Microsoft Announces Copilot for Finance

Microsoft today announced Copilot for Finance, a superset of Copilot for Microsoft 365 for finance teams. It’s available now in public preview.

“Microsoft Copilot for Finance extends Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and revolutionizes how finance teams approach their daily work,” Microsoft corporate vice president Charles Lamanna writes. “Copilot for Finance joins Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service, now generally available, to provide AI-powered, role-based workflow automation, recommendations, and guided actions in the flow of work.”

Copilot for Finance includes Copilot for Microsoft 365 and adds context from financial data sources like Microsoft Dynamics 365 and SAP, along with the Microsoft Graph. It aims to streamline financial tasks, automate workflows, and provide insights while you’re in the flow of work so that finance can play a more strategic role in the business. Microsoft notes that it provides the following high-level benefits:

• Improved efficiency. Copilot for Finance surfaces insights in a simpler way to support decision-making and reduce the time spent on manual, repetitive work.

• Supports critical functions. The public preview release supports key scenarios like variance analysis, reconciliation, and more.
• Unified data and apps. Copilot for Finance works with applications like Excel and Outlook, so users aren’t forced to use complicated dashboards or new apps to find the data they need.

You can learn more on the Microsoft Copilot for Finance website. And you can access the preview by signing up on the Microsoft website. There’s no word on the cost, but it will obviously be more expensive than the $30 per user per month that Microsoft charges for Copilot for Microsoft 365.