Plan and prepare for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance in 2025 release wave 1
Important
The 2025 release wave 1 plan covers all new functionalities planned to be delivered to market from April 2025 to September 2025. In this article, you'll find the product overview and what's new and planned for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance.
Overview
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance is a role-based Copilot agent that accelerates time-to-impact for finance professionals by surfacing insights that support strategic decision-making and reducing the time spent on manual, repetitive work. Copilot empowers finance professionals to stay in the flow of work by seamlessly connecting productivity tools, such as Microsoft Excel, with existing financial systems, such as ERP, to support critical business processes and generate insights and actions in real time.
In 2025 release wave 1, we are focusing on the following capabilities:
- In Excel, variance analysis is available in pivot tables with time-series data and offers capabilities both to identify variances using criteria the user can input using natural language, and detailed analysis of underlying data explaining key drivers for these variances. Users can fine-tune variance analysis results using multiturn prompts, add additional insights, collaborate, and share analysis results with stakeholders using custom report formats.
- Users will be able to access the data from external data sources while analyzing financial data in Excel and use natural language to query it.
- Makers will be able to extend Copilot for Finance through Microsoft Copilot Studio.
- Copilot for Finance will offer experiences in Microsoft Teams, supporting collections calls using Teams telephony capabilities, with suggested conversation scripts based on company-defined procedures and customer financial information. Action items and follow-ups can be automatically recorded in the financial system.
- Finance professionals will be able to 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.
Learn more about Copilot for Finance:
Investment areas
Microsoft Excel experiences
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance helps finance professionals work with financial data in Microsoft Excel without jeopardizing financial data integrity in ERP systems. Finance professionals will be able to reconcile their financial data with next-generation AI support from Copilot for Finance to compare financial data structures, create reconciliation reports, and troubleshoot and correct discrepancies.
Microsoft Outlook experiences
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance experiences in Microsoft Outlook empower accounts receivable employees to communicate effectively with their customers. Finance professionals will be able to connect to their ERP system directly from Outlook while communicating with their customers, get valuable insights into customer data that’s in ERP, get help when crafting email responses, and save communication summaries and action items back into their ERP system.
Microsoft Teams experiences
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance experiences in Microsoft Teams enables finance professionals to collaborate and communicate on financial data using Teams. Finance professionals will be able to access and interact with customer data in the ERP system directly from the Teams call conversation. They will get help when organizing and planning collection activities and will be able to save communication summaries and action items back into their ERP system. Finance professionals will also be able to collaborate on macro-economic topics using Teams. Copilot for Finance will provide the user with summaries of external macroeconomic signals as well as automated monitoring, including preparing and sharing stakeholder reports on macroeconomy trends.
To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave, check out the release plan for Microsoft 365 Copilot for Finance below: