The Scenario
You are an HR director. Annual salary reviews wrapped up last week. You have an Excel workbook with 35 employee job UUIDs in column A, their new annual salaries in column B, and the payment unit in column C.
The compensation changes need to be in Gusto before the next payroll run on Friday. Your options are: click through 35 employee profiles in Gusto one at a time, or find a better way.
The slow version:
- Open Gusto
- Find each employee by searching their UUID or name
- Navigate to their compensation record
- Enter the new rate and payment unit
- Save
- Go back, find the next employee
- Repeat thirty-five times
- Catch a data entry error on employee 22 only when the pay stub comes out wrong
- Tuesday afternoon gone.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads the compensation workbook and updates all 35 Gusto records without you opening the Gusto UI once.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
For each row in this workbook, update the Gusto job in column A with a new compensation: rate from column B, payment unit from column C, FLSA status from column D. Write "Updated" or the error into column E for each row.
SheetXAI iterates through all 35 rows, calls Gusto's compensation API for each, and writes a status back into column E.
What You Get
Thirty-five Gusto compensation records updated, with a status column in the workbook:
- "Updated" — the new compensation is live in Gusto, effective for the next payroll run
- Error message — if a row had a problem, the specific reason so you can fix and re-run that row
You did not open a single employee profile in Gusto. One prompt, 35 records updated.
The status column is your audit trail. When payroll asks if the raises are entered, you look at column E.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Post-salary-review workbooks are often slightly messy.
When payment units are formatted inconsistently
Some rows have "Annual," some have "annual," some have "Yearly," and one has "per year."
Before updating Gusto compensation, normalize all payment unit values in column C — treat "Annual," "annual," "Yearly," and "per year" as "Year." Then create new compensation records for each job UUID in column A using rate in column B and normalized unit. Write "Updated" or error to column D.
When FLSA status is missing from some rows
Some rows have the FLSA status blank and Gusto requires it.
For rows where column D (FLSA status) is blank, infer the status — "Exempt" for salaried (column C = "Year"), "Nonexempt" for hourly (column C = "Hour"). Then create a new compensation for each job UUID using rate, payment unit, and inferred or existing FLSA status. Write "Updated" or error to column E.
When some employees received no raise and should be skipped
A few employees in the workbook have the same rate as their current Gusto compensation.
For each job UUID in column A, check if the rate in column B differs from the current Gusto compensation. Only create a new record where the rate is changing. Write "Updated," "NO CHANGE — skipped," or the error to column D.
When you need to update compensation and then verify the new rate landed correctly
After pushing the updates, pull the current compensation back from Gusto to confirm everything matches.
Create a new compensation for each job UUID in column A using rate in column B and payment unit in column C. Write "Updated" or error to column D. Then fetch the current compensation from Gusto for each job UUID and write the confirmed rate and unit to columns E and F. Flag any row where confirmed rate in column E does not match column B.
The pattern: the update and the verification run in one session. You do not push changes and then manually check each record.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the workbook with your salary review data, then ask it to push the compensation updates to Gusto. The Gusto integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to export the employee roster for compensation review or the Gusto in Excel overview.