Microsoft has announced the public preview of Copilot for Finance, an AI-powered assistant designed to help finance professionals work more efficiently. The new offering builds on Microsoft's Copilot technology and aims to save finance teams time on routine tasks so they can focus on higher-value strategic initiatives.
Copilot for Finance is the latest industry-specific Copilot solution from Microsoft, joining Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service tools that are already seeing strong adoption. Over 30,000 organizations currently use Copilot for Sales to help sellers close deals faster.
Drawing on financial data from sources like Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, and Microsoft Graph, Copilot for Finance can automatically generate invoices, flag accounting discrepancies, and create polished visualizations and presentations ready for sharing. Key features available in the public preview include:
- Automated variance analysis in Excel to quickly identify financial risks
- Reconciliation process improvements for reliable records
- Customer account summaries in Outlook to simplify collections
- Turning Excel data into presentation visuals and reports
Early adopters like advertising firm dentsu, financial services leader Northern Trust, and credit card titan Visa plan to use Copilot tools to empower employees with AI. Visa's CIO Don Hobson said Copilot will "transform the ways in which we work and how we service our clients."
The solutions aim to break down information silos while surfacing role-specific insights and recommendations aligned with Microsoft's responsible AI principles. Users can also further customize it within Microsoft's Copilot Studio.
With finance teams often bogged down in manual processes, Microsoft said its own world-class finance group helped inform Copilot for Finance based on needs to modernize operations. The tools promise to reduce risk and help finance better guide strategic decisions across organizations.
The launch comes as businesses increasingly move AI from isolated experiments to broad adoption focused on empowering customer-facing and operational roles. Microsoft said interest spans companies both large and small.