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 a Google Sheet — 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, hourly rate
- Click save
- Click "Add contractor" again
- Repeat eight times
- Miss the fact that two of them are business entities, not individuals, and have to go back and fix the record type
- You spent forty-five minutes on data entry for eight people.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI reads the contractor sheet and creates all eight records in Gusto without you touching the Gusto UI once.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Create Gusto contractor records for each row in this sheet: column A is first name, column B is last name, column C is email, column D is hourly rate, column E is type (individual or business). Create all 8. 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 for each:
- "Created" — the contractor exists in Gusto and is ready for payment setup
- Error message — if a row had a problem, you see the specific error so you can fix it and re-run
Type is handled correctly. Individual contractors and business contractors are created with the right record type in Gusto based on column E — you do not have to check each one manually.
Column F is your confirmation. When the client asks if the contractors are in the system, you look at the sheet.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Contractor onboarding data from recruiting or account teams is often rough around the edges.
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 D 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 the Gusto contractor creation and write "SKIPPED — no valid email" into column F. For all other rows, create the Gusto contractor and write "Created" or the error into column F.
When you need to create business contractors with a different name field
Business contractors use a company name, not a first and last name. Column E flags which type they are.
For rows in this sheet where column E is "business," create a Gusto business contractor using the value in column A as the company name. For rows where column E 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 D 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 sheet using columns A through E. Write the Gusto contractor UUID back into column F and "Created" or the error into column G. If creation fails for any row, leave column F blank.
The pattern: the cleanup and the creation run in one pass, so you are not fixing formatting in one step and creating records in another.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the sheet 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 sheet or the Gusto in Google Sheets overview.