The Scenario
You are an accountant preparing a small business year-end for a client. The year-end is in three weeks and you need the FreeAgent balance sheet exported to Excel so you can work through it alongside the prior year's figures already in column D.
Your client has given you FreeAgent access. You need account names and balances for the period-end date in cell A1, written into columns A and B so the VLOOKUP formulas in column C that reference prior year data can resolve correctly.
The slow version:
- Log into FreeAgent, navigate to Reports, select Balance Sheet, set the period-end date
- Read down the balance sheet on screen, typing each account name and balance into the Excel workbook manually
- Realize FreeAgent uses slightly different account names than last year's workbook
- Fix the names so the VLOOKUPs resolve
- Ninety minutes later, you have a workbook that mostly works.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that can pull the FreeAgent balance sheet and write it directly into the structure your workbook expects.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Fetch the FreeAgent balance sheet for the date in cell A1 and write each account name and its balance into columns A and B, starting at row 2.
SheetXAI calls FreeAgent's balance sheet endpoint for the date in A1, writes account names and balances row by row, and your VLOOKUPs in column C resolve against the prior year data in column D.
What You Get
A balance sheet comparison workbook with:
- Column A — account name as returned by FreeAgent
- Column B — balance for the period-end date in cell A1
- Column C — prior year balance via VLOOKUP (already in your workbook)
- Column D — prior year figures already present
The VLOOKUP column resolves as soon as the data is written. No manual typing, no account name reconciliation on the first pass.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Balance sheet exports have real complications in practice.
When FreeAgent account names do not match your prior year workbook
Last year's workbook uses "Trade Debtors" and FreeAgent returns "Accounts Receivable."
Fetch the FreeAgent balance sheet for the date in cell A1 and write account names and balances into columns A and B. For each account, check if the name in column A exactly matches any value in column D. If it does not match, write 'NAME MISMATCH — check against prior year workbook' in column C.
When you want the trial balance instead
Pull the FreeAgent trial balance summary and write all account categories, their debit balances, and credit balances into columns A, B, and C. At the bottom, write a totals row for debit and credit columns and flag in column D if the totals do not match.
When you need balance sheet figures for two dates side by side
Fetch the FreeAgent balance sheet for the date in cell A1 and write account names and balances to columns A and B. Then fetch the FreeAgent balance sheet for the date in cell A2 and write the balances to column C, matching by account name. In column D, calculate the movement (C minus B) for each account.
When you want the full period-end package: pull, compare, calculate movement, and flag large variances
Fetch the FreeAgent balance sheet for the date in cell A1 and write account names and balances to columns A and B. Pull the prior year balance sheet for the date in cell A2 and write to column C. Calculate the movement in column D. In column E, write a one-sentence note for any account where the absolute movement in column D is over 5000, describing whether the account increased or decreased and by what percentage.
The pattern: instead of transcribing the balance sheet by hand and doing the comparison separately, you describe the final state of the working paper in one prompt.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your year-end working paper, put the balance sheet date in cell A1, and ask it to pull the FreeAgent balance sheet into columns A and B. The FreeAgent integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. See also how to pull a FreeAgent P&L summary into a reporting workbook or the FreeAgent in Excel overview.