You want to look back at your year, but a blank doc titled "2026 review" isn't much help. A year in review template gives you the structure: where the numbers go, where each month goes, and where the decisions for next year go, so you fill it in instead of staring at it.
This post walks through a five-tab template you can build in Google Sheets in about 15 minutes, with the columns for each tab. One of the tabs can fill itself in for your Google Sheets activity with a free sheet I made.
TL;DR
- You get a five-tab Google Sheets layout: numbers, months, wins, misses and next year.
- Every tab should feed the last one, so the review ends in decisions, not just memories.
- The most common mistake is collecting a year of notes and never turning them into 2027 plans.
Who this is for
- Operations analyst: You already think in tabs and columns, and this gives your personal year the same treatment.
- Freelance bookkeeper: A numbers tab next to a months tab shows which clients and seasons paid off.
- Content creator: You can count what you published and see which months were your strongest.
- Team manager: The same template works for a team retro with one row per project.
- Google Sheets power user: Sheets Wrapped turns your own spreadsheet habits into a page of numbers.
Tab 1: NUMBERS
Three columns: Metric, 2026, 2027 target. Add 5 to 10 rows of things you can actually count. Some ideas:
- Days off taken
- Trips
- Books finished
- Projects shipped or clients served
- Workouts or runs
- Hours spent in Google Sheets (see the next section)
Leave the 2027 target column blank until the last tab.
Let Sheets Wrapped fill in your Sheets numbers
If a lot of your work lives in spreadsheets, Sheets Wrapped gives you a ready-made numbers tab for it. It's a free Google Sheet, like Spotify Wrapped for Google Sheets. Make a copy, click the Sheets Wrapped menu, then "Wrap my 2026 Sheets", and a new tab fills with numbers like hours in Sheets, cells edited, your first sheet of the year and how many files are still named "Untitled spreadsheet".
On the Sheets Wrapped page I show my own run from October 2026: 229 hours in Google Sheets, 451 new sheets created, and 35 still called "Untitled spreadsheet".
It's plain Apps Script in your own Google account, no AI and no outside services. It reads file names, dates and sharing only, never opens your files or reads your email, and only writes to your own copy. You can change the year to wrap any year back to 2006, or schedule it for a date like December 31. Copy the numbers you care about into your NUMBERS tab.
Tab 2: MONTHS
Twelve rows, January to December. Columns:
- Month
- Main thing (what took most of your time)
- Best moment
- Hardest moment
- Energy (1 to 5, as a dropdown)
Fill it with your calendar and photo roll open. Then select the Energy column and add a color scale (Format, then Conditional formatting, then Color scale). Low months jump out in red.
Tabs 3 and 4: WINS and MISSES
Keep both simple, with two columns each.
WINS: What happened, and why it worked. Aim for 5 to 10 rows. "Why it worked" is the useful column, because it tells you what to repeat.
MISSES: What didn't happen or went wrong, and what you'd change. Be specific. "Course didn't launch because client work filled all of Q2" is something you can plan around. "Bad at focus" isn't.
Tab 5: NEXT
This is where the review becomes a plan. Columns:
- Decision (keep, stop, start, or change)
- From which tab (so you remember why)
- When in 2027
Aim for 3 to 5 rows. Then go back to NUMBERS and fill in the 2027 targets that match.
Now put the "When in 2027" dates on an actual calendar. Big Year 2027 is a free Google Sheet with all 12 months on one tab, so you can type each decision onto its date or month and see the whole year at once. Holidays you add in its SETTINGS tab highlight automatically, which helps you avoid planning a start date on a holiday weekend.
Common pitfalls
- Too many metrics. Ten is a lot. Pick the ones you'd actually want to compare next December.
- Filling MONTHS from memory. Open your calendar and photos, or the middle of the year turns into a blur.
- Vague misses. Write what happened and the cause, so the fix is obvious.
- Skipping the NEXT tab. The review isn't done until each decision has a time in 2027.
FAQ
What should a year in review template include?
Numbers you can count, a row per month, wins, misses, and a list of decisions for next year with dates.
Is there a free year in review template for Google Sheets?
You can build the five-tab layout in this post in about 15 minutes. Sheets Wrapped is a free sheet that fills in your Google Sheets activity for the year.
Does Sheets Wrapped read my spreadsheets?
No. It reads file names, dates and sharing info only, never the contents of your files, and it runs inside your own Google account.
Can I review a year other than 2026?
Yes. Sheets Wrapped lets you change the year and wrap any year back to 2006.
When should I do a year in review?
Late December or the first week of January. Do it before you set any 2027 goals.
Ready for the next one? Get the Big Year, a free 2027 calendar in Google Sheets.
