the value box, enter 0.
Under "Formatting style," choose a nice green color for the text or cell fill. Click Done.
Click "Add another rule." This time, choose "Less than" and enter 0.
For the formatting style, choose a red color. Click Done.

Now, every time you add a bet, the profit will automatically appear in green for wins and red for losses.

Part 3: Building your Analysis Dashboard

A log of individual bets is good, but a high-level overview is where the real insights are found. Let's create a new sheet for this. Click the "+" button at the bottom-left of the screen to add a new sheet, and rename it "Dashboard." This is where we'll summarize all the raw data from our "Bets" sheet.

Calculating High-Level Performance Metrics

On your Dashboard sheet, create a space for key metrics. In one column, list labels like "Total Profit/Loss," "Total Wagered," etc. In the next column, we'll put the formulas. In these examples, 'Bets'!J:J refers to the Profit/Loss column on your 'Bets' sheet, 'Bets'!G:G is the Stake column, etc. Adjust them if your columns are different.

Total Profit/Loss: Shows your overall profitability.

=SUM('Bets'!J:J)

Total Wagered (Turnover): The total amount of money you've bet.

=SUM('Bets'!G:G)

Return on Investment (ROI): The holy grail metric. It tells you your profit as a percentage of your total investment. Format this cell as a percentage.

= [Total Profit Cell] / [Total Wagered Cell]

Make sure to replace the bracketed text with the actual cell reference, e.g., =B2/B3

Total Bets Placed: A simple count of every bet you've made.

=COUNTA('Bets'!A:A)

Win Rate: The percentage of your bets that have won. Remember, a high win rate doesn't guarantee profit if you're only winning low-odds bets. Format this as a percentage.

=COUNTIF('Bets'!I:I, "Won") / COUNTA('Bets'!I:I)

Deeper Dives with `SUMIF`

Now, let's break down your performance by different categories. Using the SUMIF function, we can see our profit for each sport, bet type, or bookmaker.

On your dashboard, create small tables. For example, to see profit by sport:

Sport	Profit/Loss
NFL	`=SUMIF('Bets'!B:B, "NFL", 'Bets'!J:J)`
NBA	`=SUMIF('Bets'!B:B, "NBA", 'Bets'!J:J)`
Soccer	`=SUMIF('Bets'!B:B, "Soccer", 'Bets'!J:J)`

You can replicate this exact structure to analyze your Profit/Loss by Bet Type (column D) and by Bookmaker (column F). This is how you find your betting edge. You might discover you're crushing the NFL but losing money on the NBA, indicating where you should focus your energy.

Visualizing Your Journey with a Cumulative Profit Chart

A cumulative profit chart is the best way to visualize your betting performance over time. It shows the ups and downs and your overall trajectory.

First, go back to your "Bets" sheet. In column K (or the next available column), title it "Cumulative P/L."
In the second row of this column (K2), enter the formula:

=SUM(J$2:J2)

This formula locks the starting cell (J$2) but lets the ending cell update as you drag it down, creating a running total of the Profit/Loss column.

Drag this formula down to apply it to all your bets.
Now, back on your "Dashboard," select a blank area. Go to Insert > Chart.
In the chart editor, select "Line chart."
For the "X-axis," click and select your "Date" column from the "Bets" sheet ('Bets'!A:A).
For the "Series," select your new "Cumulative P/L" column ('Bets'!K:K).

You’ll now have a powerful line chart that maps your bankroll's journey - your goal is to see that line trending up and to the right!

Final Thoughts

By following these steps, you've built more than just a spreadsheet, you've created a powerful tool for self-analysis that will help you bet smarter and more strategically. Regularly updating and reviewing your tracker is the first step toward finding a real, sustainable edge against the books.

Building this tracker is an awesome start, but as you grow, manually creating reports and wrestling with SUMIF formulas can become tedious. This is why we built Graphed to help. By connecting your Google Sheets, we allow you to skip the manual formula-writing and chart-building. You can simply ask questions in plain English like, "What is my ROI on NBA moneyline bets in the last month?" or "Create a pie chart of my profit by bookmaker." We automate the analysis so you can get straight to the insights, faster.