How to Actually Keep Track of Your Keycap Orders Without Losing Your Mind
I used to track custom keycap orders in a spreadsheet that became completely unmanageable after about six months. I had columns for set names, artisan details, order dates, estimated ship dates, actual ship dates, costs, and a random notes section that I never kept clean. Eventually I stopped updating it because the friction was too high. That changed when I found the Custom Keycaps Tracker approach, which is basically just a better system for logging and monitoring your keyboard hobby spending. Here is how it actually works in practice. You create a single database — could be a Google Sheet, could be Notion, could be a dedicated app — that captures every keycap set you own or have on order. The essential fields are straightforward: product name, seller or manufacturer, order date, expected delivery, confirmed delivery, price paid in USD, and current status (ordered, in production, shipped, received, sold). That last field is the one people skip and immediately regret. You will lose track of which sets you already own versus which ones are still pending without it. The trick most people miss is tracking artisan pieces separately from full sets. Artisans are individual keycaps — spacebars, ESC caps, single accent keys — and they show up on your tracker differently than a full PBT set from KeyboardCo. I learned this the hard way when I couldn't find a specific artisan I had ordered because I logged it under the same entry as the matching keycap set. I ended up buying the same artisan twice within a month. Now I use a separate section in my tracker specifically for individual pieces, with fields for the host key it's meant for and whether it has matched companions in my collection.
Setting Up a Custom Keycaps Tracker That Actually Stays Updated
If you are going to build this from scratch, start simple. A Google Sheet with clear column headers is enough for most people. Column A for the set or artisan name. Column B for the seller. Column C for the order date using a formula that calculates days until expected delivery. Column D for the price. Column E for status with a dropdown so you cannot accidentally type "pending" one time and "awaiting" another and then spend twenty minutes trying to sort by status later. I use conditional formatting to highlight rows where the expected delivery date has passed but the status is still not marked as received. This catches the orders I forgot about, and it usually surfaces two or three stale entries per month that I had mentally checked off but never actually did. The formula takes about thirty seconds to set up and has saved me from leaving tips on packages I didn't realize were still in transit. For the actual implementation, you can find existing templates if you search for Custom Keycaps Tracker on GitHub or r/MechanicalKeyboards. Several people have built Notion databases with pre-formatted views grouped by status, seller, and total spending. The Notion version handles the dropdown menus and color coding automatically. The Google Sheet version gives you more control over formulas and is easier to export if you ever want to leave the platform. Pick whichever one you will actually open and update within five minutes of a package arriving.
There is a specific edge case that trips people up consistently: tracking sets that come in multiple waves. Some manufacturers split shipments because certain colors are produced in different batches. I ordered a set from a small European maker where the main row shipped in one container and the modifier row shipped three weeks later in a different one. My tracker had marked the whole order as received when the first box arrived, so I thought I had the complete set for almost a month before I realized the second box was still coming. Now I add a sub-status field that lets me mark partial receipt instead of a binary received-or-not. Another thing worth noting is that spreadsheets do not solve the problem of finding which keycap set goes with which keyboard. If you own multiple boards, the tracker should include a field for the primary board each set is paired with. I stopped doing this for a while and then spent an afternoon going through three plastic bags of keycap sets trying to remember which one matched my old board. It took forty minutes to sort out something the tracker could have told me in ten seconds. The main limitation of any tracker like this is that it requires consistent data entry. If you buy a set at a local meetup or on eBay and do not log it the same day, it disappears from your awareness and comes back to haunt you later when you are scrolling through forums and see someone selling the exact same set for half the price. I keep a running list of recent purchases on my phone notes and transfer them into the main tracker once a week. This cuts the missed-entry rate down to roughly one or two per month instead of four or five.
Get the Full Details
Some people recommend using dedicated apps designed for this purpose. There are a few keyboard collection managers on iOS and Android, but they tend to be expensive, update infrequently, and force you into their data structure. A well-maintained spreadsheet or Notion database is free, fully customizable, and does not require you to import or export anything when the app dies. That happened to me twice in the past three years with two different apps. The only data I had left was whatever I had exported before they shut down. If you want to get more advanced, you can add fields for resale value tracking. Log the original price and the current estimated resale value, and the sheet will tell you which sets you have held onto too long. This sounds like advice from a financial advisor but it is just basic subtraction. Most keycap sets depreciate within the first year unless they are limited runs from recognized makers. Knowing this before you sell prevents the common mistake of holding a set for eighteen months waiting for value to increase when the market had already moved past it. The whole system works because it makes the information visible when you need it. When you are deciding whether to buy a new set, you can open the tracker and see exactly how much you have already spent this quarter. When you are organizing your desk drawers, the status column tells you which sets are actually in your possession versus which ones are still floating somewhere in international shipping. When someone asks what you own so they can trade with you, you have an organized list instead of a mental inventory that is wrong about half the entries.
I do not recommend this system if you only buy one or two sets a year. The overhead of maintaining it will outweigh the benefit and you will abandon it within a few months. But if you are the type of person who places three or more orders per month across different sellers and makers, the tracker pays for itself in the time it saves you from re-finding information you should already have.
