Arabella Asis Tech 03.01.2024 02:Mar AM EST

Microsoft Announces Copilot For Finance in Excel, Outlook to Boost Time Savings

Microsoft has introduced its new Copilot tool that can help people working in finance accomplish key tasks, especially in Excel, Outlook and other productivity apps.

The company is yet to announce its pricing details, but it has confirmed that it will be first offered in public preview.

(Photo : Microsoft)

Microsoft Copilot for Finance

In a blog post, Microsoft shared that the new Copilot Experience for Microsoft 365 aims to provide AI assistance for financial professionals. The public preview offers connections to the organization's financial systems like Dynamics 365 and SAP.

"By implementing next-generation AI to deliver insight and automate costly and time-intensive operational tasks, teams can reinvest that time to accelerate their impact as financial stewards and strategists," the company explained.

The new Copilot tool is designed to streamline audits by pulling and reconciling data using only a prompt. It can also automate communication and payment plans and accelerate financial reporting.

How Copilot for Finance Works

Like other chatbots, Copilot for Finance works through prompts. The AI model can suggest actions in the workflow and generate insights across the organization's financial systems.

The new finance tool can also spot reporting errors and missing unidentified variance. Regardless, the company still encourages users to check the source data for transparency before taking any actions.

Under the public preview, customers are introduced to various key features of the tool, such as variance analysis in Excel using natural language prompts, complete summarization of customer account details on Outlook, and turning raw data in Excel into a presentation that can be shared on Outlook and Teams.

"The potential time and cost savings are substantial, transforming not just how financial professionals work, but how they drive impact within the organization," Microsoft added.