Trustee.eu vs Excel — Why Spreadsheets Break at 10+ Clients

Excel works fine for one or two clients. But as your DPO practice grows, spreadsheets become a liability: missed deadlines, version conflicts, no audit trail, and hours wasted on formatting. Trustee.eu is built for how external DPOs actually work.

External DPOs managing 10+ clients in Excel spend an average of 8 hours per week on administrative tasks — that is over 400 hours and EUR 30,000 in lost revenue per year. One missed DSAR deadline or an outdated RoPA during an audit can cost your client thousands in fines.

Feature Excel / Google Sheets Trustee.eu
Multi-tenant management Manual (separate files per client) Native (switch clients in 1 click)
Automated deadlines Manual calendar entries Auto-reminders at 7/3/1 days
RoPA generator Copy-paste templates Structured with Art. 30 fields
DSAR tracking Row in a spreadsheet Full workflow + audit trail
Compliance score None Per-client traffic light dashboard
PDF export Manual formatting required One-click audit-ready reports
NIS2 module Not available Readiness checklists + liability reports
Audit trail None (who changed what?) Full activity log per client

Excel is a general-purpose tool — not a compliance system. At EUR 79/month, Trustee.eu pays for itself after saving just one hour of admin work per week. Most DPOs save eight.

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