# Should meeting notes go in a notebook or a tracker table?

> For freelancers and consultants deciding where a client's recurring subjects should live in TrackHeros: what a notebook holds, what a tracker holds, when each one fits, and how the two work together on the same Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings without repeating each other.

Canonical: https://trackheros.com/answers/tracker-or-notebook/  
Author: Sami Kanafani  
Updated: 2026-11-04

**In short:** In TrackHeros a notebook collects what one client's Google Meet and Microsoft Teams meetings said about a topic: summaries, action items, transcript excerpts, your own notes and a running 'where things stand' in prose. A tracker is a table with typed columns that meetings fill, each cell keeping its history. Use a notebook to read the story and a tracker to look a value up.

| Fact | Detail |
| --- | --- |
| Notebook | Entries and a running summary in prose, organised by topic |
| Tracker | A table with typed columns and a history for every cell |
| Both | Belong to one client's workspace |
| Used together | The notebook's summary is written to refer to the tracker's table rather than repeat it |

TrackHeros has two places for what a client's meetings keep coming back to: notebooks and trackers. This answer is for freelancers and consultants deciding which one a subject belongs in, for meetings held on Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. The short version: a notebook is for reading, a tracker is for looking a value up. Trackers are described in full on [trackers](/features/trackers/).

## What is the difference between a notebook and a tracker?

A notebook is a per-client collection organised by topic and written to be read. A tracker is a table with typed columns, written to be looked up, where every cell keeps the history of its values.

|                    | Notebook                                                 | Tracker                                                      |
| ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Holds              | Summaries, action items, transcript excerpts, your notes | Rows and typed columns you define                            |
| Organised by       | Topic, such as "the production deployment"               | Row (a feature, a candidate, a deal), or one row per meeting |
| What stays current | A running "where things stand", in prose                 | Each cell, with every earlier value kept                     |
| Answers            | "What has happened with the migration?"                  | "When is go-live now, and who moved it?"                     |
| You read it        | Top to bottom, before a call                             | One cell at a time, or filtered                              |

## When should I use a notebook?

When the subject is a story rather than a set of values. A notebook suits a topic that runs across many calls, such as a migration, a redesign or a disputed invoice, where what matters is the context: who raised it, what was tried, and what the client said about it.

Its running summary of where things stand is the page to read before the next call. Each excerpt links back to the meeting it came from, and you can add notes of your own.

## When should I use a tracker?

When the question you keep asking has a short answer that changes. A candidate's salary expectation, a feature's status, a change request's cost and a deal's stage are each a cell, and a tracker keeps that cell current as meetings mention it.

A table can also be filtered in ways prose cannot: to the rows changed recently, the ones changed several times, the ones with a conflict, or the ones waiting for your review. A [value that changes at every meeting](/answers/track-a-value-that-changes-every-meeting/) is the clearest case for a tracker. What a tracker is, from the start, is in [what is a meeting tracker?](/answers/what-is-a-meeting-tracker/)

## Can I use a notebook and a tracker for the same subject?

Yes, and they are built not to repeat each other. They are separate features that read the same meetings; the notebook's running summary is written to refer to a tracker's table instead of restating the values in it, for the trackers the notebook's creator can see.

A typical pair for a client project is a notebook called "Launch", holding the excerpts and the narrative, and a project tracker holding each piece of work with its status, owner, deadline and blockers. The notebook says why the date moved. The tracker says what the date is now, who said it, and what it was before.

## Are notebooks and trackers kept separate per client?

Yes. Each one belongs to a single client's sealed workspace and reads only that client's meetings. A tracker set up for all your clients keeps a separate table for each of them, with a client label on every row, and never merges two clients' rows.

How that boundary is enforced is on [client isolation](/features/client-isolation/). Keeping the notes of a client's recurring calls easy to read is covered in [recurring client meeting notes](/blog/recurring-client-meeting-notes/).

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