Google Sheets vs HeyKero
The spreadsheet remembers everything. It just never tells you.
Last reviewed July 29, 2026
The short answer
A spreadsheet is the most common brand deal tracker in the world and for a handful of deals a year it is the correct choice: free, instant, and flexible in a way no product can match. Its single structural limitation is that it has no state. A sheet records what you typed and waits. It will not tell you an invoice is 12 days overdue, that a deliverable is due Friday while the video is still unedited, or that the deal you are about to sign conflicts with an exclusivity clause you agreed in March.
HeyKero is the same information with opinions attached: six deal stages, the video that fulfils each deal tracked beside it, invoices generated from the deal record, and a dashboard whose job is to surface the thing that will cost you money this week.
Side by side
Only the rows that change a decision. Where the other tool wins, the row says so.
| HeyKero | Google Sheets | |
|---|---|---|
| Free forever | No | Yes |
| Add a field in two seconds | No | Yes |
| Anyone can open it without an account | No | Yes |
| Tells you an invoice is overdue, unprompted | Yes | No |
| Generates a numbered invoice PDF | Yes | No |
| Links a deal to the video that fulfils it | Yes | No |
| Keeps the sponsor email thread on the deal | Yes | No |
| Warns you about exclusivity conflicts | Yes | No |
| Shows old and new value when an amount changes | Yes | No |
A sheet is a record. A pipeline is a system.
The difference is not features, it is direction. You go to a spreadsheet; a pipeline comes to you. Every failure mode creators describe — the invoice never sent, the brand who went quiet, the deliverable that slipped — is a failure of nobody looking, not a failure of nobody recording.
Conditional formatting is the usual patch, and it half works: the cell goes red, but only once you open the file. The alert has to find you on a day you were not thinking about invoices.
The video and the deal live in different files
This is the failure that costs the most and shows up the least. A sponsorship has a deliverable deadline. The video fulfilling it has a production schedule. In a spreadsheet those are two tabs at best and two different files at worst, so a brand deadline on the 14th and a video still in editing on the 12th never appear in the same place.
HeyKero links the deal to a content project, and the deal card carries the production stage. When the deadline is closer than the publish date, both sides say so.
What actually happened to this deal
When a spreadsheet cell goes from $5,000 to $6,500, the $5,000 is gone. There is no record of when it changed, why, or which email caused it. With one collaborator the memory usually holds. With an assistant or a manager editing the same sheet, it does not.
Every HeyKero deal keeps a chronological log with the old value and the new one, so “Amount updated: $5,000 → $6,500” is a line you can point at three months later.
Where the spreadsheet genuinely wins
It is free, and it will still be free in ten years. It has no opinions, so it bends to any deal structure you invent. Everyone you work with already knows how to use it, including the accountant who will never log into your deal tracker. It exports anywhere, and no company can raise the price on it or shut it down.
Those are not consolation prizes. If you close three deals a year, a purpose-built tool is overhead you do not need, and the honest recommendation is to keep the sheet.
Which one you should actually pick
Choose Google Sheets if
- You close roughly three deals a year or fewer
- You want a record of what happened rather than a system that chases things
- Your deals have unusual structures that no product models
- You are not willing to pay for deal tracking under any circumstances
- You need an accountant or collaborator to open it without an account
Choose HeyKero if
- You run five or more sponsorships at once and they overlap
- You have chased money you would have missed if you had not remembered
- The video fulfilling a deal has its own deadlines that need to line up
- Someone else — an assistant, editor or manager — touches your deals
- You want an invoice PDF without retyping anything you already know
What each one costs
Google Sheets is free with any Google account and there is no realistic scenario in which that changes.
HeyKero is free while it is in beta, so today the honest answer is that neither costs you anything. Paid pricing has not been announced yet.
When it is, the only sensible way to judge it is against a single missed invoice. Published surveys put the average YouTube sponsorship in the low thousands, so the bet a paid tool is making is that it catches one late payment a year. If your deal volume is low, that bet does not pay and the spreadsheet stays the right answer.
Moving over
There is no CSV import yet, so moving means retyping. In practice only live deals need to move — brand, amount, stage, deadline — and closed deals can stay in the sheet as a historical record you never touch again.
The low-risk version: add the two deals you are most worried about, keep the spreadsheet running in parallel for a fortnight, and see whether the dashboard surfaces anything the sheet did not. If it does not, you have lost ten minutes and learned your spreadsheet is fine.
Questions people ask
Is a spreadsheet good enough for tracking brand deals?
Under about three deals a year, yes. A spreadsheet is free, universal and needs no setup, and the cost of a missed detail is low when there are few details. The maths changes when several deals overlap and each carries a deliverable deadline, an invoice and a payment date.
What does a spreadsheet actually fail at?
State. A spreadsheet records what you typed and never tells you anything. It cannot say an invoice is 12 days overdue, that a deliverable is due Friday while the video is still unedited, or that the VPN deal you are about to sign conflicts with an exclusivity clause from March.
Can I not just add conditional formatting and reminders?
You can, and plenty of creators do. Conditional formatting turns a cell red once you open the sheet, which still requires you to open the sheet. Calendar reminders and Apps Script get closer, at which point you are maintaining a small piece of software rather than running your business.
Does HeyKero import my spreadsheet?
Not yet. There is no CSV import, so deals are entered by hand. Only live deals need to move; closed ones can stay in the sheet as a historical record.
What does HeyKero cost compared to a spreadsheet?
A spreadsheet is free forever. HeyKero is free while in beta and its paid pricing has not been announced yet. On price the spreadsheet wins outright and always will.
What does a spreadsheet do better than a purpose-built tool?
Flexibility and ownership. You can add a column in two seconds, share it with an accountant who has never heard of your tools, export it anywhere, and no company can change the price or shut it down. Those are real advantages, not consolation prizes.
How do I know I have outgrown the spreadsheet?
A reliable signal: you have chased a brand for money you were owed and realised nobody would have noticed if you had not remembered. A second one: you have had to reconstruct what was agreed by scrolling back through an email thread.
Put your deals on a board and see what’s late.
Free while we’re in beta. No card, and nothing to migrate on day one — add the two deals you are most worried about and see if the board tells you something your current setup doesn’t.