For owner-run businesses doing $500K to $3M a year
Whether you sell, pass it on, or step away, the day will come. Keystone gets you there on your terms.
Free. About 10 minutes. No card.
Early access. The planning workspace is free to use today. Free accounts are open. Connecting your accounting system and team access are rolling out with a small group of design partners first. What is live
Sample The real Keystone home screen, showing a fictional plumbing company. The business and its numbers are made up. The screen is the product. See the other ways to view it
Industry figures from published sources, each linked. See the research
Most owners write a plan once, if at all. Nothing checks it against what actually happens, so it stops being useful by spring.
A quarterly profit and loss shows a problem weeks after it started. By then the same mistake has repeated on every job since.
Hire or wait. Raise prices or hold. Without a current picture, those decisions come down to gut and whatever is in the account today.
Why it matters
Most owners pull their records together when someone asks for them: a buyer, a bank, a landlord. That is the worst time to find out what is missing. Keystone keeps your plan, your monthly numbers and your decisions in one place, so the file is ready before anyone asks.
Buyers start with three years of financial statements and tax returns, then look hard at your margins and expenses. A plan with monthly numbers that tie to your books shows what the business earns and where it is going, and it holds up when the buyer's accountant checks it.
The SBA tells owners to have a business plan, an expense sheet and five years of projections before asking for a loan, and an established business should show three to five years of income statements, balance sheets and cash flow. Keystone keeps the plan, budget, forecast, cash outlook and history together, and the monthly report prints for the bank.
An SBA real estate loan is for owner-users: your business has to occupy at least 51% of an existing building, or 60% of a new one. The lender is underwriting your business as much as the property, so it comes back to the same file: your history, your projections and how the payment gets made.
SBA Form 1920, lender's application (occupancy requirements)
Even if you never sell or borrow, a plan checked every month tells you what is working, who owns what, and what to fix before it costs you. The paper trail builds itself as you go: every target, every number and every decision, with the date and the reason.
The operating dashboard
Every number shows where it came from. Anything missing says "not recorded" instead of being estimated.
Sample Screens from the Keystone workspace with a fictional business loaded.
Your view
Some owners want to be told what needs them. Some want every number. Some want the road to the finish line. Pick a style for your home screen, then add, move or remove any card. Each person on your team picks their own.
Guided
Guided
By the numbers
By the numbers
By the goal
Your own
Experts
Anywhere
Sample Real screens from the Keystone workspace, all showing the same fictional plumbing company. Switch styles any time from the home screen.
Real people, near you
A plan tells you where you stand. Some decisions still deserve a conversation with someone who has seen them many times. Keystone introduces you to vetted local CPAs, attorneys, lenders, brokers and other professionals who already work with businesses like yours. The first conversation is free, and you do not need an account.
One conversation for a second opinion. Is this price increase too much? Lease or buy? Can I afford this hire? What would a buyer pay?
Hand the work to someone who does it every day: monthly books, taxes, a contract, a line of credit, selling the business. You agree scope and price directly with them.
Inside Keystone, the Experts tab suggests who to talk to from your own numbers: a margin behind your industry, a sale on the horizon, a cash dip ahead.
How it works
About 10 minutes to start. After that, a short check-in each month.
Answer questions about your business in your own trade's terms. Keystone turns the answers into three to five yearly goals, each with a number, a deadline, an owner and the work behind it.
LiveEach month, add your numbers: type them in, or import your profit and loss. Keystone compares them with the pace each goal needs.
Live QuickBooks sync with design partnersAnything off pace becomes an issue, with the likely causes shown alongside. You see what moved and why, not just that it moved.
LivePick a fix, give it an owner and a date. A month after it's done, Keystone checks whether the number actually moved, and adjusts the plan if needed.
LiveExamples
Four situations from the same fictional plumbing company, about $1.4M a year in sales. Every figure is calculated by Keystone from that sample business. These are not customer results; Keystone does not have published customer results yet.
Profit, every yearAbout $23,500 a year in gross profit if materials go back to 22% of sales. The extra cost was $5,880 over the last three months.
Cash, one timeAbout $34,800 released once if the business gets three quarters of the way to collecting in 24 days (the base case). That is cash, not profit: it shows up once and does not repeat.
Decision testedThe range matters more than the base case. The owner can see that even the downside does not need outside money.
Decision testedRevenue and profit move in different directions in the downside. That is why Keystone never shows only one of them.
What you bill. A sale is not profit until its costs are paid.
What you keep after costs. The number that repeats year after year.
What lands in the bank, and when. Collecting faster is cash once, not extra profit.
Keystone keeps these three apart everywhere, and never adds them into one "return" figure.
What you can use
Keystone is early. This list says exactly where each part stands, and it is updated when anything changes.
Free. Runs in your browser. Nothing to install.
Without an account, your work stays in your browser and can be downloaded as a PDF or a file.
Built and tested. Being switched on for a small group first.
Not built yet. No dates promised.
Sample operating plan and report
For Hendricks Plumbing & Mechanical, a fictional company. The plan comes out of the guided start. The report is October's check-in. Both are produced by Keystone from the sample business; none of it is a real customer.
Each goal also carries its supporting work, a budget and the triggers that raise an issue. Where a published figure would set a target, Keystone uses it only if it names who was measured, when, and where to read it.
Three things to do this month, with what each is worth and what kind of value it is:
Gross profit figure for item 3: sales times the business's 44.1% contribution margin. All figures are the sample company's own; no industry benchmark is used on this page.
Pricing
Nothing is charged today. When paid plans start, you will be told the price before anything is billed, and free work will not be taken away.
Taking a small number of owners in the six launch industries. Apply to be a design partner
This is the current plan, published so you know what to expect. It may change before launch.
Questions
Yes. The workspace and free accounts are open now. Team access, the QuickBooks connection and email summaries are built and are being switched on with design partners first. The status list above says where each part stands.
Nothing during early access. Design partners get 12 months free in return for feedback. The current plan after launch is $99 to $299 a month by business size, but that is not final and nothing is charged today.
Not yet, and we will not publish any until they are real. Everything on this page marked Sample or Illustrative comes from a fictional plumbing company, run through the actual product.
Every figure is listed, with its source, on the research page. From published sources, each shown with who was measured, the year and a link: for example the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Restaurant Association's operations data, CoStar and STR for hotels, NAHB for builders and remodelers, and AICPA for accounting firms. A figure can set your target only if the publisher collected the data itself and it measures the same thing you do. Figures from software vendors or reported second-hand are shown for comparison only. Where nothing public exists, Keystone says not available rather than guess. Comparisons with other Keystone businesses come later, once there are enough of them.
Owners of established, owner-run businesses doing roughly $500K to $3M a year, usually with a small team and customers who come back. Keystone is built for seven industries, and each one is split into the kinds of business owners actually run:
Each type gets its own questions, measures and monthly scorecard, in its own words. Don't see yours? Tell us. We add types as owners ask for them.
Without an account, the workspace keeps your data in your own browser. Our privacy policy sets out what we collect, and the cookies page lists what is stored in your browser. With an account, data is stored in a hosted database where each business can only see its own records, and accounting connection keys are never sent to a browser. Keystone does not have a security certification such as SOC 2 yet.
No. Keystone reads your numbers and helps you act on them. It does not keep your books, file taxes, or give legal, tax or investment advice.
A direct QuickBooks Online connection is built and is being switched on with design partners. Today you can export a profit and loss by month from QuickBooks or Xero and import it as a CSV; Keystone checks it against the report's own totals.
Only to put Keystone's own figures into plain English and to suggest fixes, and both are switching on with design partners. Any sentence that states a number Keystone did not calculate is removed before you see it. Suggested fixes wait for the owner's approval. All the calculations themselves are ordinary arithmetic, shown on the screen.
Something else? Ask the founder.
Free. No card. You keep the result either way.
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