About DSPdesk

I’m Ross Baeker, founder of DSPdesk.

I’ve spent years leading operations and compliance for a small, growing distillery in Kentucky. Those two roles are inseparable, but they feel very different in practice.

I feel that contrast most sharply when I leave the warehouse and sit down to record the work. The operation itself may have been clear: spirit moved, proof changed, bottles filled, cases stacked. But turning that activity into a clean software record is often more fragile than the work itself, especially when the tools add friction instead of clarity.

Operations are tangible. Bulk spirits and finished goods are handled directly. Gauges, tanks, totes, bottles, cases, labels, closures, pallets, and shipments all provide feedback as the work happens. You can see what changed. You can measure it, move it, even taste it.

Distillate that did not exist now does. Bulk spirit that was not yet at bottle proof now is. Separate materials - glass, labels, corks, sleeves, cases, and spirit - become a finished product. There is a physical reality to the work that makes progress feel concrete.

Compliance is different. That direct, near instantaneous feedback suddenly goes missing. The work has already happened, but the records still have to prove it happened correctly. Every movement has to land in the right account, at the right proof, in the right period, with the right class, origin, and reporting treatment. A physical operation that made perfect sense in the moment can become surprisingly difficult to explain once it is scattered across spreadsheets, handwritten notes, accounting records, and monthly filing deadlines. A mistake in the plant often reveals itself quickly. A mistake in the records may not show up until month-end, during reconciliation, or worse, after a report has already been filed.

DSPdesk grew out of the distance between what happens in the plant and what the records have to prove later.

I wanted software that treated distillery records as more than data entry. In a DSP, each operation is part of a chain: spirits are received, moved, gauged, produced, processed, proofed, bottled, warehoused, removed, corrected, and eventually reported. If the software does not understand that chain, the burden falls back on the operator to hold everything together manually.

That is the work DSPdesk is meant to reduce.

The goal is not to replace judgment or hide the complexity of distilled spirits compliance. The goal is to make the underlying activity clearer: capture the measured facts once, preserve the history, show how the math was derived, and make reporting easier to review before it becomes a filing problem.

DSPdesk is being built for distilleries that want their operational records, inventory movements, and compliance reporting to live closer together. It is especially focused on small and growing DSPs where the same people often wear several hats and where month-end reporting can depend too heavily on memory, manual reconciliation, and fragile systems.

I built DSPdesk because I know that feeling firsthand, and because I believe distillery software can do a better job of respecting both sides of the work: the physical reality of the plant and the compliance record that has to stand behind it.