Most Jamaican finance teams I work with are not short on ideas. They are short on hours. A senior accountant spends Tuesday cleaning a messy export from a point-of-sale system. The CFO of a mid-sized manufacturer in Spanish Town spends Thursday rebuilding a budget because a line item moved. The founder of a Montego Bay tour operator spends Sunday wrestling a spreadsheet into something her bank will accept.

Quietly, in the background, the tool that swallows most of those hours — Google Sheets — just changed.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has released a Google Sheets add-on that places ChatGPT directly inside the spreadsheet. There is no copying and pasting between tabs and chatbot, no exporting to a separate AI tool. You open your sheet, click Extensions, and a sidebar appears on the right. From that sidebar you can ask ChatGPT to build, update, or explain anything in the file in plain English.

What it is: a spreadsheet-native ChatGPT sidebar that builds sheets, updates them with plain-English prompts, explains formulas, and cleans messy data. (Image: PGH Consulting)

For Jamaican business owners and finance professionals, this is not just another software update. It is the moment AI quietly walked into the spreadsheet you already use every day.

What it actually does
The add-on, currently in beta for Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education users, does four things particularly well.

It builds spreadsheets from scratch. Type “build a 12-month operating budget for a small hotel with rooms, F&B, and payroll, and add a chart” and it produces a formatted sheet, formulas included.

It updates existing sheets in plain English. Instead of writing a formula, you can write the request: “add a column that flags any month where expenses are more than 80% of revenue.”

How to enable it: install ChatGPT from the Google Workspace Marketplace in four steps. If your organization uses admin controls, your administrator will need to approve it first. (Image: PGH Consulting)

It explains formulas and tabs. Inheriting someone else’s spreadsheet is no longer a guessing game. Highlight the cell, ask “what is this doing,” and you get an answer in English.

And it cleans messy data. Anyone who has tried to consolidate a year of receipts knows that the real work is not analysis — it is standardising headers, removing duplicates, and fixing dates. The AI does that on request.

Why this matters more in Jamaica than in New York
The bigger US firms reading the same news this week have whole analytics teams. Most Jamaican companies do not. We have one accountant doing the work of three, one founder doing the work of five, and a finance function that often runs on a single laptop and a strong cup of coffee.

Tools that make a single person more capable have an outsized impact in our market. A treasury officer who can model three FX scenarios in fifteen minutes instead of two days is, in real terms, a different employee. A small distributor who can clean a year of cash sales without hiring a junior is freeing money to invest elsewhere.

Step 4: launch the add-on from the Extensions menu. The ChatGPT sidebar opens on the right of your sheet, ready to take prompts. (Image: PGH Consulting)

How to turn it on
If your organisation already has a paid ChatGPT plan that supports the integration, the setup takes about three minutes. Open Google Sheets, go to Extensions, then Add-ons, then Google Workspace Marketplace. Search for ChatGPT, install it, and sign in with the same account that holds your ChatGPT plan. From any sheet you can then go to Extensions, then ChatGPT, then Open. The sidebar opens on the right and you are ready to go.

One important note for businesses with IT controls: if your Google Workspace uses admin approvals, your administrator will need to permit the add-on first. This is a one-time approval, not an ongoing licence.

What it will not do for you
ChatGPT in Google Sheets is fast and confident. It is also occasionally and confidently wrong. It can apply the wrong formula, miscount a row, or interpret a column header in a way you did not intend. For routine cleanup and first drafts, this is rarely a problem. For anything that ends up in a board pack, a tax filing, or a bank submission, the rule is simple: review every formula and every total before you share it.

Treat the AI like a sharp, fast junior analyst. Useful, but not yet trusted to sign off.

Four prompts to try first: build a 12-month budget; explain a cell error and fix it; clean up a messy sheet; create a scenario tab with base, upside, and downside cases. (Image: PGH Consulting)

What to try this week
1. Build a formatted 12-month budget with categories, totals, and a chart.
2. Ask ChatGPT to explain why a cell is returning an error and propose a fix.
3. Clean up a messy sheet — standardise headers, remove duplicates, keep formatting.
4. Create a scenario tab with base, upside, and downside cases.
Always review formulas and calculations before sharing.

The next column in this series will look at how Jamaican businesses can use AI to forecast cash flow when the JMD/USD rate refuses to sit still.

Peta-Gaye Hardy is the founder of PGH Consulting, LLC, where she helps finance and operations teams adopt AI in practical, low-risk ways. She writes about AI in Finance & Business and is based between Jamaica and the United States.

Disclosures: This article is informational and does not constitute investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. The author has no commercial relationship with OpenAI or Google and was not compensated by them. Accompanying images were generated using AI image tools and edited by the author.