The Scenario
You are an operations manager at a consulting firm. Eight new freelance contractors are starting engagements next week. You have all their details in an Excel workbook — first name, last name, email, hourly rate, and whether they are an individual or a business entity.
They need to exist in Gusto before their first timesheets are submitted.
The slow version:
- Open Gusto
- Click "Add contractor"
- Select individual vs. business
- Enter first name, last name, email, and hourly rate
- Save
- Click "Add contractor" again
- Repeat eight times
- Realize two of them are business entities and you selected "individual" for both — go back and fix the record type
- Forty-five minutes of data entry for eight people.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads the contractor workbook and creates all eight records in Gusto without you touching the Gusto UI once.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Bulk-create individual contractors in Gusto from this workbook: first name in A, last name in B, email in C, type (individual/business) in D, hourly rate in E. Write "Created" or the error into column F for each row.
SheetXAI iterates through all eight rows, creates the contractor records in Gusto with the correct type, and writes a status back into column F.
What You Get
Eight Gusto contractor records created, with a status column showing the result:
- "Created" — the contractor exists in Gusto and is ready for payment setup
- Error message — if a row had a problem, the specific reason so you can fix it and re-run that row
Type is handled correctly. Individual and business contractors are created with the right record type based on column D — no manual checking required.
Column F is your confirmation. When your account lead asks if the contractors are in the system, you look at the workbook.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Contractor onboarding data from account teams is often imperfect.
When hourly rates are formatted inconsistently
Some rows have "$85.00," some have "85," and one has "eighty-five dollars per hour."
Before creating the Gusto contractors, normalize all hourly rate values in column E to a plain number (e.g., 85.00). Then create a Gusto contractor record for each row using columns A through E, and write "Created" or the error into column F.
When some contractors are missing email addresses
Three rows have a placeholder email because the contractors have not responded yet.
For rows where column C (email) contains "@placeholder" or is blank, skip creation and write "SKIPPED — no valid email" into column F. For all other rows, create the Gusto contractor and write "Created" or error into column F.
When business contractors need a company name instead of first and last name
Column D flags which type each contractor is. Business contractors use a different name field.
For rows where column D is "business," create a Gusto business contractor using column A as the company name. For rows where column D is "individual," create a Gusto individual contractor using column A as first name and column B as last name. Use column C for email and column E for hourly rate for all rows. Write "Created" or error into column F.
When you also need to write back the Gusto contractor UUID for your project management system
Your project management tool needs the Gusto contractor UUID to link time entries to contractor records.
Create a Gusto contractor record for each row in this workbook using columns A through E. Write the Gusto contractor UUID back into column F and "Created" or error into column G. If creation fails for any row, leave column F blank.
The pattern: the cleanup and the creation happen in one pass, so you are not fixing formatting separately from creating records.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the workbook with your next batch of contractor onboarding data, then ask it to create the records in Gusto. The Gusto integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to bulk-create new employee hires in Gusto from a workbook or the Gusto in Excel overview.