Microsoft put finance skills into Copilot in Excel in June. On 29 October it expanded them into something closer to a junior accountant. In the words of Brian Jones, who leads the Excel product group, the company is “expanding with more than 25 new finance skills and partner-built plugins across Microsoft Copilot, purpose-built for accounting, capital markets, and broader finance work.”

Three of the new accounting capabilities will interest anyone who has ever closed a month. Reconciliation: “Compare balances and transactions, identify discrepancies, and prepare reconciling items for review.” Journal entries: “Draft accruals, reclassifications, allocations, reversals, and recurring entries, with checks for required inputs and balanced entries.”

Reporting: “Analyze financial performance against plan, identify key drivers, and prepare reporting that explains what changed and why.” Microsoft’s support page lists eight skills in an Accounting folder, among them reconciliation, close-management, variance-analysis and financial-statements, with a separate journal-entry skill, each invoked by typing @ and the skill name into the Copilot pane.

Alongside them come partner plugins for Copilot’s Cowork agent, including Intuit QuickBooks, Xero and Zoho Books for accounting, and Mercury for business banking, plus a plugin for Microsoft’s own Dynamics 365 ERP. For a business running Microsoft 365 with its books in one of those systems, the pieces of an AI-assisted month-end are now all on one page.

Reconciliation: compare balances and transactions, flag discrepancies and propose reconciling
items. Journal entries: draft accruals, reclasses, allocations and reversals, check that debits and credits
balance. Variance commentary: explain price, volume, mix, rate or timing. Partner plugins: QuickBooks,
Xero, Zoho Books, Dynamics 365, Mercury. The tool prepares; a person still posts. (Branded graphic by PGH Consulting, LLC)

What it actually does

This column argued in Week 19 that Claude in Google Sheets was useful because it worked on the file in front of you and asked before editing. Copilot’s accounting skills are a step further: they know what a reconciliation is.

The reconciliation skill, per Microsoft’s documentation, “compares balances and transactions across the general ledger, subledgers, bank statements, vendor records, and other sources,” matches transactions, “identifies discrepancies such as missing records or duplicate entries, and prepares proposed corrections and supporting documentation for review.” The journal-entry skill “checks that debits and credits balance, reconciles entries to source records, and documents calculations, business purpose, and supporting evidence for review.” The variance skill explains differences “by price, volume, mix, rate, or timing,” builds the bridge chart and “drafts explanations of significant or unexplained changes for review.”

Read those three descriptions again and count the phrase. Every one ends in “for review.” Microsoft’s own disclaimer on the same page says Copilot “isn’t a substitute for the judgment of a qualified accounting or tax professional” and tells users to “review and verify all output, including calculations, account mappings, and tax treatments, against source records” before relying on it, posting entries or sharing financial information. That is not boilerplate. It is a description of the product: it prepares, and a person posts.

The accounting plugins look the same. Xero’s own release describes Copilot surfacing profit and loss detail, top customers and who owes you money, with clickable links back into Xero to carry out tasks such as sending payment reminders. Nothing I have found in what Microsoft or the partners have published says Copilot posts a journal or sends an invoice in QuickBooks, Xero or Zoho Books from inside Excel. For now it reads, drafts and hands over.

The audit trail is the feature. No trail, no acceptance. Invoke the skill, record what Copilot
changed and why, review every line against source, reverse specific edits if needed. Policy rule: switch
the audit trail on every time. (Branded graphic by PGH Consulting, LLC)

The audit trail is the feature

The part of the announcement that matters most to a finance team is the smallest. In Excel, Microsoft says, professionals “will also have the option to start an audit trail whenever they invoke an accounting capability. If selected, this will create a record in their chat history of what Copilot changed and why.” With that record, Copilot can “identify when specific changes were made and by whom” and “selectively reverse individual edits without disrupting the rest of the workbook.”

Last week this column described what AI errors look like in a professional report: real author, wrong paper; a total nobody computed. The same shape will appear in a workbook, and the defence is the same: know what the tool touched. A reconciliation where the AI matched 400 lines and you cannot see which 12 it forced is worse than no reconciliation. A reconciliation where every match and every proposed correction is listed with its reason is a reviewable document.

So the first rule is simple. The audit trail is optional. Switch it on, every time, and make that the policy. A reconciliation or journal prepared by Copilot without a trail should not be accepted by whoever reviews it, in the same way a manual one without workings would not be.

Copilot licence required. Frontier early access must be enabled by an admin. Partner plugins
beginning to roll out. Cowork usage billed in Copilot Credits. Typical licence pricing: Copilot Business
US$21 per user a month; Microsoft 365 Copilot US$30. Availability may vary by tenant, region and
reseller. (Branded graphic by PGH Consulting, LLC)

Who gets it, and what it costs

Here the announcement is less helpful than the product. The June finance skills are generally available to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers on Excel for the web, Windows and Mac. The October accounting skills are in Frontier, Microsoft’s early-access programme, which its support page describes as “an early-access space for the latest AI innovations in Microsoft 365” open to anyone with a Copilot licence once an administrator has switched Frontier on. The partner plugins are “beginning to roll out.” Microsoft’s post names no price and no plan.

The Copilot licence itself is the US$30 per user a month enterprise seat, or Copilot Business at US$21 for organisations of up to 300 users, as Week 20 covered. Microsoft’s Business FAQ says the smaller licence “provides the same Microsoft Copilot capabilities,” but no Microsoft page I can find says in terms that Copilot Business gets the Frontier accounting skills.

Cowork, where the accounting plugins live, needs a Copilot seat and is then billed by usage in Copilot Credits at one US cent each, and it is off until an administrator turns it on; administrators can set spending limits by tenant, group or user. If you read Week 20, you know where that line goes on the register.

Run last month again before you trust this month. Ask your admin about licences, Frontier and
Cowork spending limits. Re-run one bank reconciliation with the audit trail on. Test one journal and one
variance explanation. Score the outputs. Write the review rule into the close checklist. (Branded graphic by PGH Consulting, LLC)

The first close

Do not start with the close that matters. Pick last month, which is already done, and run it again with Copilot alongside.
Give the reconciliation skill one bank account and the matching ledger export, with the audit trail on, and compare its proposed reconciling items with the ones your accountant actually posted. Give the journal-entry skill the accruals you booked and see whether it drafts the same ones, balanced, with the business purpose stated. Give the variance skill the management accounts and read its explanation of the biggest movement against the one you wrote. Score each on the ten-cell card from Week 15: correct, followed the instruction, how much editing.

Then decide who signs. The skill prepares; a named person reviews every line against source and posts. If that person is the same one who used to do the whole job, they have gained time. If it is nobody, the business has gained a risk.

What this does not settle

The accounting skills are early access and Microsoft says so. The usage figures in the announcement, more than 8,000 users invoking the skills more than 44,000 times in a week of Insiders testing, measure adoption among testers, not accuracy. Microsoft’s own customer quote, from EY Ireland, says “we are still testing the functionality.”

Availability will vary. Microsoft’s June post carried the line that “specific availability, supported regions, and licensing requirements may vary,” and the Copilot Business question above is unanswered. Check with your reseller before you budget for it.

The plugins read and draft. Until a partner says otherwise, assume nothing posts to your books from Copilot, which for a first close is the right design.

And the disclaimer is correct. Copilot “doesn’t provide accounting, tax, audit, or financial advice or professional determinations.” A balanced journal is not a correct journal. Only a person who understands the transaction can tell the difference, and that person is still the one whose signature goes on the file.

What to try this week
Ask your Microsoft 365 administrator whether your tenant has a Copilot licence, whether Frontier is switched on, and whether Cowork has a spending limit set. Write the three answers down.

If you have access, open last month’s bank reconciliation in Excel, type @reconciliation with the audit trail on, and compare the output with what was posted.

Run one journal and one variance explanation the same way. Score all three on the ten-cell card.

Write the review rule into your close checklist: no Copilot-prepared reconciliation or journal is accepted without the audit trail, and a named person reviews every line against source before posting.

If your books are in QuickBooks, Xero or Zoho Books, ask the vendor what their Copilot plugin can read and whether it can write. Record the answer in the AI permissions register.

Features, availability and licensing are as described by Microsoft on 29 October 2026 and on its support pages as at 31 October 2026, and are subject to change; the accounting skills are in early access. The tool prepares. A person still posts, and a person still signs

Peta-Gaye Hardy is the founder of PGH Consulting, LLC, where she helps finance and operations teams adopt AI in practical, low-risk ways. She writes the weekly AI in Finance & Business column and is based between Jamaica and the United States. Learn more at www.pghconsultinggroup.com. Follow on Instagram and YouTube @pghconsultinggroup, and connect on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/peta-gaye-hardy.

Disclosures: This article is informational and does not constitute investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Readers should consult a qualified professional before acting. Product features, availability, plan eligibility and prices are as published by Microsoft and its partners at the time of writing and are subject to change; readers should confirm the current position with Microsoft or their reseller before subscribing. AI tools can produce errors, and every figure, entry, or claim they produce should be verified against a source before being shared or acted upon. The author is a chartered accountant and has no commercial relationship with Microsoft, Intuit, Xero, Zoho, Mercury or any product mentioned and was not compensated by them. All product names, logos, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are referenced for editorial purposes. The business examples described are illustrative and do not depict any real business.