Comparison
You don't have a dashboard problem. You have a spreadsheet problem.
Excel works. Until it doesn't. Here's a side-by-side of what changes when you move batch traceability, dispatch and COAs off spreadsheets and into Keystone — using the exact metrics our founding partner measured before and after.
Home › Excel vs Keystone
Proof points
In one glance.
- Audit-ready: traceability lookup under 30 seconds (was: 2+ hours)
- Handover risk: zero. The system holds the knowledge (was: one person)
- BRCGS Issue 9 mock-recall: 90 seconds (was: half a day)
- Dispatch-note rejection rate: zero. Retailer-formatted (was: ~5–8%)
The honest part
Spreadsheets are great. Until the FSAI calls.
Most Irish artisan food producers run their entire operation on a beautifully crafted Excel workbook — usually built by one person who knows where every formula lives. It's clever. It's free. It works. The problem isn't the spreadsheet itself, it's everything that depends on it: traceability, audit-readiness, retailer compliance, succession risk. The moment that one person is on holiday and an SFPA inspector walks in, the system breaks down.
The comparison
What actually changes.
When Excel is genuinely the right answer
We won't pretend everyone needs us.
Excel is still the right answer if you tick all three of these boxes: (a) your business is under roughly €1m in annual revenue, (b) you make essentially one SKU — one cheese, one bake, one cut — with maybe a couple of pack sizes, and (c) you don't supply national retailers (Tesco / SuperValu / Lidl / Aldi / Dunnes / M&S). At that scale a well-built workbook is fine. The threshold flips when any of the following are true: you're losing two hours a week chasing traceability, you're getting dispatch notes rejected by a retailer, a BRCGS audit is on the calendar in the next 12 months, or you're worried about what happens when the one person who knows the spreadsheet is on leave. At that point €790/month buys back the time, the audit confidence and the handover safety.
FAQs
Frequently asked.
Can you import our existing Excel data?
Yes. Twelve months of historical data is included in standard implementation. Beyond 12 months is scoped & quoted separately — we send a fixed-fee number in writing before we start.
What if I still want to use Excel for some things?
Keep doing it. Keystone exports every report to Excel/CSV in one click. We're not religious — if your accountant needs an Excel feed, we'll generate it on a schedule.
Will my team actually use it?
We sit on your floor for two days during implementation. We map your existing workflow into Keystone's screens. There's a 30-day post-go-live hand-holding period where you have direct line to the build team. Our founding partner's QA Manager was running dispatch on Keystone solo by day 6.
What happens if you go out of business?
Your data is yours. Daily encrypted backups stay in your AWS region. We can hand over a full SQL dump and codebase escrow on request — it's in the standard contract.