Copilot for finance: what's coming to Excel and the close

A close to wrap up, reconciliations to do, discrepancies to explain before the review. On 29 October 2026, Microsoft announced more than 25 new skills and extensions for finance teams in Copilot. They work in Excel, and in Cowork, the Copilot space where you hand over multi-step work.

What Microsoft is announcing

Finance skills had already existed in Copilot for Excel since June 2026. The 29 October announcement extends them, and rests on three building blocks.

• Excel in Copilot. Excel is built into the Copilot app: you analyze, edit and co-author a workbook without leaving the conversation.
• Cowork for multi-step work. You hand it work that combines Excel models and other deliverables, such as a close package.
• The company's context. Copilot draws on what the organization already knows, for example the close calendar, beyond the open file.

For accounting: reconciliations, journal entries, reporting

The new accounting features are coming to Copilot for Excel and to Cowork. They target repetitive, manual tasks, where accountants already work.

• Reconciliations. Copilot compares balances and transactions, spots discrepancies and prepares the reconciliation items, for review.
• Journal entries. It drafts entries: accruals, reclassifications, allocations, reversals, recurring entries. It checks that the required data is present and that the entry balances.
• Reporting. It analyzes performance against plan, identifies the main drivers and prepares reporting that explains what changed, and why.

One detail matters for executives: every time you run an accounting feature, you can open an audit trail. It keeps, in the conversation history, what Copilot changed and why.

Microsoft gives a usage figure: in seven days of limited access, more than 8,000 users ran these accounting skills more than 44,000 times.

For corporate finance: the close and forecasts

In Cowork, a finance extension lets you delegate work that spans several files and several conversations. Two examples speak directly to finance departments.

• The close review package. Cowork gathers the close items, spots blockers and risks, analyzes variances, then drafts the commentary and the follow-ups.
• The forecast review. It consolidates budget data, flags the changes that need an explanation, and prepares a memo with the tables, the presentation and the follow-up messages.

Everything is prepared for review, before any action.

Microsoft is also announcing an extension dedicated to capital markets, for banking, research and private equity. An extension for Dynamics 365 business applications is starting to roll out. So are partner vendors' extensions: accounting software, market data, credit and risk analysis.

Trust: history, permissions, data

This is the most important part for a finance department.

• The workbook history. Copilot knows how a workbook has evolved, not just its current state. It can say when a change was made and by whom, explain its effect on the analysis, and undo one specific change without touching the rest.
• Permissions. Copilot only works with content each user has access to. It respects existing permissions and sensitivity labels.
• Data. Prompts and answers stay inside the Microsoft 365 service perimeter, covered by enterprise data protection. Neither they nor your documents are used to train the models.

And the decision stays human. The recommendations, the approvals and the actions that follow remain in the hands of finance professionals.

What's available, and what isn't

• Available: Copilot's finance skills in Excel, and Cowork's finance and capital markets extensions.
• In early access: the accounting features, in Excel and in Cowork. They come through Frontier, the Microsoft 365 early access program.
• Rolling out: the Dynamics 365 extension and the partner vendors' extensions.
• Not specified: the price, the license required, languages and regions. Some partner services may require a separate subscription.

What this means for you

For a finance department, the announcement boils down to one idea: Microsoft's assistant is moving into the close, with a history of who changed what, and when.

That's precisely what file-based consolidations lack. In a CAC 40 group, I saw an Excel consolidation end, six months later, in disagreement over the figures. Excel had no single source, no lock and no audit trail. That's the story of the Excel consolidation that ends in a six-month debate. A change history in the workbook solves part of the problem, the audit trail. It creates neither a single source nor a lock.

Three pieces of advice before you start:

• Check the license first. The announcement gives no price. Ask your IT department what your subscription covers, and the exact cost of the rest.
• Tell what's available from what's in early access. The accounting features are in early access: they can still change. Try them on a real case that's already closed, never on your current close.
• Keep the review step. Microsoft says it itself: everything is prepared for review. A draft entry stays a draft until an accountant has approved it.

If what you need is one version of the figures, with a lock and approvals, you need an application. That's the case in the case study One single truth for treasury. And before adding a license, look at what you already pay for: zero software purchased. AI assistants in Microsoft 365 are described on the page A Copilot AI agent that works for your teams.

The tool prepares. Finance decides. That's the right split.

Based on Microsoft

Based on: Microsoft Copilot for finance: Purpose-built for the way finance teams work, Microsoft, 29 October 2026, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/blog/2026/10/29/microsoft-copilot-for-finance-purpose-built-for-the-way-finance-teams-work/.

Article published on the Microsoft Copilot blog by the head of the Excel product group. The sentence that sums up the spirit of the announcement: "Finance professionals retain control of the recommendations, decisions, approvals, and actions that follow."