Application Tracker - Manage Your Job Search End to End

Your generation history holds the PDF documents. The Application Tracker holds the outcomes - who you talked to, where each application stands, when you need to follow up, and how it all ended. This guide walks you through every part of the feature: what you can record, how the two views work, the 10-status pipeline, bulk actions, retention, exports, and the small habits that make the tracker actually useful instead of another stale list.

What the Tracker Does

The Application Tracker is the long-term, editable record of every job you apply to through preparAItor. For each application you can record:

• Status - where the application currently stands in the pipeline
• Comments - free-form notes you can keep adding to as things develop
• Contact - the recruiter or hiring manager's name, email, phone number, and LinkedIn
• Priority - low, medium, or high, so the important ones stand out
• Tags - up to 10 short labels per entry for industry, location, tech stack, or anything else you want to filter on
• Next action - a one-line reminder with a due date
• Workload and application method - full-time or part-time (with a percentage), and how you applied (electronic, in person, phone)
• Rejection reason - optional note if the application ends in rejection
• Attached documents - the generated cover letter, application email, interview Q&A, job summary, and the original job posting

Every entry is editable. A job starts at Applied, gets promoted through Interview 1 and Interview 2, maybe to Offer, and eventually to Accepted or Rejected. You control the story - the tracker just keeps the record.

Tracker vs. Generation History

Generation history and the Application Tracker look similar on the surface - both are lists of jobs you've worked with. They are not the same thing.

Put simply: history holds the PDF document; the tracker holds the outcome. The cover letter you generated last month will expire in your history - that's intentional. The memory that you applied to that company, talked to a specific recruiter, scheduled an interview, and got the offer - that stays in your tracker for a full year.

Two Views: Kanban and List

You can view your applications in whichever mode fits the moment. Both views show the same data; you can switch freely.

• Kanban board - columns for each stage of the pipeline. Drag and drop cards between columns to update status. Great for a quick visual read of where things stand.
• List view - a dense table with sortable columns (company, status, applied date, next action, priority). Great for working through a large pipeline without scrolling sideways.

Use the Kanban board when you want the visual picture and the list view when you want to act efficiently on many entries at once.

The 10-Status Pipeline

Tracker entries move through a defined set of statuses. You update the status manually as the application progresses.

Status changes are time-stamped automatically in the activity log for each entry, so you can always see when each transition happened. You can update status either by picking from the dropdown inside an entry or by dragging the card between columns on the Kanban board.

Two Ways to Create an Entry

There are two paths into the tracker. Pick whichever matches how the application started.

1. Save from a Generation in History

Open any entry in your generation history and click Save to tracker. The generated documents (cover letter, application email, interview Q&A, job summary, job posting) and the parsed job record attach automatically. Pick a starting status and you're done.

This is the most common path - you generate a cover letter, you send it off, you save the entry. The tracker inherits everything you already did. Attached documents stay attached to the tracker entry even after the original history entry expires.

2. Add a Manual Entry

Open Tracker in the main navigation and click Add application. Enter the company name, the job title, the date you applied, and anything else you want to record. You can also paste a job posting URL - it's stored with the entry for reference only (there's no automatic scraping of the URL, so you'll still fill in the header fields yourself).

Manual entries are useful when you applied somewhere through a different channel - a referral, a recruiter's email, a direct message - and never went through the generation flow in the app.

Duplicate Detection

When you create a manual entry for a company + job title combination you've already tracked, the app flags the potential duplicate so you don't accidentally create two entries for the same application. You can override and save anyway if it really is a different role at the same company.

Per-Plan Capacity

Each plan caps how many active tracker entries you can hold at once:

The cap is a hard limit. When you hit it, adding a new entry is blocked until you free a slot. You have two options:

1. Delete older entries. Rejected or withdrawn applications from months ago are usually the easiest candidates.
2. Upgrade to a higher plan. More room immediately, and your existing entries are preserved.

For an active job search, Pro is usually enough. Premium is for the long, structured campaign - executives, consultants, or anyone running dozens of applications in parallel.

Downgrading never deletes entries that are already saved. If you drop from Pro to Starter with 40 entries, your 40 entries stay put - you just can't add new ones until you're back under the new cap of 15.

365-Day Retention

Every tracker entry is kept for 365 days from when it enters the tracker - not from the last time you touched it. A year after import or creation in the tracker, the entry is deleted.

This is long enough to cover a full annual job-search cycle (applied in January, heard back in May, signed in July, reflected on in December), but it's not forever. The tracker isn't designed to be a lifetime archive. If you need to keep something beyond the 365-day window, export it before it expires.

Deletion Reminders

You get two emails before an entry is deleted:

• 30 days before deletion - first heads-up, time to export or download anything you want to keep.
• 7 days before deletion - final reminder.

Both emails include direct links back to the entry so you can open it, export the record, and download any attached documents.

Can You Extend the Retention?

No. 365 days is the cap, and it cannot be extended. If you need a record past that window, export the entry (CSV, PDF, or a document ZIP) before it expires and archive the export locally. Once an entry is deleted, it cannot be recovered.

Recording a Realistic Application Journey

A typical application's path through the tracker looks like this:

1. Applied - you sent the documents. Entry created with the generated cover letter, email, and other documents attached.
2. Waiting - the ball is in their court. Add a comment with the confirmation email text. Set a Next action: "follow up in 7 days".
3. Interview 1 - a recruiter reaches out. Add them as a contact (name, email, phone, LinkedIn). Change the Next action to "prepare for interview round 1".
4. Interview 2 - second round. Add comments about how round 1 went, what questions came up, what you'd do differently.
5. Offer - you got the offer. Add comments with the details (salary, benefits, start date) - these live in the free-form notes, not a structured form.
6. Accepted - done. The entry becomes a reference record for the next year.

At any point you might branch to Rejected or Withdrawn. Every transition is time-stamped in the activity log, so three months from now you can still see exactly when things happened.

The Next Action Field

Each entry has an optional Next action - a short label plus a due date. Examples:

• "Follow up with recruiter" - due in 7 days
• "Prepare for interview round 2" - due tomorrow
• "Accept or decline offer" - due in 3 days

The due date is shown on the entry card. When it's overdue, the card is highlighted on the board or list view so you don't miss it.

This is an in-app visual flag, not an email reminder. The tracker does not send follow-up emails. The only tracker emails are the 30-day and 7-day retention warnings. If you need email reminders, use your calendar - what the tracker gives you is a reliable visual cue every time you open it.

Bulk Actions

When you're working through a large pipeline, you can act on multiple entries at once:

• Bulk status change - promote several entries to a new stage with one action. Example: mark five "Waiting" entries as "Rejected" after a batch of "thanks, but no" emails.
• Bulk delete - remove multiple entries in a single action.
• Bulk document download (per entry) - open any entry and download all of its attached documents (cover letter, email, Q&A, summary, job posting) as one ZIP. This is a Premium feature. The formats inside the ZIP respect your plan's download permissions and your Settings → Preferences → Bulk Download toggles (per-doc-type PDF / DOCX / TXT), exactly like the generation-history bulk download.

Bulk document download is per entry - it's not a combined ZIP across multiple entries. To pull documents for several applications, open each entry one at a time.

Exporting Your Tracker

When an entry is about to expire, or any time you want a personal backup, you can export your tracker:

• CSV export - a flat spreadsheet of your entries with columns for applied date, company, job title, contact, status, workload, application method, and (if present) rejection reason. Open it in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers.
• PDF document export - the same summary as a printable document.
• Per-entry document ZIP (Premium) - every attached document for a single entry, bundled as described in the Bulk Actions section above.

Exports happen in your browser, so you always get a local copy. Especially useful to run before big retention thresholds - a tracker export once a month is a cheap insurance policy, and exports don't cost credits.

After the 365-day retention expires, deleted entries cannot be recovered - even from customer support. Export first, then let it expire.

What the Tracker Does Not Do

A few things people sometimes expect the tracker to handle but it does not, so there are no surprises:

• No offer-comparison screen. There isn't a dedicated side-by-side offer view. You can filter the board to the Offer column to see all your active offers, and put salary, benefits, and start-date details into each entry's comments.
• No follow-up emails. The tracker does not send you email reminders when a Next action is due. Those are visual-only flags inside the app. Only the 30-day and 7-day retention warnings come by email.
• No auto-import from URL. You can paste a job posting URL on a manual entry, but it's stored purely for reference - the tracker doesn't scrape the URL and auto-fill title, company, or description. To get parsed job data, run the job through the Generator first and save that generation to the tracker.
• No credit cost. Creating, editing, updating, and deleting tracker entries is free. Credits are only spent on AI-powered actions (parsing, CV analysis, document generation, interview sessions). The tracker itself is always free to use within your plan's capacity.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of the Tracker

A tracker works if you work it. A few small habits go a long way:

• Save to the tracker as soon as you apply. The 365-day retention clock starts when the entry enters the tracker, so there's no benefit to waiting. And if you save right after hitting send, the generation is still fresh in history and auto-attaches cleanly.
• Update statuses the same day. A tracker with stale statuses is a tracker you stop trusting. When something changes, update it immediately - it takes seconds.
• Use comments like a journal. Every interaction - the call with the recruiter, the interviewer's name, the weird question they asked - goes in comments. Future-you will thank present-you when a recruiter circles back six months later.
• Set a Next action for every open entry. The single best way to avoid ghosting them by accident. Make the due date realistic: if you said "I'll follow up in a week", the Next action is "follow up" with a date 7 days out.
• Use priority and tags to cut through noise. Mark the three most important applications as high priority; tag entries by industry or location to filter quickly. Max 10 tags per entry is plenty.
• Export monthly. Download a CSV every few weeks as a personal backup, especially when entries are nearing their 30-day or 7-day deletion warning.
• Delete ancient rejections freely. Once you're over a rejection, dropping the entry keeps the board readable and frees a slot for new applications, especially on smaller plans.

Privacy and Data

Tracker entries are stored in your account and accessible only to you. Documents copied from your generation history remain protected in the same way. Comments are stored as plain text inside your own account. The tracker doesn't share data with third parties.

Deleting a tracker entry does not delete the corresponding generation-history entry - they're separate records. The generation-history entry will still expire on its own retention schedule (1, 7, or 30 days).

Related Guides

• Generation History and Downloads - the short-lived staging area for generated files. Save to the tracker for long-term records.
• How to Generate Your Application Documents - create the documents that auto-attach when you save a generation to the tracker.
• AI-Powered Interview Preparation - when your tracker status moves to Interview 1, this is where you prepare.
• Notification Preferences - control which tracker emails (30-day / 7-day retention warnings) you receive.

The tracker is a small change in habit and a big change in confidence. Two minutes per application, updated as things happen, and a year from now you'll still know exactly who said what and when.