The Scenario
You are an operations coordinator at a consulting firm. Eight new client engagements are kicking off Monday. Every one of them needs a Harvest client record, a Harvest project, and a billing setup before the team can log a single hour.
The details are all in an Excel workbook — the Q1 Kickoffs tab. Client name in column A, project name in column B, billing type in column C, budget hours in column D. Eight rows, clean data, ready to go.
Creating them one by one in Harvest takes about four minutes per client if you know what you are doing. You have eight clients. That is thirty minutes minimum, and you have not done the tasks yet.
The bad version of Friday afternoon:
- Log into Harvest, click Clients, click New Client, fill in the name, save
- Click Projects, New Project, fill in the project name, assign the client, set billing type and budget
- Repeat seven more times
- Realize you set the wrong billing type for client three and have to go back
- It is 5:30 and the tasks are not done.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that reads your onboarding table and sets up every Harvest client and project in one pass.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Create Harvest projects for every row in my Q1 Kickoffs tab — columns are ClientID, ProjectName, BillBy, BudgetBy, HourlyRate — and write the new project IDs back into column F.
SheetXAI reads all eight rows, creates each Harvest client and project with the right billing configuration, and writes the IDs back into column F. When Monday's kickoff happens, every team member can log time immediately.
What You Get
Eight rows of confirmation data written back into the workbook:
- Column F — Harvest project ID for each new project
- Billing type and budget — set exactly as specified in columns C and D
- Client-project link — each project correctly assigned in Harvest
The IDs in column F become the bridge between your operations workbook and Harvest going forward. When you need to log expenses, create invoices, or pull time reports for these projects, you already have the IDs in the workbook.
Need tasks added to each project? Tell SheetXAI to create the standard task set for each project ID in column F and it will.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Onboarding sheets are rarely perfectly consistent. SheetXAI handles the variations in the same prompt.
When billing type names do not match Harvest's expected values
Your workbook says "Fixed Fee" but Harvest expects "project" as the billing type string.
For each row, map the billing type in column C to Harvest's API values: "Fixed Fee" maps to "project," "Hourly" maps to "time," "Non-billable" maps to "none." Then create each client and project with the mapped billing type and write the IDs back into columns E and F.
When some rows have budget hours missing
A few engagements are still being scoped and column D is blank. You want to create the clients and projects now but skip the budget until it is confirmed.
Create Harvest clients and projects for all rows. If column D is blank, create the project without a budget. Write the returned IDs into columns E and F, and write "NO BUDGET SET" in column G for any row where the budget was skipped.
When you also need to assign team members to each project
The workbook has a Team column with comma-separated names and you want each project in Harvest to have the right team members assigned immediately.
For each row, create the Harvest client and project as normal. Then look up each name in the Team column in the Harvest user list and add them as project team members. Write the project ID in column F and the number of assigned members in column G.
When the onboarding workbook also has task types per project
Column E lists the task types for each project and each project needs those tasks created in Harvest.
For each row, create the Harvest client and project. Then create one Harvest task for each item in column E for that project's ID. Write the client ID in column F, project ID in column G, and task IDs as a comma-separated list in column H.
The pattern: the workbook is the source of truth. SheetXAI reads it, creates everything in Harvest in one pass, and writes the IDs back so you have a complete record without opening Harvest's UI once.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your client onboarding workbook, then ask it to create every Harvest client and project in one prompt. The Harvest integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. See also how to log expenses in bulk from an Excel sheet or the Harvest in Excel overview.