The Scenario
You are a controller implementing a chart-of-accounts integration with Brex. To make expenses taggable by GL code, every cost-centre code needs to exist as a value under a Brex custom field called "Cost Centre."
Your chart of accounts has three hundred cost-centre codes in an Excel workbook: column A is the code, column B is the display name. The accounting integration goes live in five days.
The slow version:
- Open Brex admin, navigate to Custom Fields, open the Cost Centre field
- Click "Add Value" three hundred times
- Copy the code, paste it as the value; copy the display name, paste it as the label
- Lose count around value forty, re-check where you left off
- Finish at midnight on day two.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads the chart-of-accounts workbook and loads every cost-centre code into the Brex custom field in one go.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Create a Brex custom field value for every row in this workbook under the custom field called "Cost Centre." Use the value in column A as the field value and column B as the display name. Write "Created" or the error message into column C for each row.
SheetXAI iterates through all three hundred rows, calls Brex's custom field value API for each, and writes the result into column C. Three hundred codes loaded, one column of confirmation.
What You Get
Column C with a creation status for every code:
- "Created" — value loaded successfully
- Error message — already exists, invalid format, etc.
The codes come from column A, the display names from column B. No typos, no skipped rows.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
GL code workbooks from accounting are rarely upload-ready. SheetXAI handles the edge cases inline.
When some codes already exist from a prior partial load
You started loading codes last month and stopped halfway.
Before creating each value, check whether a custom field value with that code already exists under "Cost Centre" in Brex. If it exists, write "Already exists — skip" in column C. If not, create it and write "Created."
When codes use inconsistent formatting
Some codes have leading zeros, some do not. Brex will create separate values for "1001" and "01001."
Before creating custom field values, normalize the codes in column A: zero-pad all codes to five digits and remove leading spaces. Write the normalized code back into column A, then create the Brex custom field value using the normalized code and display name from column B. Write the result into column C.
When the custom field does not yet exist
The "Cost Centre" custom field has not been set up in Brex yet.
First, create a Brex custom field called "Cost Centre" of type dropdown if it does not already exist. Then create a custom field value for every row in this workbook using column A as the value and column B as the display name. Write the result into column C.
When multiple custom fields need to be populated from the same workbook
Column A has cost-centre codes, column D has project codes, column G has entity codes.
Create Brex custom field values for three fields from this workbook: entries in column A go under "Cost Centre," entries in column D go under "Project Code," entries in column G go under "Entity." Write creation results for each field into columns B, E, and H respectively.
The pattern: the chart of accounts is the source of truth. SheetXAI reads it once and builds the Brex taxonomy from it.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the chart-of-accounts workbook your accounting team maintains, then ask it to load all the cost-centre codes into the Brex custom field before your integration goes live. The Brex integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. See also how to bulk-create Brex project budgets from an Excel workbook or the Brex in Excel overview.