The Scenario
You took over the Timely account setup for a client onboarding project three days before the kickoff call. The previous account manager left a Google Sheet with 35 client names — column A, neatly listed, color codes in column B. The project managers on the call are expecting to be able to log time against these clients the moment the meeting ends.
The bad version:
- Open Timely, click "New client," type the first name, pick the matching color from the dropdown, hit save
- Switch back to the sheet to read the next name, switch back to Timely, repeat 34 more times
- Realize on row 22 that you have no way to verify you haven't skipped one, so you start counting backwards through your browser history
The kickoff call is in 40 minutes. You have 35 clients to create and you have not started the prep deck yet. Spending that time clicking through a form once per row is not a trade you can afford to make.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads what's in your sheet and through its built-in Timely integration it can create all 35 clients in one pass — without you touching the Timely UI at all.
Create a Timely client for every name in column A of my Clients tab — all 35 at once, using the color code in column B for each one
What You Get
- Timely receives a create-client call for each row in the sheet
- Column C fills with the result for each row: the new client ID if successful, or an error message if something failed (duplicate name, invalid color code)
- The 35 clients are live in Timely and immediately available for project assignment
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Color codes are missing for some rows
Create a Timely client for every row in column A of my Clients tab — use the color in column B if it exists, and default to blue if column B is empty
Some client names have trailing spaces or inconsistent capitalization
Clean up the names in column A — trim whitespace and apply title case — then create a Timely client for each one using the cleaned name and the color in column B
The sheet has a header row and some blank rows mixed in
Create a Timely client for each non-empty row in column A of my Clients tab, starting from row 2, using the color in column B — skip any row where column A is blank
Full cleanup and create in one pass
In my Clients tab: trim whitespace from column A, skip any row where column A is blank or says "Name," then create a Timely client for each remaining row using the name in column A and the color in column B — write the new client ID into column C and flag any failures in column D
The pattern: ask for the cleanup and the creation together, so you don't have to manually fix the sheet and then run a second step.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open the sheet with your client list, then ask it to bulk-create clients in Timely. If you're setting up multiple accounts, see also the spoke on bulk-creating teams and the hub overview for all Timely workflows.