Google Sheets is an industry-agnostic powerhouse. Like Google Docs, it’s built for collaboration — and you can use it for anything that can be organized in rows and columns. Manage your freelance roster. Track your quarterly budget. Monitor inventory levels in warehouses. Whatever tracking is needed, Sheets can probably handle it.

As versatile as the tool is, your spreadsheet can quickly become messy, especially when you’re manually copying and pasting information from different tools. This is where AI and automation can help you.

With ZIP – what we call automated workflows – you can become an expert Sheets user. Here, I show you how.

Go ahead

Get notifications for changes to Google Sheets

One of the best features of Google Sheets is the ability to collaborate on spreadsheets. If you’re guilty of breaking formulas like I am, it’s easy to get a colleague to jump into the same sheet to help out.

When you have multiple people collaborating on a spreadsheet, it’s inevitable that someone will be quicker to update than others. And that a straggler can prevent you from getting your work done.

If you find yourself waiting on others more than you’d like, or checking that spreadsheet all day, try a zip that will update you when there’s a new or updated row in Google Sheets. You can choose where you want to receive your alert — perhaps the chat app you use at work, email, or SMS.

Collect leads

Social media is a hot spot for businesses to get leads. Facebook and LinkedIn have platforms for just that purpose – Facebook Lead Ads and LinkedIn Ads. Lead data is aggregated into campaign reports so you can track performance, and there’s an option to download your data. However, the problem is that you don’t really own the data until you export it to a CSV file.

You can work around this by using an automated workflow to connect Facebook Lead Ads or LinkedIn Ads to Google Sheets. The spreadsheet will add new rows with your prospect information as it comes in, so you always have a backup and those valuable details aren’t lost in election reports.

Alternatively, if you collect leads in another system that doesn’t connect to Zapier (like your website or custom app), you can use Web hooks. Webhooks let your apps talk to each other. Forwards detailed information back and forth whenever new items are found in the first app.

For example, this ZAP will capture the payload within your app, which will be captured by Zapier’s webhooks. Zapier again Automatically inserts this data into a new spreadsheet row for you

Manage projects and tasks

A spreadsheet can be a quick and dirty way to organize information, but it’s not always the best place to manage a project.

For example, you might be putting together a project plan in a Google Sheet because it’s easier for you to visualize the plan. However, the team you’re working with uses Asana to manage projects.

To avoid duplicate work, you can use a ZAP to automatically create ASANA tasks, or other items, in your favorite project management app whenever there is a new row in a Google Sheet.

You can also push updates to the task management app for a new queue if you forget to take a certain action yourself. For example, if your marketing team uses Google Sheets to manage your editorial calendar, you can use a ZAP to connect it to Google Tasks or any task management app so you never miss an assignment.

Use AI in Google Sheets

Adding AI steps to your ZIPs is an easy way to build more intelligent processes. Say you use the sheets to track every prospect who books an appointment with you on the calendar. Squeeze AI through the Zapier step here, and you’ll be able to extract key details about your intake question answers before adding them to your sheet.

Or maybe you want to send weekly Slack notifications for batches of newly added queues using Digest by Zapier. With the AI ​​phase, you can analyze trends in this data – before it reaches your team down the channel to sample customer requests or flag unusual activity.

Zapier also integrates with hundreds of AI apps — such as AirParser, a data extraction tool. Whenever there’s a new file in your Google Drive, AirParser can swipe any unstructured data you need, then add them to a new row in the sheets.

In general, you can use field mapping to transfer structured data between ZAP steps. But Unstructured Data, such as information buried in PDFs, are not neat, predefined fields, which is where AI document extractors come in handy.

Store emails

Your email inbox is a mess. There, I said it. I’m not here to judge – I too have thousands of messages sitting in my inbox because “I might need this one day.”

you can do Use folders, emails, and filters to organize your inbox, but it usually requires a little effort to set up and maintain. Even with a system like this, you can’t easily scan your messages to find what you’re looking for — and when it comes to email, I prefer zero effort. Fortunately, you can create a scannable backup using a workflow that will automatically store your emails in a Google Sheet.

You can choose to configure your ZAP to store email information according to certain attributes, specific search strings, or labels. Now you have a copy of the messages you want to hang on to, and you’re free to clean out your inbox.

Manage sales and events in real time

Whether you run an e-commerce store and want to track sales or you’re hosting an event and need to gather attendees, there will always be other types of data that you need to organize, analyze and act on quickly.

A great way to do this is to store this business-critical information in Google Sheets. With these zips, you can automatically send order information (like new Shopify orders) and event attendees (like new Eventbrite registrants) directly to Google Sheets. This way, you and your team can stay on top of your business in real time.

Take your spreadsheets to the next level

This is just the beginning of all you can do with Google Sheets and Zapier. Zapier supports thousands of apps, so you can automate almost any task at work. Start creating your own zip now and see what you can create.

This article was originally published in July 2020 and was most recently updated by Steph Spector in November 2025.