8 features included in release plans
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance 2025 release wave 1
For previous release wave highlight videos:
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Business Value
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance unlocks harnessing additional data sources for super-targeted and insightful analysis results.
Feature Details
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance adds the following capability for variance analysis:
- Supplementary data sources allow you to add references to other contextual data that can be used to add more details to analysis.
Enabled for:
- This feature is available only in English for the February 2025 release. Additional languages will be added following public preview.
Business Value
| Change history | |
|---|---|
| Public preview date moved to Mar 2025 | Sep 05, 2024 |
Business Value
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance enables the next level of productivity in analyzing variances with in-process collaboration and easy sharing of results in presentation-ready form.
Feature Details
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance adds the following capability for variance analysis:
- Collaboration and sharing of variance reports in a form allowing you to share them with stakeholders (for example, using a Microsoft PowerPoint slide).
Enabled for:
- This feature is available only in English for the February 2025 release. Additional languages will be added following public preview.
Business Value
| Change history | |
|---|---|
| Public preview date moved to Mar 2025 | Jul 24, 2024 |
Business Value
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance enables you to automate data-gathering routines to simplify your ETL processes.
Feature Details
Copilot for Finance will add the following capabilities for obtaining financial data:
- Connectors to financial systems.
- Adding data from financial systems using natural language to support the data-gathering process in data reconciliation.
Enabled for:
- The public preview is available in English only.
- The author created this article with assistance from AI. Learn more
Business Value
Business Value
With Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance, your pre-reconciliation stage is set to transform, delivering unparalleled value.
Data preparation excellence: Empower your reconciliation process with agent-guided data sanitization capabilities. Seamlessly prepare your data for reconciliation with precision and efficiency, ensuring the integrity and accuracy of your source data. By leveraging the agent's assistance, you can eliminate data issues in the extract, transform, and load (ETL) process, allowing you to embark on reconciliation with confidence.
Matching criteria definition: Simplify your reconciliation efforts by defining precise matching criteria with Copilot. Automatically establish and refine rules that accurately identify matching transactions, ensuring seamless and error-free reconciliation.
Feature Details
Microsoft Copilot for Finance introduces enhanced capabilities for assistance for pre-reconciliation staff, offering the following features:
- Data preparation: Use the agent-assisted data sanitization process for efficient and error-free reconciliation preparation to help ensure source data integrity and accuracy.
- Data selection: Benefit from streamlined auto-generation of matching rules to accurately identify matching transactions for seamless and error-free reconciliation.
Enabled for:
- The author created this article with assistance from AI. Learn more
Business Value
| Change history | |
|---|---|
| Public preview date moved to Mar 2025 General availability date updated to Nov 2024 |
Oct 03, 2024 |
Business Value
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance lets you seamlessly analyze variances using the familiar interface of Microsoft Excel while defining precise criteria for identifying discrepancies, harnessing additional data sources for targeted analysis, and effortlessly generating comprehensive variance analysis reports enriched with supplementary comments for enhanced stakeholder communication.
You can dive into the heartbeat of your organization by dissecting forecast-to-actual trends on a regular basis. Stay ahead of the curve and keep all stakeholders informed about the dynamic state of your business with timely, insightful analyses, unlocking a multitude of benefits:
- Reduce risk: Leverage intelligent anomaly detection to mitigate risk and proactively address potential issues before they escalate, safeguarding the financial health of your organization.
- Accelerate decision-making: Experience a streamlined analysis cycle that empowers swift, informed decision-making. With Copilot's advanced capabilities, you'll accelerate your journey from data to actionable insights.
- Save time: Bid farewell to tedious manual commentary and reporting processes. Copilot automates these tasks, delivering accurate insights sourced from a plethora of data records, saving you valuable time to focus on strategic initiatives.
Feature Details
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance supports the following capabilities for variance analysis:
- Define criteria for identifying variances in the Excel spreadsheet that require further analysis. The criteria can be defined as natural language instruction directly in the Excel spreadsheet. Copilot will identify and highlight the variances in the worksheet using these criteria.
- Review Copilot-generated variance analysis results and adjust and complement them as needed.
- Report variance analysis outcomes in a ready-to-use form.
Enabled for:
- The author created this article with assistance from AI. Learn more
Business Value
| Change history | |
|---|---|
| Public preview date moved to Jun 2024 | Apr 18, 2024 |
Business Value
ERP systems typically require customization to meet unique business needs. These customizations can involve changes to the user interface, reporting, and business logic. However, this flexibility complicates integration with other systems, requiring product and specific implementation knowledge.
Simplifying the support of extensibility allows for a high degree of customization, enabling businesses to adapt the application to their unique needs and thereby enhancing their overall performance. This flexibility improves business outcomes and results in more thorough end-to-end scenario completion and improved workflows, which leads to streamlined business operations.
Feature Details
Through Microsoft Copilot Studio, this feature gives makers the ability to:
- Define the entities and fields that can be interacted with in Copilot for Finance. This will include out-of-the-box entities and custom entities retrieved from custom connectors.
- Define custom plugin interactions with each entity.
- Specify connected data sources to be used in data reconciliation.
Enabled for:
Business Value
Business Value
Collections software plays a vital role in modern business operations, streamlining the process of recovering outstanding debts. Some of the major advantages include:
- Streamlined workflows: Effective collections software brings all key data elements needed into a single pane of glass and empowers the user to execute the key end-to-end processes without bouncing between multiple applications.
- Enhanced communication: By providing a centralized platform for managing emails and phone calls, customers can ensure all interactions are tracked and accessible by authorized personnel, promoting increased transparency.
- Increased compliance: Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance will be built on compliant, secure platform technology that allows customers to better comply with industry regulations and legal requirements.
- Reporting and analytics: Copilot for Finance provides accounts receivable managers the means to better measure the effectiveness of their copilot initiatives by offering insights into team performance, collection trends, and customer behavior. This data-driven approach enables teams to identify areas for improvement, optimize strategies, and make better business decisions.
Collections teams can specifically benefit from the adoption of these tools in the following ways:
- Reduced Days Sales Outstanding (DSOs): By being prompt in responding to customer inquiries, collections teams can reduce days sales outstanding by avoiding delays when customers reach out for key documents.
- Reduced delinquency rates: By automating reminders and follow-up tasks, collections software can significantly reduce the time it takes to collect debts, leading to faster cash flow and improved financial performance.
- Enhanced resource productivity: By automating routine tasks and improving communication, collections software allows agents to handle more cases and resolve them faster, boosting overall team productivity.
- Improved customer service: Collections software fosters a more positive customer experience by facilitating personalized communication and ensuring timely resolution of inquiries.
Feature Details
Copilot for Finance is a game-changer for collections coordinators, offering a suite of capabilities that streamline and enhance the collections process. Copilot for Finance provides an immersive experience in Microsoft Teams that offers the following capabilities needed to decrease days of outstanding sales and improve cash flow.
- Worklist items: This feature will display the list of cases that the collections coordinator needs to work on, sorted by priority, urgency, and status. Each item will include details of the associated customer, the invoice, and the relevant correspondence details.
- Pre-call preparation: Enriched with generative AI, collections coordinators will be provided with call scripts to prepare for calls and to support the customers during the calls.
- Copilot dialing support: During customer calls, collections coordinators will be able to interact with Copilot for Finance to gain specific customer insight and take action on key scenarios that would typically require context switching to the ERP.
- Post-call support: This feature will provide the ability to store call summaries, transcripts, and calls in Microsoft Dataverse. It will also recommend the next best actions.
Enabled for:
- The public preview is available in English only.
Business Value
Business Value
Through Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance, corporate financial leaders can leverage generative AI to provide meaningful, timely summarizations of macroeconomic conditions from multiple, yet selective, market data and sources to optimize their investment and business decisions. Ever-changing conditions require consistent and constant monitoring of a variety of market-driving areas and themes that impact capital investments.
Producing impactful analyses involves analyzing and delivering clear insights from a volume and matrix of content (geos, themes, industries, government, market indices, and more). The necessary collaboration and effort are often challenging to deliver a result that is effective in content within the window of decision-making opportunity.
The effort required can result in limiting sources, less-than-optimal reactions to sudden macroeconomic events, an inability to monitor trends and themes, and keeping stakeholders informed in real time or near-real time.
Copilot for Finance can help customers broaden sources, deliver more fine-tuned insights, and stay informed in real time. Copilot for Finance would optimize the monitoring of macroeconomic signals. Through the collaborative nature of Teams, Copilot for Finance can create macroeconomic, topic-driven libraries easily contributed to and accessible by teams such as treasury and other senior financial leadership. A team's experience also provides a centralized space for stakeholder reports, general updates on macroeconomic conditions, and late-breaking news that impacts capital markets.
Feature Details
Copilot for Finance will support the following capabilities for macroeconomic analysis:
- Finance team collaboration on macroeconomic topics.
- Customizable macroeconomic topics library.
- AI monitoring and summarizing external macroeconomic signals.
- Preparing and sharing stakeholder reports on macroeconomic trends.